To protect and serve

Two thoughts on this story from the weekend, in which President Bush went back to where his Secret Service agent had been prevented by local security from accompanying the president into a dinner, and the president physically pulled his agent through so that the agent could do his job:

It is a measure of the character of the president. Secret Service agents are trained to sacrifice their lives, if necessary, to protect the life of the president. Bush could have sent someone else over to clear up the problem, but he took control of the situation himself. A stark contrast to his former opponent in the election who, when he fell on a ski slope on one of his vacations, blamed it on the Secret Service agent. "I don't fall down, the [expletive] knocked me over."

The second, much more disturbing aspect of this story, has been discussed by a Power Line correspondent:

"Let me put it into perspective: the president has been marked for death by hundreds of terrorist groups; he is in a foreign country, one where there have been near contintuous [sic] riots against America and against him, personally, over the Iraq War; as he's walking into a banquet hall, the local police intentionally cut him off from his security detail.

"If the first thought that popped into your mind when you heard about that was not "assassination," then your mind is still laboring in a pre-9/11 world."

Read all of the post here. It's a chilling thought (no pun intended).