Plato's Republic: Statesman, G.B. Trudeau & Doonesbury...
For eight years, Doonesbury portrayed William Clinton as a waffle, dripping with butter. The last president had a penchant for Big Macs and fried foods, and there was more than one version of the cartoon image. When Bush came into office, Gary Trudeau immediately put a feather to the face – literally. But then a 10-gallon cowboy hat floating in midair. Now we’re back to the feather. It’s almost like the best political cartoonist can’t make up his mind as to what Bush actually IS.
Other political figures are easy – like California’s Arnold Schwarzenegger, portrayed as a muscular hand and described as “Herr GropenFuhrer”. Trudeau’s political commentaries are sharp and savage, and pull few punches. And unfortunately, many other cartoonists make an attempt to counter his daily strip – notables include Mallard Fillmore, a strip well-drawn but politically naïve, and bitterly sarcastic to the point of tantrumic Limbaugh-esque rancor.
But Bush wears different hats. The Lone Cowboy. The goofy guy with a smirking grin. He must endear himself to someone – 46% of the people in the nation can’t listen to the radio, television, or read his commentary in the newspapers without desperately wanting to shove a primary grammar tome into the man’s hands. In some ways, the floating Dunce cap has something of a grand ring to it.
But if there was a way to paint a zealot’s hat upon his head. Something that tapped into the fiery Puritan spirit of hellfire and damnation – the same spirit that causes him to chant about crusades, good, evil, and the welfare of the American people. It’s the narrowminded attacks that focuses people to the bad impressions of Bush.
Those impressions? Selfish, greedy, self-centered, and misguided. Arrogant, aggressive, cocky, swaggering, self-righteous, and backsliding teetotaler. Hypocritical in his demands for service and sacrifice – from a man who never once showed up for duty during his tour in the Texas Air National Guard. Evangelical in religion, domineering in personal contact, nouveau rich - with all the pretension and none of the class.
In other words, Bush is everything that makes a quintessentially American stereotype. It’s as if an old, crusty, French noble with horrendous body odor, dressed all in black, smoking Gauloise cigarettes, keeping three mistresses in the presidential palace and making fun of the American tourists while dining upon frog legs, snails, and other things only found near scum-filled ponds were the leader of France.
And in many ways, he relishes his image of cornpone Texan multimillionaire. He cultivates it. In some ways, he finds ways to portray himself as a humble man with humble, honest roots in the working class – but the reality is, he’s about as far from the American Everyman as a 19th century factory-shift mother of five was from Queen Victoria.
It’s been documented that he does not read – during his time as Texas governor, he would receive a report and ask the sender to just “tell me what it says”. Four hours a day was spent in the office, on the campaign trail, or playing golf with cronies – many of whom worked in the higher echelons of the Enron Corporation, or had direct connections to the House of Saud. After a long three or four hour meeting, he’d relax and play four or five hours of video games to unwind.
And yet I hesitate to call him stupid. Ignorant, perhaps. Misled on foreign and domestic policy, certainly. Completely out of touch with the average American citizen’s needs and wants, definitely. But then we are no longer in the business of governing the average American’s needs or wants.
What I’m amazed at, though, is that it would appear The Bush Crew has failed to get virtually any points on the board for domestic, environmental, or foreign policy “wins”.
Correction: Every assertion of the God’s Honest Truth by the Bush Administration has proven to be wrong.
On Monday, the White House backed off from asserting that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, saying it now wanted to compare prewar intelligence with what’s actually there, right now. The position came the minute David Kay, the CIA’s former chief weapons inspector, threw his hands up in the air and more or less said bugger this for a game of soldiers, there’s no weapons there, there were no weapons there, there’s no reason for the statements that we “knew” Saddam had them, and all the intelligence, documented or otherwise, that said there were weapons, was wrong. They couldn’t afford them, they didn’t have the systems in place, and sure, they could have had them – but they did not. I’m going home. This sucked.
Yet somehow the Bush administration is still clinging to the idea that the ends justified the means.
In other words, that the ultimate goal, all along, was always getting rid of Saddam Hussein.
That’s an important distinction. George Bush, during an interview with Diane Sawyer, said, simply, that he considered Hussein a threat, no matter what. Cheney kept pushing a strong belief in the existence of Iraqi WMDs until he nearly needed a new pacemaker. It doesn’t take a conspiracy theorist to connect the dots – what the American people needed, or wanted, or the political landscape of the world required did not matter. The WMDs were the vehicle – the elimination of Iraq as a hostile entity and the reconstruction of a pliant puppet-state similar to the Iraq of the 1980s was the goal.
The true criminals in the game of weapons of mass destruction went unheeded. North Korea’s nuclear program is all but complete, leaving the most volatile, xenophobic country in the world with the means to commit mass murder. Libya, last month, pointed out that it had the means and methods, but cheerfully decided not to pursue the execution and came clean about its own programs. And Pakistan, one of the poorest countries in the world, with a heavy Islamic population, the closest proximity to Afghanistan, and an aggressive neighbor to the east, has nuclear scientists who were shopping the nuclear secrets around the world.
Like Qaddafi, it’s time for the Bushies to come clean. The blue dress that brought the House of Clinton down was not significant symbol of any kind of corruption, but the weapons of mass destruction are symbolic of an Easter Egg hunt gone terribly awry.
The fact that the United States went to war on faulty intelligence, with a reasonable doubt as to the veracity of that information is perhaps the most chilling aspect of the whole conflict. And that is the most important distinction, and the answer to George W. Bush’s response to Ms. Sawyer: “What’s the difference? If he had the weapons, he would be the danger.”
