[Danno]

White House shrugs off Polish apology demands


The White House on Wednesday shrugged off Polish demands to express more than mere 'regret' after President Barack Obama mistakenly referred to a Nazi Holocaust site as a "Polish death camp."
"We regret the misstatement, but that is what it was," said Obama spokesman Jay Carney, reiterating that the president "misspoke" during a ceremony awarding the highest US civilian honor to late Holocaust hero Jan Karski.
"He was referring to Nazi death camps in German-occupied Poland."
Poland had earlier insisted that Washington must do more than simply express the "regret" offered by another White House spokesman late on Tuesday, hours after Obama's use of words deemed offensive by Warsaw.
Obama's verbal slip overshadowed his posthumous award of the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Karski, a Polish underground officer who provided the Allies with early eyewitness accounts of Nazi genocide against European Jews.
Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Obama's words had hurt all Poles and he expected more from Washington than just regret.
"I am convinced that our American friends can today allow themselves a stronger reaction than a simple expression of regret from the White House spokesman -- a reaction more inclined to eliminate once and for all these kinds of errors," Tusk told reporters in Warsaw.
"Today, this is a problem for the reputation of the United States," the prime minister said.
Members of Poland's Jewish community -- including the country's Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich -- said in a statement that: "We expect President Barack Obama to personally correct his words."
Poland's President Bronislaw Komorowski said meanwhile he had sent a letter to Obama "counting on (...) cooperation in correcting this unfortunate error" which "I am certain in no way reflects the thoughts or views of our American friend."
US officials reiterated Wednesday that Obama had visited the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial during his visit to Poland last year and had repeatedly paid tribute to the bravery of Poles during World War II.
Between 1939 and 1945, nearly six million Polish citizens perished under Nazi Germany's brutal World War II occupation of their country.
More than half of Poland's victims were of Jewish origin and they, in turn, accounted for half of the six million European Jews who perished during the Holocaust.
Many were killed in death camps set up by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland -- including the most notorious, Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Poland's government keenly watches the global media for descriptions of former Nazi German death camps as "Polish" because it says the term -- even if used simply as a geographical indicator -- can give the impression that Poland bore responsibility for Nazi Germany's World War II genocide.
Karski, who was a clandestine officer of the Polish government-in-exile in London, witnessed scenes of starvation and death after infiltrating Warsaw's Jewish Ghetto and visiting a Nazi transit camp sending Jews to death chambers.
Karski took his eye witness testimony to wartime US president Franklin Roosevelt. He later became a professor of history at Georgetown University and died in Washington aged 86 in 2000.
http://ca.news.yahoo...-110505006.html

[lostinblue]

In his book "Dreams from my Father", Barack Obama spoke about his alcohol and drug use in high school and noted that he "drank heavily, (and) tried drugs enthusiastically."

I spent the last two years of high school in a daze, locking away the questions that life seemed insistent on imposing. I kept playing basketball, attended classed sparingly, drank beer heavily, and tried drugs enthusiastically. I discovered that it didn't make any difference if you smoked reefer in the white class mates sparkling new van, or in the dorm room with some brother you'd met down at the gym, or on the beach with a couple of Hawaiian kids who had dropped out of school and now spent most of their time looking for an excuse to brawl.
Looks like he was stoned during world history class.

[Mr. Big Dog]

Looks like he was stoned during world history class.

More proof that he is a real American.

[Lincolns mullet]

More proof that he is a real American.

The RWN's prefer the sneaky, sexual deviant types.

[ready4ONE]

Sounds like Poland is a bit sensitive and needs to quit whining. The sentence might have been better structured but the only folks who don't hold the Germans responsible for the Holocost deny it happened all together.

[Obama 2012]

Who's 'Oama?'

[Danno]

BUt this is the President who went around the world on an "apology tour" when he was first elected..... trying to right the perceived wrongs of Americas past.

Why is he so reluctant to simply say "I made a mistake, I'm sorry" for his own errors?

[Lincolns mullet]

Why is he so reluctant to simply say "I made a mistake, I'm sorry" for his own errors?

He's too uppity.

[Asia]

Sounds like Poland is a bit sensitive and needs to quit whining. The sentence might have been better structured but the only folks who don't hold the Germans responsible for the Holocost deny it happened all together.

Every year there are some publications all over the world which claims that there were Polish death camps.
Even in German media.
So I don't think Poland needs to quit whining.

[Gegel]

1338478643[/url]' post='5410449']
Every year there are some publications all over the world which claims that there were Polish death camps.
Even in German media.
So I don't think Poland needs to quit whining.

I agree... And I think that they should express their unmitigated outrage but refusing to take any financial aid from the USA and pay back all they money they have received in the past decades immediately.
That would speak louder than any whining...

[Usui Takumi]

This is pretty foolish...they already apologized once.

[Mr. Big Dog]

But this is the President who went around the world on an "apology tour" when he was first elected.....

He did? When and to whom did he actually apologize? You know, just because Karl Rove says he did, that doesn't actually make it so. Can you substantiate when and where the President apologized for what?

[Lincolns mullet]

I agree... And I think that they should express their unmitigated outrage but refusing to take any financial aid from the USA and pay back all they money they have received in the past decades immediately.
That would speak louder than any whining...

[Lincolns mullet]

Does anyone know any good pollock jokes?

[Gegel]

1338479694[/url]' post='5410490']
This is pretty foolish...they already apologized once.

Alas for some bashing the POTUS is a full-time job, as stated in the back of their Kool-Aid ration book...

Edited by Gegel, 31 May 2012 - 11:06 AM.