Some food for thought on POTUS:
Brain Dead, Made of Money, No Future at All
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Tuesday 17 August 2004
To: George W. Bush
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear George:
A pretty awful joke has been making the rounds lately. Some might say it's an awful joke because of the comparison. Most, however, think it's an awful joke because it isn't funny. It's too close to the truth to be funny.
The joke: What is the difference between President George W. Bush and President Ted Bundy?
The answer: Bush killed more people than Bundy.
See? I told you it was a terrible joke. On the one hand, it is in poor taste by commonly accepted standards to compare a sitting President to a notorious serial killer. On the other hand, though, the 943 dead American soldiers in Iraq, the more than ten thousand dead Iraqi civilians, the more than five thousand dead civilians in Afghanistan, and let's not forget the large crowd of Americans you toddled off to the Texas killing bottle while Governor, pretty much means you have left Mr. Bundy in the deep shade when it comes to the body count.
There are, of course, the nearly 3,000 dead people from September 11th, people from all over the world. The 9/11 Commission broke out some buckets of whitewash, and like a group of dutiful Tom Sawyers, painted over the grim realities of that day. It couldn't be stopped, they said in their report. People like Richard Clarke, Sibel Edmonds and the families of the lost who know more about the events of that day than anyone on the planet, disagree.
"Two planes hitting the twin towers did not rise to the level of Rumsfeld's leaving his office and going to the War Room? How can that be?" asked Mindy Kleinberg, a 9/11 widow who has become a leader in the truth movement. The thing is, Mindy, Mr. Rumsfeld was probably fine-tuning the Iraq invasion plan he'd been working on for years. He is, after all, a professional.
Three more American kids got killed in Iraq today, George. That makes 30 dead American soldiers in the first 16 days of August. That's thirty more names to be added to the commemorative wall which will appear somewhere in Washington DC someday. Thirty more etchings in ebon stone, thirty more people who would not now be dead but for your decisions and your actions and your appalling dishonesty.
I'm pretty bored with those commonly accepted standards that are supposed to be applied in the treatment of a sitting President. Too many people have been playing patty-cake with you over the last three years, George. Too many journalists looking to keep their sweet seat in the press crunch at the White House, too many television news anchors who think research and context is for other people, too many media outlet owners - read: 'massive corporations' - whose profit margins are intimately wed to your suicidal policies, and, frankly, too many politicians for the 'loyal opposition' who have been tested in the forge of true crisis these last years, and been found to be sorely wanting.
So let's not have any patty-cake between us, George. Let's get down to brass tacks. Your people compared Senator Max Cleland to Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein during the 2002 midterm campaign. Cleland left two legs and an arm in Vietnam, but your people did that to him anyway. A little hard talk, East Texas style, shouldn't be anything new to you.
A wiser man once wrote this:
"Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose, and you allow him to make war at pleasure...if, today, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, 'I see no probability of the British invading us' but he will say to you, 'Be silent; I can see it, if you don't.'"
The wiser man who wrote these words was Abraham Lincoln, in a letter to his law partner Billy Hendron. Lincoln wrote this letter in 1848 while serving in the House of Representatives, years before he himself would assume the office of the Presidency. Lincoln became, in the fullness of time, a war President who unwillingly inherited his war, and then pursued it with grim determination.
He summoned Generals like Ulysses Grant, whose essential demeanor, in the words of Civil War historian Bruce Catton, "was that of a man who had made up his mind to drive his head through a stone wall." From March of 1864 to April of 1865, Grant used the mighty Army of the Potomac as Lincoln's merciless fist, until the white flags were raised over bloodied ground at Appomattox.
cont.
Brain Dead, Made of Money, No Future at All
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Tuesday 17 August 2004
To: George W. Bush
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear George:
A pretty awful joke has been making the rounds lately. Some might say it's an awful joke because of the comparison. Most, however, think it's an awful joke because it isn't funny. It's too close to the truth to be funny.
The joke: What is the difference between President George W. Bush and President Ted Bundy?
The answer: Bush killed more people than Bundy.
See? I told you it was a terrible joke. On the one hand, it is in poor taste by commonly accepted standards to compare a sitting President to a notorious serial killer. On the other hand, though, the 943 dead American soldiers in Iraq, the more than ten thousand dead Iraqi civilians, the more than five thousand dead civilians in Afghanistan, and let's not forget the large crowd of Americans you toddled off to the Texas killing bottle while Governor, pretty much means you have left Mr. Bundy in the deep shade when it comes to the body count.
There are, of course, the nearly 3,000 dead people from September 11th, people from all over the world. The 9/11 Commission broke out some buckets of whitewash, and like a group of dutiful Tom Sawyers, painted over the grim realities of that day. It couldn't be stopped, they said in their report. People like Richard Clarke, Sibel Edmonds and the families of the lost who know more about the events of that day than anyone on the planet, disagree.
"Two planes hitting the twin towers did not rise to the level of Rumsfeld's leaving his office and going to the War Room? How can that be?" asked Mindy Kleinberg, a 9/11 widow who has become a leader in the truth movement. The thing is, Mindy, Mr. Rumsfeld was probably fine-tuning the Iraq invasion plan he'd been working on for years. He is, after all, a professional.
Three more American kids got killed in Iraq today, George. That makes 30 dead American soldiers in the first 16 days of August. That's thirty more names to be added to the commemorative wall which will appear somewhere in Washington DC someday. Thirty more etchings in ebon stone, thirty more people who would not now be dead but for your decisions and your actions and your appalling dishonesty.
I'm pretty bored with those commonly accepted standards that are supposed to be applied in the treatment of a sitting President. Too many people have been playing patty-cake with you over the last three years, George. Too many journalists looking to keep their sweet seat in the press crunch at the White House, too many television news anchors who think research and context is for other people, too many media outlet owners - read: 'massive corporations' - whose profit margins are intimately wed to your suicidal policies, and, frankly, too many politicians for the 'loyal opposition' who have been tested in the forge of true crisis these last years, and been found to be sorely wanting.
So let's not have any patty-cake between us, George. Let's get down to brass tacks. Your people compared Senator Max Cleland to Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein during the 2002 midterm campaign. Cleland left two legs and an arm in Vietnam, but your people did that to him anyway. A little hard talk, East Texas style, shouldn't be anything new to you.
A wiser man once wrote this:
"Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose, and you allow him to make war at pleasure...if, today, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, 'I see no probability of the British invading us' but he will say to you, 'Be silent; I can see it, if you don't.'"
The wiser man who wrote these words was Abraham Lincoln, in a letter to his law partner Billy Hendron. Lincoln wrote this letter in 1848 while serving in the House of Representatives, years before he himself would assume the office of the Presidency. Lincoln became, in the fullness of time, a war President who unwillingly inherited his war, and then pursued it with grim determination.
He summoned Generals like Ulysses Grant, whose essential demeanor, in the words of Civil War historian Bruce Catton, "was that of a man who had made up his mind to drive his head through a stone wall." From March of 1864 to April of 1865, Grant used the mighty Army of the Potomac as Lincoln's merciless fist, until the white flags were raised over bloodied ground at Appomattox.
cont.