The danger lies in using the force of the United States to eliminate a threat that does not pose an immediate threat to the safety and security of the United States. Right before 9/11/01, George W. Bush was briefed by the counterterrorism unit of the CIA as to the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden, and the feasibility of “target neutralization”. The decision to stay the course – regardless of the multiple warning signs unheeded by the Bush administration – ignored a specific, identified threat to the safety of the American people in favor of dealing with the fallout from the Enron scandal.
So it is difficult to see how pursuing Iraq’s shadow weapons instead of the terrorists who committed the 9/11/01 attacks is furthering America’s best interests, or even protecting American safety. The Bush administration promised to bring the architects of al-Qaeda to justice, yet have failed miserably to find a grey-bearded 6’5” Saudi Arabian on kidney dialysis.
On top of this, the United States has the largest budget deficit in the history of the world – from a balanced budget and no deficit spending during the Clinton years. Over the next fifteen years, the budget deficit is expected to cost the United States $1.7 trillion dollars – and that’s with an economy still in the tank, with wealth .
In other words, the Bush administration went to go fight the neighborhood bully and maxed out the credit cards when they did it.
Not that Bush reads newspapers, or watches news television, or listens to the radio, but this morning’s Dallas Morning News made an excellent point – namely that the paper’s editorial staff supported war against Iraq because Bush claimed Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and was ready to use them against the United States. 11 months later, the US forces haven’t found those weapons.
If the Dallas papers say the White House stretched the truth to fit the motivations for war, that’s a serious matter – because it’s more to the truth. Lying as an excuse for war is one of the most reprehensible things a leader can do – and if that leader is using “protecting American interests” as an excuse, that’s little better than the excuses thousands of dictators, despots, and conquerors have used to cruelly slaughter thousands of innocents throughout history.
In fact, Hussein could have argued that the war with Iran that killed 1 million Iraqis, and the police state maintained throughout his regime was also for the interests of protecting Iraqi civilians, and civilian interests.
But it doesn’t matter.
The new symbol of the Bush administration should be a greased pig. Not because of the grand food that is Texas barbecue. Not for the billions of dollars in corporate pork and protection money given to the Bush re-election campaign. But the minute the Bush Administration stops changing their stories (from weapons of mass destruction to weapons of mass destruction program activities; from “imminent threat of attacks against America” to “evil dictator”; from “coalition of the willing” to a fracture with virtually every ally, and a trickle of peacekeepers from Mongolia, Korea, Japan, and Austrailia, with Britain’s highly unpopular involvement steadily slowing), we might be able to believe a word they say.
Until then, it’s still a pack of lies – and the sad part is, the lies aren’t even coherent. But then, from past experience and the track record, you might not expect much from the Bush administration.
Friday, January 23, 2004
If you think this is funny, you're...well, you're not normal.
One of the best things about being a kid in the 1980’s was the toys. At the age of eight, I was an enthralled witness to the epic battle of the Transformers: Autobot versus DeceptiCon; GIJoe versus Cobra. The girls in our neighborhood played with Barbies and imagined worlds of shopping, domesticity, and having sodas with friends at the mall; we men were out conquering planets with giant robots that transformed into cars, trains, planes, and somehow (I’m still unsure why these existed) dinosaurs. And they were locked in a conflict that went on without end.
Of course, the DeceptiCons were evil. You knew it. Starscream had an annoying voice. The DeceptiCon leaders whacked humans around and destroyed buildings just because they could. They were fast and speedy and sneaky. And there was the name. DeceptiCon - it had a very simple meaning. Deception. Deceit. Lies. For fun and profit, and giant Enerjon cubes. But for all of that, and even taking in to account the fact that the good guys were the vehicles stuck trundling along on the ground, the DeceptiCons lost week after week after week in the Saturday morning cartoon fight of good versus evil.
Sometimes a DeceptiCon would cross the lines to join the Autobots, and vice versa. When the animators of the cartoon series ran out of ideas, they would throw in a crisis of enerjon cubes (the lifeforce of the Transformer) to spice things up.
But ultimately, it came down to the basic plot that I remember – the Autobots and the Decepticons were at war, period. It had been going on for as long as anyone could remember, and finally it came down to a battle on planet Earth. The idealogues of the Decepticons said that the race of the Transformers needed the resources to maintain their way of life – the Autobots wanted to adapt to the new environments. The Decepticons used up the resources of planets and left them alone; the Autobots didn’t.
I had one friend who loved the DeceptiCons. Had every single one of them, down to the tiny transforming cat and bird so hard to find in the later years. I could never understand why he chose that side. The DeceptiCons were evil! Evil doers! They dealt with mass-industry humans. They abused the Earth to gather enerjon resources! They used humans as servants! I simply didn’t understand why he chose the path of the Gun – for the leader of the DeceptiCons transformed himself into a .45 automatic pistol – with a scope.
I remembered this because the other day I realized I simply, truly, do NOT understand a segment of society. I don’t understand why they do the things they do, or state the beliefs they espouse. I keep wondering if they simply don’t get the reasons underlying the structure of logic. Out loud I’ll ask why in the name of GOD they support the things they do. And in some way, I can’t help but wonder if there’s no more gray space in the political spectrum.
Today’s neoconservative coalition seems to be following in the hardliners’ steps. The echoing statements and assumptions voiced after 9/11/01 by the bandwagon patriots clearly said if you disagreed with the president, you were allying yourself with terrorism. When asked who in the Bush administration said it, most of the people who had this opinion shifted their feet and mumbled something about not knowing.
Actually, it was John Ashcroft, responding to criticism of the Patriot Act, and the office of the Attorney General who made the link, over and over again, that without the support of the American people for the president, the terrorists would win. It was the chubby, tacturn, dour face of Dick Cheney who said, “The American People Stand United Against Terror”. It was the panic-stricken folks who slapped bumper stickers that said “Kill Osama” on the backs of their SUVs and pickups. It was, in essence, the paranoiac who feared the unknown; the xenophobic; the “real Americans”.
