Bush Ties Fight Against Malaria to War on Terrorism
by Christine Stuart | April 25, 2008 3:26 PM
Posted to General News
U.S. President George W. Bush tied his initiative to combat malaria to the war on terrorism in his speech at the Northwest Boys and Girls Club Friday morning.
Fighting malaria is a “strategy that advances our security interests,” Bush said. “From experience we understand that the terrorists and extremists can only find fertile recruiting grounds where they find hopelessness.”
“Their ideology is so backwards, so distorted, so hateful nobody really wants to follow it unless you’re so hopeless that it becomes appealing,” he said. “So the best way to defeat this ideology of hate is with acts of compassion and love. The best way to defeat an ideology of darkness is to spread the light of hope.”
Bush highlighted the club’s effort to fight malaria by presenting it with a dragonfly award. He said the dragonfly is the natural predator of the mosquito, which carries the disease.
More than 150 clubs nationwide raised $25,000 to buy more than 2,500 bed nets for families in Africa. Two other individuals were presented with the dragonfly award.
Zachary Ellenthal, 13, of Wilton raised about $12,000 through his bar mitzvah to help fight malaria. Ellenthal said he asked his family and friends to donate to the cause instead of giving him money. He said he also set up a web site to continue to raise money.
Allyson Brown, 18, of Melbourne, Florida was the third recipient of the award. Brown, a senior at Holy Trinity Episcopal Academy, organized a school dance to raise money to combat malaria and the trend caught on. The dance program called “Stayin Alive” has been thrown at more than 100 high schools in 30 states.
She said students can understand how the $10 ticket to the dance helps buy a mosquito net for a child in Africa. “They feel like they’re personally making a difference by donating the money,” she said.
Brown has raised $30,000 for an organization called, Malaria No More. John Logsdon, of Malaria No More, said one million people, mostly children under the age of 5, die from the disease every year.
But Bush Also Had a Political Agenda
U.S. Rep. Chris Shays, R-4, accompanied the president to Connecticut Friday. He showed up at the Boys and Girls Club in Hartford for the brief 20-minute malaria speech, then he was gone.
As Bush stayed around to shake hands with some of his supporters in the room, Shays disappeared. No one was allowed outside the building until Bush left, so no one was able to chase him to ask questions.
Notable Republicans in the room included Hartford attorney Ross Garber, who was recently nominated by Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell to become the state’s top federal prosecutor, Rell’s son Michael and his wife, and Hartford councilwoman Veronica Airey-Wilson. Democratic Congressman John B. Larson’s staff members, including Billy Ciotto, also attended.
After the Hartford event, Bush headed to Henry Kissinger’s home in Kent to help raise money for congressional candidate David Cappiello.
More than 400 people were expected to attend the $1,000 per person fundraiser, where for $10,000 they could have their picture taken with the president. Cappiello is hoping to unseat Rep. Christopher Murphy, a first-term Democrat in the 5th congressional district.
Those in attendance at the Boys and Girls Club event understood that the president seemed to be using them, so he could write-off a portion of his travel expenses on the taxpayers and not Cappiello’s campaign, however, none of them were willing to comment on the politics of the visit.
Benjamin Harlee, 11, who is a member of the club said it’s an honor the president came to the club.
Harlee was not one of the children who personally got to meet the president, but if he did, “I would tell him to lower gas prices.”
Anything else? “Pull the troops from Iraq,” Harlee said.
Unable to get close enough to Kissinger’s home in Kent, war protesters from Connecticut Opposes the War opted to stand outside the Congregational Church in Warren, which is just west of Kent.
“This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to confront the “masterminds” of our failed wars in Southeast Asia and Iraq,” the group of protesters said in an email advertising the protest.
At the end of the event they are expected to proceed to the center of Kent and march up and down downtown Kent with TrueMajority.org’s “Iranmobile”.
Below is a picture of the “Iranmobile” taken earlier this year at Sen. John McCain’s campaign rally at Sacred Heart University.
Comments (7)
Posted by: Tessa Marquis | April 25, 2008 6:00 PM
Except for the two state police directing traffic at the church, who were terrific, the police/state troopers/secret service were extremely anxious in Kent.
The ones along the road further towards the Kissinger "compound" were the nervous ones. They were spoken to politely and obeyed immediately. I mean like obeyed IMmediately.
Nothing worse than an nervous cop. Except a fascist president and his fawning warmonger friends.
Posted by: christine | April 25, 2008 6:33 PM
At least you didn't get your car towed from a perfectly legal parking spot, in which you had to walk by at least 20 cops to get to the building which was blocked with a handful of CT Transit buses. Not one of these cops, all local btw, had the courtesy to tell me I could get towed if I leave my car there. So not only did they tow it costing me $108, they gave me a ticket, which I will be fighting along with the towing fee. The men and women taking into their sleeves today were very polite and nice, which has not been my experience in the past. I'm ready for a drink...wait I don't drink anymore. A cigarette and up of coffee will have to do.
Posted by: Steven G. Erickson | April 26, 2008 8:02 PM
Bush obviously isn't liked by possibly 2/3 of the country.
Those that have taken up a fight on Malaria, my hat off to you. It is an honorable cause.
As for Bush, to me he is just a lying, glorified drug lord, not a leader of the "free" world.
It doesn't take much for someone to google official and news sources to come up with some facts. Carter signed away, and the CIA was supplying Bin Laden and smuggling heroin into the US from the late 70's.
When President Reagan went on the air with a crack pipe and crack rocks on his desk, maybe he was most responsible for the crack cocaine epidemic. White Nancy was saying "Just say no", Ronny was saying "Just say yes" to the CIA and military transports bringing in cocaine from South America to America.
Nothing really has been done since then to stem the tide, so George W. Bush is just the newest drug lord in the office of President.
I don't care to listen to any of his lies. Drug dealers are scum.
Posted by: Helder | April 26, 2008 11:47 PM
Great report Christine! It was shocking to hear that he was coming to Hartford for some trumped up reason, but to read the different accounts between WNPR & yours, readers get two different views to why he was here (despite the fact that they used your photo online). And of course, it's pretty hard to believe he was here for any real altruistic reason.
Keep up the great reporting!
Posted by: Steven G. Erickson | April 27, 2008 7:32 AM
Not "white" in front of Nancy, but "While", my mistake.
Posted by: cedarhillresident | April 28, 2008 9:28 AM
$515,038,000,000 and climbing!!! I can not stomach the man. He is not even worth my effort at this point in time!!!! 266 day and 15 hours!!!! Unless we are lucky and a piano drops on him or a freak meteor falls from the sky.... but hmm then that would leave us with Cheney!! This man should not be doing anything put hiding in the hole he crawled out of!!! Sorry about the car christine. See the man bring evil everywhere he goes!
Does Cappiello really think that associating himself with Bush is a good thing in the end???? $1000. to a swamp creature???
I wish someone with morals came to the kids events...
They did a great job an bravo to them!
Posted by: Futurist | April 28, 2008 11:49 AM
What you all seem to be missing is that Bush is the first president of the "blog-o-sphere" age and, as such, has had every misstep and misstatement magnified out of proportion with any common-sense notion of reality and bounced around cyberspace ad infinitum, inflaming hysterical emotions. I am predicting (mark my words) that any democrat, whether male or female, will suffer the same slings and arrows of outrageous fortune---only probably worse. Worse, because this technology is in its infancy and the intensity of scrutiny and criticism will grow until the "blog-o-sphere" settles into some kind of maturity. And until then, I will continue to be amused as I watch the shoe fitting painfully on the other foot.