Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists.
—George Bush, lying to the American people, Oct. 7, 2002
Forget politics and personalities, and tell me which of these two men most deserves to be fired: President A: Fumbles around with a fat girl who is eager to fumble around with him, gets caught, lies about it, gets caught in his lies. President B: Wants to start a war with Iraq, whose evil, bad leader was nasty to his daddy. So he openly lies, making people believe Iraq had something to do with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Worse, he and his administration deliberately mislead the American people into believing that the Iraqi regime has “weapons of mass destruction” and that “Saddam Hussein and his weapons are a direct threat to this country.”
So Congress, stricken with fear that they might be called traitors or, worse yet, liberals, gives him his war. Thousands of Iraqis are killed. Hundreds of Americans die. It becomes clear that the administration has no clear plan for reconstituting Iraq, but that this will cost this country hundreds of billions of dollars, driving up deficits, almost certainly spiking inflation, and otherwise hurting our own stagnant economy.
Later, it is learned that Halliburton, the firm once led by his vice president, is speedily granted at least $500 million in “reconstruction” contracts for Iraqi oil fields. No-bid contracts, of course, which, as U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said, “apparently allowed Halliburton to profit from virtually every phase of the war.”
Well, as Walter Reuther didn’t say, it’s always nice to buy what you build.
If you haven’t figured out the answer to my question by now, give it up, buy a bag of pork rinds and get thyself to the next showing of the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The part where Georgie shreds the Constitution is my personal fave.
Frankly, with the government in the hands of the plutocrats, the chances of the Shrub being impeached for anything are nonexistent, unless perhaps he turns up in bed with a dead boy or a live sheep. And actually, that is as it should be.
Impeachment is like an atomic bomb, a weapon better not used at all, unless we get a maniac or Richard Nixon comes back out of the earth. George Bush doesn’t deserve impeachment, even if he had really been elected. Not yet, anyway.
What he does deserve is to be held in contempt by thinking people everywhere, and to be defeated in a landslide next year. Now, it is no secret that I am opposed to George Bush in the same way that I am opposed to rotting fruit. I dislike his cocky, anti-intellectual smirk, his moronic way of speaking, his smart-ass cowboy persona.
His clear notion that the world is sort of a frat-house playground for his rich corporate friends sickens me, and I cannot think of a single issue where I think he is on the side of the angels. Nevertheless, that’s all politics, and on democracy’s scorecard my opinion and my ballot deserve no more or less importance than Justin Timberlake’s.
Yet there is a much deeper problem with the George Bush presidency. He, and his minions, lie all the time, about issues of war and peace, and they sacrificed American blood and treasure for their lies, which makes them beyond contempt.
Anyone with any doubt of this ought to check out last week’s piece by Paul Sperry, former Washington bureau chief for Investor’s Business Daily, in the online newspaper worldnetdaily.com. Sperry, as his credentials indicate, is not the kind of journalist who can be easily dismissed as getting his marching orders from Hillary Clinton’s league of radical lesbians. Indeed, he was once barred from the Clinton White House for asking snarky questions and pushing Mr. Bill for more press conferences.
But in a long analysis based on a formerly top-secret document called the National Intelligence Estimate, Sperry demonstrates conclusively that, as the banner headline in the Traverse City Record-Eagle put it Sunday, “Plain and simple, the president lied.” Not once, not twice, but many, many times.
Bush knew, based on his own best intelligence data, that Saddam had nothing to do with Sept. 11. He also knew that there was little or no likelihood that he “would engage in clandestine attacks against the American homeland,” or “share chemical or biological weapons with al Qaeda,” if in fact he had any.
Lying is morally bad enough. But as Sperry demonstrates, his lying wasn’t only wrong, it led to what amounts to international criminal negligence.
“Forget that Bush lied about the reasons for putting our sons and daughters in harm’s way … it was the height of irresponsibility to have done so in the middle of a war on al Qaeda, the real and proven threat to America. Bush diverted those troops and other resources, including intelligence assets, Arabic translators and hundreds of millions of tax dollars, from the hunt for Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders along the Afghan-Pakistan border. And now they’ve regrouped and are as threatening as ever.
“Any Bush supporters with any intellectual honesty and concern for their families’ safety should be mad as hell about it,” he concludes, adding, “and that’s coming from someone who voted for Bush.”
Hold that tiger: People who couldn’t care less about the plight of inner-city infants are worrying about “illusionist” Roy Horn, who has been in critical condition after being bitten by a tiger on stage Oct. 3. I have a hard time feeling sympathetic. You don’t have to be an “animal-rights nut” to know that a fully grown Siberian tiger doesn’t belong on the stage of a casino, or in somebody’s apartment. There was cruelty and mistreatment involved here, all right, and the culprit wasn’t the tiger.
Jack Lessenberry opines weekly for Metro Times. E-mail [email protected]