But to borrow the phrase “Let’s Roll” meant nothing. George W. Bush took 253 days of personal leave in the first year of his presidency. If we were to roll, where were we to roll to? It is easy to define a War on Terror. It’s harder to identify where that War on Terror should be fought. Whose land needs to be invaded. Where to send the forces to do it. And when it’s best to conduct it.
The problem is, the Bush Administration had advance knowledge of the threats posed by Osama bin Laden. A counterterrorist team had studied the leader’s movements and actions for five years, and gave a specific location and indication that if left unchecked, a terrorist strike against the United States was imminent. According to administration officials, the warnings that bin Laden posed a threat were “brushed off” by Bush and his team.
It suited the purposes of the United States to invade Afghanistan, but there is no link between 9/11/01 and Iraq. So how come Bush went to war with Iraq? A year ago, President Bush used his State of the Union address to sound a frightening alarm about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The president told the nation that Iraq had amassed 25,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin and 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve gas. He charged that Saddam Hussein's regime had sought to acquire "significant quantities" of refined uranium and special aluminum tubes whose only practical use was as part of a program to develop nuclear weapons (which turned out to be, in fact, false). And he sent the warning that only one vial from those vast stockpiles of weapons could "bring a day of horror like none we have ever known”, playing directly to the fears of the American public that another 9/11/01 was imminent.
That dire warning of multiple threats served as the Bush administration's justification for war in Iraq – skipping directly over United Nations approval. To this date, no weapons of mass destruction of any kind have been found in Iraq. No anthrax. No botulinum. No VX. No plutonium, yellowcake uranium, or any other type. In fact, U.S. weapons inspectors have not even found significant evidence of programs that might eventually have led to the development of weapons. And the allegations concerning Iraq's efforts to develop a nuclear weapons program were proved to have been based on fake evidence.
Even then, when support for the war waned in late May of 2003, the administration waved copies of photographs “leaked” from Iraq where “advanced communications” Mig-25 Foxbats were found buried in the desert sand (convieniently neglecting to mention that the designers of the Foxbat were apparently drunken Russian aerospace engineers attempting to see if they could take a brick, put wings on it, and make it fly). In fact, the photographs had been taken during the first Gulf War – and no such Foxbats had been uncovered by U.S. troops.
Yet, having staked the honor of the United States on his allegations against Iraq, President Bush hasn't even tried to explain the utter lack of evidence to support the stark charges he made a year ago in American public policy. Even more to the point, yesterday, his aide de camp, Dick Cheney, the second-in-command of the Armed Forces, publicly renewed the assertions that Saddam Hussein has a relationship with Al Qaeda and two tractor trailers discovered after the war were enough proof that Iraq had an active biological weapons program – even though documents captured with Hussein indicate that no such relationship existed – and the fact that the Bush team’s own inspection group was called back to the United States a full month ago.
That’s in stark contrast to Colin Powell’s statement in an interview that he had not seen "smoking-gun, concrete evidence" of connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda. One might think the Secretary of State would be a little more connected with root sources and analysis than the vice-president. Members of Congress and some in the intelligence community said Thursday that Cheney's comments could lead the public to believe there was collaboration between Iraq and Al Qaeda, and that his statements were not supported by the evidence.
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the planner of the 9/11/01 attacks, has told American interrogators that Al Qaeda rejected the idea of any working relationship with Iraq, which was seen by the terrorist network as a corrupt, secular regime. When Hussein was captured last month, he was found with a document warning his supporters to be wary of working with foreign fighters.
Cheney also argued that the main thrust of the administration's case for war — the claim that Iraq was assembling weapons of mass destruction — had been validated by the discovery of two flatbed trailers outfitted with tanks and other equipment.
"We've found a couple of semi-trailers at this point which we believe were in fact part of [a WMD] program," Cheney said. "I would deem that conclusive evidence, if you will, that he did in fact have programs for weapons of mass destruction."
That’s odds with the judgment of the Bush administration’s government's lead weapons inspector, David Kay, who said in an interim report in October that "we have not yet been able to corroborate the existence of a mobile [biological weapons] production effort." In a BBC interview that aired Thursday night on public television in the United States, Kay said that is still the case. He said it was "premature and embarrassing" for the CIA to conclude shortly after the vehicles were discovered last year that they were weapons labs. "I wish that news hadn't come out," Kay said, calling the release of the information a "fiasco." Experts are saying it was more likely the trailers were meant for making hydrogen.
After Cheney implied in a television interview in September that Iraq was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush was forced to acknowledge days later that the administration "had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved" in Sept. 11.
The White House had no comment Thursday on Cheney's remarks. The White House, when directly confronted with the hard questions, has deflected them to a stance that essentially slides the question by.
George W. Bush is not as dumb as he’s made out to be. Commentator Al Franken has asked the president directly if he did cocaine after 1984, and the answer has always been, “No.” Asked if he did cocaine prior to 1984, the president says, “That’s in the past.” The reason: if Bush says he DIDN’T do cocaine prior to 1984, there are a host of individuals and public records that point directly to criminal usage – and perhaps even a cover-up. In the game of the public eye on the Iraq war, the same rules apply.
Instead of answering the questions directly, or shaking loose from the statement “Weapons of Mass Destruction”, or simply saying, yep, we goofed, but he’s gone, we’re out of there, last one out, clean up the mess, please, there’s been no explanations for the actions taken.
Instead, the focus has shifted to, “Saddam Hussein was an evil man.”
Instead, the president talked in this year's State of the Union address of Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities."
Instead, the president suggested going to the moon. Instead, the president demanded the United States spend $1.5 billion dollars for feasibility studies of a base on Mars.
