Republicans Lash Out at Reports President Bush Drank Infant Child's Blood

By C. William Boyer
Associated Press
December 22, 2005

WASHINGTON- Last week's news-clip of the alleged murder of a 7-week old infant by President Bush at a fundraiser at the American Heritage Foundation has drawn a sharp response from the President's supporters. The clip, purported to have been secretly filmed by an American Heritage ex-employee and subsequently broadcast by CBS, appears to show the President slashing an infant boy's throat before drinking his blood. But Republicans dispute this.

"That child was still alive," Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee thundered before the Senate Monday. "I saw it's little arms moving and it little legs kicking and the President wasn't drinking any blood, he was attempting to administer first aid." Critics of the president dispute this diagnosis, pointing to the fact that in the clip shown by CBS, the child never moves.

Prominent conservative pundit Ann Coulter wrote in a column that the film was faked and that CBS, in broadcasting “the two-bit fake job on national airwaves showed what a bunch of traitorous, terrorist-loving liberals they are over there at CBS. They'll even stoop so low as to photo-shop the President's head onto some Satan worshiper's body."

Bill O'Reilly, on his Fox cable program The O'Reilly Factor, stated the film had been faked "by that little weasely disgruntled employee. We oughtta take that guy out back and drink his blood."

But some Republicans took the charges of Mr. Bush murdering and drinking a child's blood head-on.

"It's within the President's prerogatives," Vice-President Dick Cheney asserted to Tim Russert on Meet The Press Sunday, "to drink a child's blood. People need to be reminded we are at war and that that child was no child at all, but a very very small Al Queda terrorist. The President was merely acting within the powers laid out in the Constitution to protect the American People. I for one am not going to allow the Democrats in Congress," continued Mr. Cheney, "to usurp the ability of the President to drink a terrorist's blood today so that the 9-11 terrorists are drinking our kid’s blood tomorrow under a mushroom cloud."

Other Republicans, in pushing back against the outcry of Congressional Democrats, claim this is merely partisan politics.

"Drinking human blood is a favorite tactic of Democratic presidents," House Majority Leader Dennis Hastert told reporters yesterday at the Capitol. "Carter drank blood in his time. A lot. And with Clinton, we all know he drained an entire Girl Scout troop. So for today, when our country is under attack, for Democrats to claim that Mr. Bush's murder and drinking of that infant boy's blood is a terrible crime, well that's just hysterical partisanship and political posturing."

Robert Novak, the conservative columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, asserted that the whole thing is "being blown way out of proportion. In a time of war, with soldiers being killed every day in Iraq, one little kid not even big enough to carry an M-16 being drained of blood is just simply taking our eye off the ball."

President Bush himself, in his radio address Saturday, sharply condemned CBS' broadcasting of the child's murder and subsequent blood drinking, saying it "tips off, you know, the, uh, the enemy, and I uh, we gotta get to the bottom of this and find out who did the filming, this leaking, that uh, that undermines my ability to defend the American people. And I'll continue to drink the blood of children, and I will do it without seeking the approval of those Democrats, if that's what it takes to protect this country's security."