A Decider, Not A Uniter

I just listened to George W. Bush on NPR giving an adlib statement about his press secretary who seems to have found a functioning escape capsule to get away from the exploding Death Star that this administration has become.

President Bush sounds like a broken man... he was hemming and hawing even more then usual and he had some serious issues to focus even long enough to complete a five-word sentence about a person he has been working with for several years.

I guess what is happening is that the following thought is chasing its own tail through the dark hallways of his mind: "Worst President Ever. Worst President Ever. Worst President Ever. Worst President EVER!"

It must be pretty noisy in there...

At some point early this year he must have understood that he had his shot at greatness and he failed. Not just failed like so many other presidents, but far worse than most.

He came into power with the promise of bringing decency back into the White House. He inherited the largest budget surplus in the history of the US. The world was generally more peaceful than at anytime in the last fifty years. He sat down at the poker table and got three aces on the first hand. Lucky again, like so often in his life.

He could have been one of those mediocre, forgettable, but ultimately harmless presidents. But then fate put him into a situation so way beyond anything he could handle, while he had surrounded himself with the worst possible aides and consultants. A recipe for disaster.

After the terror attacks the President was riding a wave of unreal popularity and he and his sycophantic staff started an orgy of megalomania that lastet until the end of 2005. They raided, stole, lied, invaded, bombed, cashed, imprisoned, tortured and murdered their way through four long years, two wars and several trillion dollars.

President Bush has never been a big reader and he admitted years ago that he only listens to a very small circle for his information about the rest of the world. He lived a dream of greatness in a golden cage. But it seems that somebody opened a window and let in some fresh air... there were too many scandals, too many dead soldiers, too many angry voters, too much money lost.

It must have been quite the moment when they explained to him what all of this means: Worst President Ever.

And things have certainly changed. His attacks on Social Security and Health Care have become weak and listless. His speeches are carbon copies of speeches he gave a year ago, it seems nobody in the White House even bothers anymore to write new material for the boss.

And then there is the war. Iraq had turned into one big symbol of a failed presidency, a big, steaming pile of shit that has the President's name all over it. Even in twenty, thirty years they will still talk of George W. Bush as the one responsible for this insane, disastrous nightmare. This must be eating up Mr. Bush. And while he is a confirmed sociopath, even he must by now understand the tsunami of misery that he has unleashed on this world. Iraq will be with him to his grave.

Which brings us to Iran... the latest addition in the gallery of horrors that this presidency has become.

Seymour Hersh in the latest edition of The New Yorker is painting quite a horrible picture of what our near future could look like. And if it would be any other journalist and any other President, we could all forget about it and sleep well... but not now.

Could this President seriously order a preemptive bombing run on Iran?

That is the question... Could he? Absolutely. He has already started one illegal war, why not another? Tens of thousands of people have already died during the fighting in Iraq, so worrying about more dead people shouldn't be a problem either.

No clear outcome? Not enough troops? No international support? No basis in law? No Problem - just look at Iraq.

It is unbelievable, but it seems that we have reached a point in time, where we can find no valid counter-argument to prevent a sitting US President from starting an unprovoked war.