Today, it’s doubtful the nation would support the president's call to war with Iraq on the basis of "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities". And if last year, during the impassioned screams for regime change from the Bush administration, someone suggested a trip to the moon or a little social jaunt to Mars, the idea would have been laughable at best; scorned as frivolous or its backers ridden out of town on a rail as “egghead scientific dreaming”.
And is it any wonder that even those Iraqis who bitterly opposed Hussein are suspicious of U.S. motives now? Leaders of the Shiites, who suffered from decades of oppression under Hussein, don't trust the U.S. plan to select a new Iraqi government through a series of regional caucuses later this year. They demand direct democracy. One man, one vote. Transparent elections.
The Bush excuse? “Democracies take time. Maybe down the road they can handle a vote. But for now, caucases are the best way to go.” Odd choice for an administration whose war cry was, “Democracy in Iraq!” No explanation of Middle East democratization was offered. And now that the funding has been effectively slashed by the domestic policy mistakes of the administration, the Bush camp seems to be the proverbial misers – demanding more money while the veterans’ benefits are slashed, an expanded, voluntary military force vetoed in favor of stop-loss (the modern-day equivalent of press-ganging, except it’s done by not releasing soldiers from duty when their enlistment contracts are up, amounting to a governmental breach of contract), and slicing the equipment budgets for “minor” things like bulletproof vests, socks, and clean underwear for troops stationed in Iraq.
Now that the war is over, the Bushies are swarming throughout the nations of the world. John Bolton has been desperately trying to find fiscal aid and financial backers to help shore up the region and restart Iraq’s dead economy. It’s like a Greeks-Only frat party that gets completely out of hand and shut down by the cops – only to have the greeks ask the rest of the collegiate community to help replant their front lawn and pay for the broken windows in their house. Part of this desperate scramble is that the Bush administration decided to wing it when it came to reconstruction – and the restraint of increase in cost of 1% vowed by the White House on all governmental spending except defense and homeland security.
When the Bush administration's prewar justifications collapsed, its postwar promises were inevitably called into question as well. The president and other administration officials now justify the war on humanitarian grounds: Hussein's horrific crimes against his own people demanded his removal from power. That’s a good argument, but it’s not the one the White House made prior to war. (Nor is it ethically justifiable – Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney were in American administrations that directly supported the man they now vilify. Not even a Reagan-esque, “Mistakes were made” pseudo-apology for their support.)
Nor is it one the White House has extended to other repressive regimes, including the other members of the "axis of evil" singled out in last year's State of the Union address. And North Korea and Iran really do have dangerous weapons programs. North Korea, in particular, HAS weapons of mass destruction, and they’re not shy about flashing them at the U.S. and its allies.
The president made it clear Tuesday night that he doesn't think he owes the American people or the world an explanation for the exaggerated claims he made a year ago in building a pretext for war. Since then, hundreds of Americans and thousands of Iraqis have died in that war, and Iraq's future remains uncertain. American credibility has been a casualty, too. “The American people must make sacrifices,” he said in October 2003. “Leaders must be honest with themselves and the people they lead.”
Ironically, that seems to be the last thing anyone truly believes of George W. Bush. The one person whom I had an enormous exchange of civil words regarding this president said, “Well, of course he isn’t telling us everything. They’re the government. They know what they’re doing. You have to trust them.” (Of course, this is also the last time I chose to date a girl who listened to Rush Limbaugh daily and thought Dr. Laura had some pretty good ideas about how life should be lived.)
So even now, as I look back to the days of Transformers: the Cartoon, I think about those DeceptiCons, and I think maybe it’s right to compare the current political state to the black and white battle of car robots to airplane robots. I don’t understand why the DeceptiCons had a lust for enerjon cubes. I don’t understand why nothing could stop them from trying to take over the world. I don’t understand why they stubbornly refused to stop violating the rights of human beings in the United States or abroad. I don’t understand why it’s was more important to use a gun than it is to wait and talk things over; maybe share resources, and quit smashing buildings just because you can. I don’t understand why the leader of the DeceptiCons always seems to be led around by the nose from his minions, who can barely stop squabbling long enough to get him to implement a new nefarious plan to get more enerjon cubes, or take out those “despicable” Autobots – just for the sake of peeing in their proverbial Cheerios.
I don’t understand folks who would support politicians who purposefully lie. The Cock of Clinton was a scandal of dishonesty, but lying about oral sex is very different than lying about the reason for the incapacitation and deaths of 10,000 American military personnel – not to mention the 30,000 Iraqi and Afghani civilians who just happened to live in the wrong country at the wrong time.
I do know that even though lots of kids had the leaders of the DeceptiCons (Megatron and Starscream), I was still the kid who always played on the side of the AutoBots, with Optimus Prime and Ironside. I liked watching them beat the incomprehensibly unintelligible Starscream and the dark, moody, robotic handgun of Megatron.
Bush is not a mentally deficient man in the normal sense of the word “dumb”. But he’s also not a genius when it comes to public accountability. At some point, even your supporters are going to ask where the empty promises led to. Where the reasons have gone. When the war on terror will be over.
And there’s only so a few times you can scream, “TO THE MOON, ALICE!”; and “AUTOBOTS, ROLL OUT!” before it gets old.
One of the best things about being a kid in the 1980’s was the toys. At the age of eight, I was an enthralled witness to the epic battle of the Transformers: Autobot versus DeceptiCon; GIJoe versus Cobra. The girls in our neighborhood played with Barbies and imagined worlds of shopping, domesticity, and having sodas with friends at the mall; we men were out conquering planets with giant robots that transformed into cars, trains, planes, and somehow (I’m still unsure why these existed) dinosaurs. And they were locked in a conflict that went on without end.
