{"id":359,"date":"2003-11-28T07:26:38","date_gmt":"2003-11-28T07:26:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/?p=359"},"modified":"2003-11-28T07:26:38","modified_gmt":"2003-11-28T07:26:38","slug":"george-were-grateful-really","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/2003\/11\/george-were-grateful-really\/","title":{"rendered":"George, we&#8217;re grateful, really"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sneaking off after dark to spend a few hours with the troops is a fine thing to do, particularly if you&#8217;re him what sent &#8217;em there.  Planning it in secret and lying to the press about it is a smart thing to do. Costs you some points with the reporters down the line, but the Prez&#8217;s hide is worth it, no matter which empty suit temporarily occupies the White House.<P>But perhaps we could&#8217;ve avoided all the hyperbole &#8212; about how unprecedented, stunning and other adjectives it was &#8212; and all the second-guessing about what it all means. The flight to Baghdad was clearly a media stunt, but it also was a gift: a morale picker-upper for the soldiers, and a bit of news for us on an otherwise newsless day.<br \/>\n<P>The thing to do when somebody hands you a present is to say &#8220;thanks.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sneaking off after dark to spend a few hours with the troops is a fine thing to do, particularly if you&#8217;re him what sent &#8217;em there. Planning it in secret and lying to the press about it is a smart&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-p\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/2003\/11\/george-were-grateful-really\/\">Read more &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[24],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}