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BUZZFLASH READER COMMENTARY

Ah, George is back on the ranch and has decided to give the good ol' boys of the press a piece of his mind. That's what I like about our boy; no matter how little he has, he's always willing to give.

I first saw an excerpt of his statement on the NBC Nightly News, and, like most of their puff pieces, I half-ignored it. But after reading it by way of a link here in BuzzFlash, I've now recognized it as another incident of George speaking extemporaneously, outside the control of his handlers as well as outside of any semblance of sanity.

George, in these situations, is very candid at speaking his mind, and it's times like this that we're spared a dose of the well thought-out, prepared crapola and get straight to the uncut, freeform crapola.

Check this out.

First we get this: "Our economy is strong, it's resilient, we've got to continue to make it strong and resilient". Then we get this: "This economy cannot afford to stand an attack."

I ask, if our economy is so strong and resilient, how can it even be threatened by a fourth class military power like Iraq, that's surrounded on three sides by the US Armed Forces? Makes you wonder if he has any idea what can affect the economy.

Not only that, he didn't even bother answering the damned question. He was asked if OUR ATTACK ON IRAQ could hurt our economy. Right?

But since he couldn't even fathom his own policy decisions being questioned, he deflected it by using some threat that he made up right there on the spot. Let it not be said that George can't think fast on his feet.

How about this one: "Bush said Iraq's response so far has been 'discouraging.' The United States has accused Baghdad of withholding information about its weapons programs in its arms declaration."

If I remember correctly, once the US Govt. got their hands on the Iraqi declaration they removed EIGHT THOUSAND PAGES from it before distributing to the UN. Who's doing the "withholding" now?

Not only that, the UN has yet to finalize its inspection so that it can compare the final report to the Iraqi declaration. Does this mean that George can predict the future?

Of course, the declaration has been "edited"... So if it is "short" that would make George a pretty good self-fulfilling prophet, now huh?

Finally, we get: "While Bush said he hoped the showdown 'will be resolved peacefully,' he added: 'The choice is his (Saddam's) to make.'"

I don't see Saddam signing deployment orders for thousands of more US troops to the Gulf now do I?

It makes one wonder if George even knows what US policy is consistent with a peaceful resolution.

A BUZZFLASH READER COMMENTARY

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A SECOND BUZZFLASH READER COMMENTARY

Buzz:

Here's a letter of appreciation I wrote to Paul Krugman for his NY Times Column appearing on January 3, 2003:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/03/opinion/03KRUG.html

Your column is one of the few lights in a very dark tunnel. I was aghast when I heard Bush say, in a snippet on public radio, in an arrogant voice to a timid reporter:

"You said we're headed to war in Iraq. I don't know why you say that. I'm the person who gets to decide, not you."

I asked my husband, "Now how come we don't hear these quotes on television?" It seems that you are the only one who "reported" that quote in a major media outlet and called it what it is: L'etat, c'est moi. (Bet you didn't think you'd have to do heavy lifting as a reporter when you took a job as a columnist, did you?) Very few others, it seems, are willing to use these scary Bush sound bites. I don't understand why. Frankly, the one above seems more intriguing to me than "I did not have sexual relations with that woman." At any rate, it seems to more directly affect my life and the lives of millions of others.

By the way, have you heard his latest quote, from yesterday's "Nature Walk"? The one where he was asked by a reporter "If we go to war...." and he said "Which country?" More breathtaking than the nature in Crawford, eh?

Thanks again for being there.

A BUZZFLASH READER COMMENTARY

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BuzzFlash Note: Imagine if our president were an African-American female. What would Rush Limbaugh be virulently fulminating about an African-American female who spouted dangerous nursery school nonsense like this? The Right Wing GOP Junkyard dogs would have impeached the poor woman a long time ago, hunted her down with the baying media hounds and let them shred her to pieces. But due to white male entitlement (AKA white male affirmative action for dimwitted offspring of inbred "Christian Folk"), Bush gets a free pass.

If you need further proof that Bush is about 15 levels above his Peter Principle (his highest level of competence being a starter on the first hole at an all male country club), read some of these excerpts from a column about the recent suck-up book Bob Woodward wrote about the adolescent who sits in the White House:

Indeed, it is less Bush's immediate obsession with Iraq that is illustrated here, than a kind of religiously-inspired grandiosity of character is revealed. For instance:

"This will be a monumental struggle between good and evil," he says just after 9/11. He returns to the White House from Camp David one day, makes a brief statement to the press, and takes five questions: "He referred to 'evil' or 'evildoers' seven times and three times voiced amazement at the nature of the attacks," Woodward writes. In another place, from Bush: "We haven't seen this kind of barbarism in a long period of time." He stops at a hockey game in Philadelphia, and, when the fans demand to watch his speech on the stadium's overhead video screens and the players huddle to watch," Bush says with wonder, "They wanted to hear what the commander in chief, the president of the United States, had to say during this moment! I have never felt more comfortable in my life."

Another time, he says to Woodward, "I'm the commander -- see, I don't need to explain -- I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation."

At still another point after the Afghan war has started, the president says to his staff, "Look, our strategy is to create chaos, to create a vacuum." And Woodward ends the book with another quote from the president, in which he again reflects the obsessive chaos theory of the neoconservatives surrounding him like sentinels and for whom Iraq has become the sine qua non of political existence: "We will export death and violence to the four corners of the earth in defense of our great nation." Whew.

The principle behind the Bush thinking, the book says, is, "this is a new world." As a matter of fact, the world that we face today is an exceedingly old world: terrorism as a substitute for armed strength, violence against "the other," the arrogance of the affluent, the careless expectations of the powerful, and the ambitions of the zealous are all as old as the Bible to which George W. Bush so passionately ascribes.

The president says testily at one point in the book to Democrat Thomas Daschle, "I'm in the Lord's hands." One rather thinks, after reading this book, that much of the time now we all are indeed.

From (http://www.amconmag.com/01_13_03/geyer7.html)

Would the right wing let anyone but a white Christian male get away with such tortured incompetence, such puerile imitations of "Little Caesar"?

Once again, if the president of the United States were an African-American female, how would Rush Limbaugh and the right wing phalanx of GOP shills react to such horrifying gibberish?

Would it be an impeachment, a lynching or a firing squad that she would face?

Just think about it.