Of course, the DeceptiCons were evil. You knew it. Starscream had an annoying voice. The DeceptiCon leaders whacked humans around and destroyed buildings just because they could. They were fast and speedy and sneaky. And there was the name. DeceptiCon - it had a very simple meaning. Deception. Deceit. Lies. For fun and profit, and giant Enerjon cubes. But for all of that, and even taking in to account the fact that the good guys were the vehicles stuck trundling along on the ground, the DeceptiCons lost week after week after week in the Saturday morning cartoon fight of good versus evil.
Sometimes a DeceptiCon would cross the lines to join the Autobots, and vice versa. When the animators of the cartoon series ran out of ideas, they would throw in a crisis of enerjon cubes (the lifeforce of the Transformer) to spice things up.
But ultimately, it came down to the basic plot that I remember – the Autobots and the Decepticons were at war, period. It had been going on for as long as anyone could remember, and finally it came down to a battle on planet Earth. The idealogues of the Decepticons said that the race of the Transformers needed the resources to maintain their way of life – the Autobots wanted to adapt to the new environments. The Decepticons used up the resources of planets and left them alone; the Autobots didn’t.
I had one friend who loved the DeceptiCons. Had every single one of them, down to the tiny transforming cat and bird so hard to find in the later years. I could never understand why he chose that side. The DeceptiCons were evil! Evil doers! They dealt with mass-industry humans. They abused the Earth to gather enerjon resources! They used humans as servants! I simply didn’t understand why he chose the path of the Gun – for the leader of the DeceptiCons transformed himself into a .45 automatic pistol – with a scope.
I remembered this because the other day I realized I simply, truly, do NOT understand a segment of society. I don’t understand why they do the things they do, or state the beliefs they espouse. I keep wondering if they simply don’t get the reasons underlying the structure of logic. Out loud I’ll ask why in the name of GOD they support the things they do. And in some way, I can’t help but wonder if there’s no more gray space in the political spectrum.
Today’s neoconservative coalition seems to be following in the hardliners’ steps. The echoing statements and assumptions voiced after 9/11/01 by the bandwagon patriots clearly said if you disagreed with the president, you were allying yourself with terrorism. When asked who in the Bush administration said it, most of the people who had this opinion shifted their feet and mumbled something about not knowing.
Actually, it was John Ashcroft, responding to criticism of the Patriot Act, and the office of the Attorney General who made the link, over and over again, that without the support of the American people for the president, the terrorists would win. It was the chubby, tacturn, dour face of Dick Cheney who said, “The American People Stand United Against Terror”. It was the panic-stricken folks who slapped bumper stickers that said “Kill Osama” on the backs of their SUVs and pickups. It was, in essence, the paranoiac who feared the unknown; the xenophobic; the “real Americans”.
But to borrow the phrase “Let’s Roll” meant nothing. George W. Bush took 253 days of personal leave in the first year of his presidency. If we were to roll, where were we to roll to? It is easy to define a War on Terror. It’s harder to identify where that War on Terror should be fought. Whose land needs to be invaded. Where to send the forces to do it. And when it’s best to conduct it.
The problem is, the Bush Administration had advance knowledge of the threats posed by Osama bin Laden. A counterterrorist team had studied the leader’s movements and actions for five years, and gave a specific location and indication that if left unchecked, a terrorist strike against the United States was imminent. According to administration officials, the warnings that bin Laden posed a threat were “brushed off” by Bush and his team.
It suited the purposes of the United States to invade Afghanistan, but there is no link between 9/11/01 and Iraq. So how come Bush went to war with Iraq? A year ago, President Bush used his State of the Union address to sound a frightening alarm about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The president told the nation that Iraq had amassed 25,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin and 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve gas. He charged that Saddam Hussein's regime had sought to acquire "significant quantities" of refined uranium and special aluminum tubes whose only practical use was as part of a program to develop nuclear weapons (which turned out to be, in fact, false). And he sent the warning that only one vial from those vast stockpiles of weapons could "bring a day of horror like none we have ever known”, playing directly to the fears of the American public that another 9/11/01 was imminent.
That dire warning of multiple threats served as the Bush administration's justification for war in Iraq – skipping directly over United Nations approval. To this date, no weapons of mass destruction of any kind have been found in Iraq. No anthrax. No botulinum. No VX. No plutonium, yellowcake uranium, or any other type. In fact, U.S. weapons inspectors have not even found significant evidence of programs that might eventually have led to the development of weapons. And the allegations concerning Iraq's efforts to develop a nuclear weapons program were proved to have been based on fake evidence.
Even then, when support for the war waned in late May of 2003, the administration waved copies of photographs “leaked” from Iraq where “advanced communications” Mig-25 Foxbats were found buried in the desert sand (convieniently neglecting to mention that the designers of the Foxbat were apparently drunken Russian aerospace engineers attempting to see if they could take a brick, put wings on it, and make it fly). In fact, the photographs had been taken during the first Gulf War – and no such Foxbats had been uncovered by U.S. troops.
Yet, having staked the honor of the United States on his allegations against Iraq, President Bush hasn't even tried to explain the utter lack of evidence to support the stark charges he made a year ago in American public policy. Even more to the point, yesterday, his aide de camp, Dick Cheney, the second-in-command of the Armed Forces, publicly renewed the assertions that Saddam Hussein has a relationship with Al Qaeda and two tractor trailers discovered after the war were enough proof that Iraq had an active biological weapons program – even though documents captured with Hussein indicate that no such relationship existed – and the fact that the Bush team’s own inspection group was called back to the United States a full month ago.
That’s in stark contrast to Colin Powell’s statement in an interview that he had not seen "smoking-gun, concrete evidence" of connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda. One might think the Secretary of State would be a little more connected with root sources and analysis than the vice-president. Members of Congress and some in the intelligence community said Thursday that Cheney's comments could lead the public to believe there was collaboration between Iraq and Al Qaeda, and that his statements were not supported by the evidence.
