Irish Eyes: They're Not Smiling

"No red carpet for killer Bush," read signs at Shannon Airport late last night, as thousands of Stop Bush protesters gathered to show their opposition to the US president. A RTE radio station talk show could not seem to get enough callers to call in supporting Bush's visit. Finally they started making appeals for pro-Bush calls. How embarrassing is that?

Staging the biggest security operation ever mounted in Ireland, 6,000 police officers and soldiers stood at checkpoints around Shannon and Dromoland Castle Friday to greet our President and First Lady who planned to stay only 18 hours. I'm just wondering why it would take 6,000 people to guard one little man. What effect does our president have on people? The residents of Shannon felt as if they were a potential target for a terrorist attack, according to the mayor. Locals gazed in amazement as they watched their peaceful neighborhood transformed into something not unlike a war film set. Port-a-potties stood lined up at intersections for the hundreds of troops and guards patrolling the remote countryside. What a scene! The Irish people will not forget this for a long time I suspect.

The overseas trip for the Bushes began at home Thursday night when Carole Coleman, a Washington correspondent with RTE (Irish state television), was granted an short interview with Bush, the first White House interview to an Irish journalist in 20 years! No one in the White House anticipated anything but a pleasant little chat with an Irish woman. The thought was that this might be a cordial start to today's EU-US summit in Ireland which seeks to patch up a relationship troubled by Iraq before Bush headed to the NATO summit in Turkey this afternoon (June 26). As it turned out, Bush bit off more than he could chew. Ms. Coleman subjected him to a grilling which left him fuming. She was relentless. She was not about to let him off the hook. I heard parts of the interview several times on Air America Radio, and I can tell you, it was great! No American journalist has fired away at Bush like she did. She did not let him get away with his typical non-answers. And George did not like it one bit. He was very rude to her. Yet she did not back down. The interview was broadcast on television and radio breakfast shows. The questions were about dead US soldiers, torture, the issue of making the world a more dangerous place, and about Bush being disliked. She really asked some doozys. When she made a statement that the world is not safer now than it was, he responded, "Why do you say that?" And she had a good answer that he couldn't refute. She reminded him that there are attacks every day and people are dying every day. She nailed him so badly that he really couldn't say much. I wish I had seen the video. Strangely the video has disappeared from the web. (Gee, I wonder what happened there.) And the interview with Laura Bush was cancelled. Overall, the whole scene went very badly. George may be wishing he had just gone directly to Turkey without passing "Go" and collecting his $200.