http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46252-2003Aug11.html
Holy photo op, Batman! The president of the United States has become a
military action figure.
When President Bush landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln three months ago
in a naval flight suit, many commentators believed that the image of
the vigorous president on the aircraft carrier would figure prominently
in his reelection campaign. What the commentators did not predict is
that Bush would become his own G.I. Joe doll.
Coming soon to a store near you: a foot-tall likeness of the president
called "Elite Force Aviator: George W. Bush -- U.S. President and Naval
Aviator."
Blue Box Toys, a Hong Kong-based company, will be distributing the Bush
dolls through KB Toys starting Sept. 15. "Exacting in detail and fully
equipped with authentic gear, this limited-edition action figure is a
meticulous 1:6 scale recreation of the Commander-in-Chief's appearance
during his historic Aircraft Carrier landing," states the breathless
promotion.
For just $39.99, you get a plastic model of Bush wearing flight suit,
survival vest and parachute harness, jauntily carrying helmet and
oxygen mask -- just as Bush did on May 1 after climbing out of his S-3B
Viking aircraft. The Bush doll joins many other Navy Seals, Blue Angels
and World War II aviators in Blue Box's "Elite Force" series.
Bush is the first president to be so honored, "and maybe the last,"
said the company's spokeswoman, Lauri Aibel, who notes that some
complaints have already been received. "We don't condone or endorse the
president, but he fit the criteria of our Elite Force collection. . . .
It would have to be somebody in uniform, a military hero of some kind,
or depicting a military uniform."
Aibel said advance orders for the Bush doll are coming in at a record
clip, though Blue Box has done no publicity or advertising yet. Blue
Box Toys did not request permission from the White House for use of
Bush's likeness, and a White House spokeswoman had no comment
yesterday.
The company recommends that only those 14 and older use the Bush doll,
which it says is an "adult collectible item" and emphatically not a
toy. It may, in fact, pose a choking hazard for the president's
Democratic opponents.
One person unlikely to order a Bush action figure is Air Force Lt. Col.
Karen Kwiatkowski, who retired in March after working as a Middle East
and North Africa specialist at the Pentagon before the Iraq war.
In an op-ed attacking the decision-making leading to war in Iraq,
Kwiatkowski said the Bush administration will be found "to have caused
a subversion of constitutional limits on executive power and a
co-optation through deceit of a large segment of the Congress."
Based on her nine months working under the Pentagon's undersecretary
for policy, Douglas J. Feith, Kwiatkowski concludes that civil servants
and active-duty military personnel were "noticeably uninvolved" in
Middle East issues, shut out by "cross-agency cliques" of hawks from
the Pentagon, State Department, National Security Council and vice
president's office who engaged in "uncritical acceptance" of isolated
opinions.
"What I saw was aberrant, pervasive, and contrary to good order and
discipline," she wrote in the op-ed, distributed by the Knight Ridder
service.
Since her retirement after 20 years in the Air Force, Kwiatkowski has
become a self-described "gnat," pestering the administration about Iraq
in more than 30 articles she has written for a libertarian, antiwar Web
site.
Is she merely grinding an axe? "It is true that I don't like those
guys," she allows, but "I initially supported Bush."
Oceans Apart:
"The war in Iraq might in fact have impeded the war against al Qaeda."
-- Report of Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, July 31
"10 Ways the Liberation of Iraq Supports the War on Terror."
-- White House fact sheet, Aug. 8
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