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the planner of the 9/11/01 attacks, has told American interrogators that Al Qaeda rejected the idea of any working relationship with Iraq, which was seen by the terrorist network as a corrupt, secular regime. When Hussein was captured last month, he was found with a document warning his supporters to be wary of working with foreign fighters.
Cheney also argued that the main thrust of the administration's case for war — the claim that Iraq was assembling weapons of mass destruction — had been validated by the discovery of two flatbed trailers outfitted with tanks and other equipment.
"We've found a couple of semi-trailers at this point which we believe were in fact part of [a WMD] program," Cheney said. "I would deem that conclusive evidence, if you will, that he did in fact have programs for weapons of mass destruction."
That’s odds with the judgment of the Bush administration’s government's lead weapons inspector, David Kay, who said in an interim report in October that "we have not yet been able to corroborate the existence of a mobile [biological weapons] production effort." In a BBC interview that aired Thursday night on public television in the United States, Kay said that is still the case. He said it was "premature and embarrassing" for the CIA to conclude shortly after the vehicles were discovered last year that they were weapons labs. "I wish that news hadn't come out," Kay said, calling the release of the information a "fiasco." Experts are saying it was more likely the trailers were meant for making hydrogen.
After Cheney implied in a television interview in September that Iraq was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush was forced to acknowledge days later that the administration "had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved" in Sept. 11.
The White House had no comment Thursday on Cheney's remarks. The White House, when directly confronted with the hard questions, has deflected them to a stance that essentially slides the question by.
George W. Bush is not as dumb as he’s made out to be. Commentator Al Franken has asked the president directly if he did cocaine after 1984, and the answer has always been, “No.” Asked if he did cocaine prior to 1984, the president says, “That’s in the past.” The reason: if Bush says he DIDN’T do cocaine prior to 1984, there are a host of individuals and public records that point directly to criminal usage – and perhaps even a cover-up. In the game of the public eye on the Iraq war, the same rules apply.
Instead of answering the questions directly, or shaking loose from the statement “Weapons of Mass Destruction”, or simply saying, yep, we goofed, but he’s gone, we’re out of there, last one out, clean up the mess, please, there’s been no explanations for the actions taken.
Instead, the focus has shifted to, “Saddam Hussein was an evil man.”
Instead, the president talked in this year's State of the Union address of Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities."
Instead, the president suggested going to the moon. Instead, the president demanded the United States spend $1.5 billion dollars for feasibility studies of a base on Mars.
Today, it’s doubtful the nation would support the president's call to war with Iraq on the basis of "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities". And if last year, during the impassioned screams for regime change from the Bush administration, someone suggested a trip to the moon or a little social jaunt to Mars, the idea would have been laughable at best; scorned as frivolous or its backers ridden out of town on a rail as “egghead scientific dreaming”.
And is it any wonder that even those Iraqis who bitterly opposed Hussein are suspicious of U.S. motives now? Leaders of the Shiites, who suffered from decades of oppression under Hussein, don't trust the U.S. plan to select a new Iraqi government through a series of regional caucuses later this year. They demand direct democracy. One man, one vote. Transparent elections.
The Bush excuse? “Democracies take time. Maybe down the road they can handle a vote. But for now, caucases are the best way to go.” Odd choice for an administration whose war cry was, “Democracy in Iraq!” No explanation of Middle East democratization was offered. And now that the funding has been effectively slashed by the domestic policy mistakes of the administration, the Bush camp seems to be the proverbial misers – demanding more money while the veterans’ benefits are slashed, an expanded, voluntary military force vetoed in favor of stop-loss (the modern-day equivalent of press-ganging, except it’s done by not releasing soldiers from duty when their enlistment contracts are up, amounting to a governmental breach of contract), and slicing the equipment budgets for “minor” things like bulletproof vests, socks, and clean underwear for troops stationed in Iraq.
Now that the war is over, the Bushies are swarming throughout the nations of the world. John Bolton has been desperately trying to find fiscal aid and financial backers to help shore up the region and restart Iraq’s dead economy. It’s like a Greeks-Only frat party that gets completely out of hand and shut down by the cops – only to have the greeks ask the rest of the collegiate community to help replant their front lawn and pay for the broken windows in their house. Part of this desperate scramble is that the Bush administration decided to wing it when it came to reconstruction – and the restraint of increase in cost of 1% vowed by the White House on all governmental spending except defense and homeland security.
When the Bush administration's prewar justifications collapsed, its postwar promises were inevitably called into question as well. The president and other administration officials now justify the war on humanitarian grounds: Hussein's horrific crimes against his own people demanded his removal from power. That’s a good argument, but it’s not the one the White House made prior to war. (Nor is it ethically justifiable – Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney were in American administrations that directly supported the man they now vilify. Not even a Reagan-esque, “Mistakes were made” pseudo-apology for their support.)
Nor is it one the White House has extended to other repressive regimes, including the other members of the "axis of evil" singled out in last year's State of the Union address. And North Korea and Iran really do have dangerous weapons programs. North Korea, in particular, HAS weapons of mass destruction, and they’re not shy about flashing them at the U.S. and its allies.
The president made it clear Tuesday night that he doesn't think he owes the American people or the world an explanation for the exaggerated claims he made a year ago in building a pretext for war. Since then, hundreds of Americans and thousands of Iraqis have died in that war, and Iraq's future remains uncertain. American credibility has been a casualty, too. “The American people must make sacrifices,” he said in October 2003. “Leaders must be honest with themselves and the people they lead.”
Ironically, that seems to be the last thing anyone truly believes of George W. Bush. The one person whom I had an enormous exchange of civil words regarding this president said, “Well, of course he isn’t telling us everything. They’re the government. They know what they’re doing. You have to trust them.” (Of course, this is also the last time I chose to date a girl who listened to Rush Limbaugh daily and thought Dr. Laura had some pretty good ideas about how life should be lived.)
So even now, as I look back to the days of Transformers: the Cartoon, I think about those DeceptiCons, and I think maybe it’s right to compare the current political state to the black and white battle of car robots to airplane robots. I don’t understand why the DeceptiCons had a lust for enerjon cubes. I don’t understand why nothing could stop them from trying to take over the world. I don’t understand why they stubbornly refused to stop violating the rights of human beings in the United States or abroad. I don’t understand why it’s was more important to use a gun than it is to wait and talk things over; maybe share resources, and quit smashing buildings just because you can. I don’t understand why the leader of the DeceptiCons always seems to be led around by the nose from his minions, who can barely stop squabbling long enough to get him to implement a new nefarious plan to get more enerjon cubes, or take out those “despicable” Autobots – just for the sake of peeing in their proverbial Cheerios.
I don’t understand folks who would support politicians who purposefully lie. The Cock of Clinton was a scandal of dishonesty, but lying about oral sex is very different than lying about the reason for the incapacitation and deaths of 10,000 American military personnel – not to mention the 30,000 Iraqi and Afghani civilians who just happened to live in the wrong country at the wrong time.
I do know that even though lots of kids had the leaders of the DeceptiCons (Megatron and Starscream), I was still the kid who always played on the side of the AutoBots, with Optimus Prime and Ironside. I liked watching them beat the incomprehensibly unintelligible Starscream and the dark, moody, robotic handgun of Megatron.
Bush is not a mentally deficient man in the normal sense of the word “dumb”. But he’s also not a genius when it comes to public accountability. At some point, even your supporters are going to ask where the empty promises led to. Where the reasons have gone. When the war on terror will be over.
And there’s only so a few times you can scream, “TO THE MOON, ALICE!”; and “AUTOBOTS, ROLL OUT!” before it gets old.
Sunday, January 11, 2004
George W. Bush's Resume
I love my mom. Every so often she sends me something just too marvelous for words...
THE BUSH RESUME
George W. Bush
The White House, USA
EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE:
LAW ENFORCEMENT:
I was arrested in Kennebunkport, Maine, in 1976 for driving under the
influence of alcohol. I pled guilty, paid a fine, and had my driver's
license suspended for 30 days.
My Texas driving record has been "lost" and is not available.
MILITARY:
I joined the Texas Air National Guard and went AWOL. I refused to take a
drug test or answer any questions about my drug use. By joining the Texas
Air National Guard, I was able to avoid combat duty in Vietnam.
COLLEGE:
I graduated from Yale University with a low C average. I was a
cheerleader.
PAST WORK EXPERIENCE:
I ran for U.S. Congress and lost.
I bought an oil company, but couldn't find any oil in Texas.
The company went bankrupt shortly after I sold all my stock.
I bought the Texas Rangers baseball team in a sweetheart deal that took
land using taxpayer money.
With the help of my father and our right-wing friends in the oil industry
(including Enron CEO Ken Lay), I was elected governor of Texas.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS GOVERNOR OF TEXAS:
I changed Texas pollution laws to favor power and oil companies, making
Texas the most polluted state in the Union. During my tenure, Houston
replaced Los Angeles as the most smog-ridden city in America.
I cut taxes and bankrupted the Texas treasury to the tune of billions in
borrowed money.
I set the record for the most executions by any governor in American
history. With the help of my brother, the governor of Florida, and my
father's appointments to the Supreme Court, I became President after
losing by over 500,000 votes.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS PRESIDENT:
I am the first President in U.S. history to enter office with a criminal
record.
I invaded and occupied two countries at a continuing cost of over one
billion dollars per week.
I spent the U.S. surplus and effectively bankrupted the U.S. Treasury.
I shattered the record for the largest annual deficit in U.S. history.
I set an economic record for most private bankruptcies filed in any
12-month period.
I set the all-time record for most foreclosures in a 12-month period.
I set the all-time record for the biggest drop in the history of the U.S.
Stock Market.
In my first year in office, over 2 million Americans lost their jobs and
that trend continues every month.
I'm proud that the members of my cabinet are the richest of any
administration
in U.S. history. My "poorest millionaire," Condoleeza Rice, has a Chevron
oil tanker named after her.
I set the record for most campaign fund-raising trips by a U.S.
President.
I am the all-time U.S. and world record-holder for receiving the most
corporate campaign donations.
My largest lifetime campaign contributor, and one of my best friends,
Kenneth Lay, presided over the largest corporate bankruptcy fraud in U.S.
history, Enron.
My political party used Enron private jets and corporate attorneys to
assure my success with the U.S. Supreme Court during my election
decision.
I have protected my friends at Enron and Halliburton against
investigation or prosecution.
More time and money was spent investigating the Monica Lewinsky affair
than has been spent investigating one of the biggest corporate rip-offs
in history.
I presided over the biggest energy crisis in U.S. history and refused to
intervene when corruption involving the oil industry was revealed.
I presided over the highest gasoline prices in U.S. history.
I changed the U.S. policy to allow convicted criminals to be awarded
government contracts.
I appointed more convicted criminals to administration than any President
in U.S. history.
I created the Ministry of Homeland Security, the largest bureaucracy in
the history of the United States government.
I've broken more international treaties than any President in U.S.
history.
I am the first President in U.S. history to have the United Nations
remove the U.S. from the Human Rights Commission.
I withdrew the U.S. from the World Court of Law and I refused to allow
inspectors access to U.S. "prisoners of war" detainees and thereby have
refused to abide by the Geneva Convention.
I am the first President in history to refuse United Nations election
inspectors (during the 2002 U.S. election).
I set the record for the fewest number of press conferences of any
President since the advent of television.
I set the all-time record for most days on vacation in any one-year
period.
After taking off the entire month of August, I presided over the worst
security failure in U.S. history.
I garnered the most sympathy for the U.S. after the World Trade Center
attacks and less than a year later made the U.S. the most hated country
in the world, the largest failure of diplomacy in world history.
I have set the all-time record for most people worldwide to
simultaneously protest me in public venues (15 million people),
shattering the record for protest against any person in the history of
mankind.
I am the first President in U.S. history to order an unprovoked,
pre-emptive attack and the military occupation of a sovereign nation.
I did so against the will of the United Nations, the majority of U.S.
citizens, and the world community.
I have cut health care benefits for war veterans and support a cut in
duty benefits for active duty troops and their families in war time.
All records or minutes from meetings that I, or my Vice-President,
attended regarding public energy policy are sealed in secrecy and
unavailable for public review.
I love my mom. Every so often she sends me something just too marvelous for words...
THE BUSH RESUME
George W. Bush
The White House, USA
EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE:
LAW ENFORCEMENT:
I was arrested in Kennebunkport, Maine, in 1976 for driving under the
influence of alcohol. I pled guilty, paid a fine, and had my driver's
license suspended for 30 days.
My Texas driving record has been "lost" and is not available.
MILITARY:
I joined the Texas Air National Guard and went AWOL. I refused to take a
drug test or answer any questions about my drug use. By joining the Texas
Air National Guard, I was able to avoid combat duty in Vietnam.
COLLEGE:
I graduated from Yale University with a low C average. I was a
cheerleader.
PAST WORK EXPERIENCE:
I ran for U.S. Congress and lost.
I bought an oil company, but couldn't find any oil in Texas.
The company went bankrupt shortly after I sold all my stock.
I bought the Texas Rangers baseball team in a sweetheart deal that took
land using taxpayer money.
With the help of my father and our right-wing friends in the oil industry
(including Enron CEO Ken Lay), I was elected governor of Texas.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS GOVERNOR OF TEXAS:
I changed Texas pollution laws to favor power and oil companies, making
Texas the most polluted state in the Union. During my tenure, Houston
replaced Los Angeles as the most smog-ridden city in America.
I cut taxes and bankrupted the Texas treasury to the tune of billions in
borrowed money.
I set the record for the most executions by any governor in American
history. With the help of my brother, the governor of Florida, and my
father's appointments to the Supreme Court, I became President after
losing by over 500,000 votes.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS PRESIDENT:
I am the first President in U.S. history to enter office with a criminal
record.
I invaded and occupied two countries at a continuing cost of over one
billion dollars per week.
I spent the U.S. surplus and effectively bankrupted the U.S. Treasury.
I shattered the record for the largest annual deficit in U.S. history.
I set an economic record for most private bankruptcies filed in any
12-month period.
I set the all-time record for most foreclosures in a 12-month period.
I set the all-time record for the biggest drop in the history of the U.S.
Stock Market.
In my first year in office, over 2 million Americans lost their jobs and
that trend continues every month.
I'm proud that the members of my cabinet are the richest of any
administration
in U.S. history. My "poorest millionaire," Condoleeza Rice, has a Chevron
oil tanker named after her.
I set the record for most campaign fund-raising trips by a U.S.
President.
I am the all-time U.S. and world record-holder for receiving the most
corporate campaign donations.
My largest lifetime campaign contributor, and one of my best friends,
Kenneth Lay, presided over the largest corporate bankruptcy fraud in U.S.
history, Enron.
My political party used Enron private jets and corporate attorneys to
assure my success with the U.S. Supreme Court during my election
decision.
I have protected my friends at Enron and Halliburton against
investigation or prosecution.
More time and money was spent investigating the Monica Lewinsky affair
than has been spent investigating one of the biggest corporate rip-offs
in history.
I presided over the biggest energy crisis in U.S. history and refused to
intervene when corruption involving the oil industry was revealed.
I presided over the highest gasoline prices in U.S. history.
I changed the U.S. policy to allow convicted criminals to be awarded
government contracts.
I appointed more convicted criminals to administration than any President
in U.S. history.
I created the Ministry of Homeland Security, the largest bureaucracy in
the history of the United States government.
I've broken more international treaties than any President in U.S.
history.
I am the first President in U.S. history to have the United Nations
remove the U.S. from the Human Rights Commission.
I withdrew the U.S. from the World Court of Law and I refused to allow
inspectors access to U.S. "prisoners of war" detainees and thereby have
refused to abide by the Geneva Convention.
I am the first President in history to refuse United Nations election
inspectors (during the 2002 U.S. election).
I set the record for the fewest number of press conferences of any
President since the advent of television.
I set the all-time record for most days on vacation in any one-year
period.
After taking off the entire month of August, I presided over the worst
security failure in U.S. history.
I garnered the most sympathy for the U.S. after the World Trade Center
attacks and less than a year later made the U.S. the most hated country
in the world, the largest failure of diplomacy in world history.
I have set the all-time record for most people worldwide to
simultaneously protest me in public venues (15 million people),
shattering the record for protest against any person in the history of
mankind.
I am the first President in U.S. history to order an unprovoked,
pre-emptive attack and the military occupation of a sovereign nation.
I did so against the will of the United Nations, the majority of U.S.
citizens, and the world community.
I have cut health care benefits for war veterans and support a cut in
duty benefits for active duty troops and their families in war time.
All records or minutes from meetings that I, or my Vice-President,
attended regarding public energy policy are sealed in secrecy and
unavailable for public review.
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