“We don’t do [ Iraqi ] body counts.” — General Tommy Franks, US Central Command
|
IRAQ WAR CO$T
(JavaScript Error)
u.s. dead the coffins iraqi casualties |
|
|
1. "To live to see George W. Bush tried for crimes against humanity."— Stephen King, author, re: Three Top Wishes. Newsweek, 1/22/07
"He's President George Bush, not King George Bush. This is not the system of government
we have and that we fought for."
"The president wants to make sure that people who become American citizens have a command of the English language. It's as simple as that." |
|
"He wore the look of certain fanatics who think of themselves as leaders without once
having gained the respect of a single human being."— Jane Bowles
Stupidity is the devil. Look in the eye of a chicken and you'll know. It's the most
horrifying, cannibalistic, and nightmarish creature in this world.
"He's an asshole. He can smile at you while cutting off your balls."
"Bush has a cruel, sadistic streak that goes back to his childhood when he gleefully bragged
about vivissecting cats." "To directly confront him, and really see the bully, you would also see the fear."
Mr. Bush acknowledged for the first time that he made a "miscalculation of what conditions
would be" in postwar Iraq. But he insisted that the 17-month-long insurgency that has upended the
administration's plans for the country was the unintended by-product of a "swift victory" against
Saddam Hussein's military, which fled and then disappeared into the cities, enabling them to mount
a rebellion against the American forces far faster than Mr. Bush and his aides had anticipated.
"Had we to do it [Iraqi War] over again, we would look at the consequences of catastrophic success – being so
successful, so fast, that an enemy that should have surrendered or been done in, escaped and lived to
fight another day."
"Too many good docs are getting out of business. Too many OB-GYN's aren't able to practice their,
their love with women all across this country."
"Bush doesn't represent the heart of America. He represents another part of the anatomy, but not the heart."
"Interrogators say that Saddam is arrogant. He's defiant. He thinks he's still popular and that people
love him and he thinks he's still president — no, wait that's Bush."
The little town of Crawford, Texas agonizes because the village idiot is missing.
"The difference between intelligence and stupidity is that intelligence has its limits."
"Naturally, the common people don't want war, but after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country."
"I don't want to sound like I have made no mistakes. I'm confident I have."
"A new poll says that if the election were held today, both John Kerry and John Edwards would beat
President Bush by double digit margins. The White House is so worried, they're thinking of moving up
the capture of Osama Bin Laden to next month."
"President Bush addressed the nation tonight and as always he was hilarious... Does it scare anyone
else that the president has strokes in between syllables?"
President Bush still says Iraq has weapons of mass destruction we never found. It sounds like he
is back on those drugs he never did."
"With Iraq plunging into chaos and gas prices at record highs President Bush took time out this
weekend for a ride on his bicycle, but unfortunately he fell off and sustained cuts to his face
and hands. Apparently Bush was distracted by the enormous responsibilities of the presidency...
I'm just kidding. He hit some gravel or something."
"A White House spokesmen said President Bush fell of his bike because it's been raining a lot and
the top soil is loose. We looked up rain fall amounts in Crawford, Texas.
May 15th, 0.0 inches of rain. May 16th, 0.0 inches of rain. 17th no rain. 18th, 19th, 20th, 21st,
22nd, and 23rd no rain. First he chokes on a pretzel; now he fell off his bike. Mr. President,
when are you going to admit that Laura is abusing you? There is no shame in being a battered husband."
|
THE WISDOM OF KING GEORGE "I'm
hopeful. I know there is a lot of ambition in Washington, obviously. But I
hope the ambitious realize that they are more likely to succeed with
success as opposed to failure." "If
he's—the inference is that somehow he thinks slavery is a—is a noble
institution I would—I would strongly reject that assumption—that John
Ashcroft is a open-minded, inclusive
person." "She's
just trying to make sure Anthony gets a good meal—Antonio." (On
Laura Bush inviting Justice Antonin Scalia to dinner at the
White House. ) "I want it to be said
that the Bush administration was a results-oriented administration, because I
believe the results of focusing our attention and energy on teaching children to
read and having an education system that's responsive to the child and to the
parents, as opposed to mired in a system that refuses to change, will make America
what we want it to be—a literate country and a hopefuller
country." "I
would have to ask the questioner. I haven't had a chance to ask the
questioners the question they've been questioning. On the other hand, I
firmly believe she'll be a fine secretary of labor. And I've got
confidence in Linda Chavez. She is a—she'll bring an interesting
perspective to the Labor Department." "I do
remain confident in Linda. She'll make a fine labor secretary. From what
I've read in the press accounts, she's perfectly qualified."
"The
person who runs FEMA is someone who must have the trust of the president.
Because the person who runs FEMA is the first voice, often times, of
someone whose life has been turned upside down hears from." "She is
a member of a labor union at one point." (Announcing his nomination of
Linda Chavez as secretary of labor.) "Natural gas is
hemispheric. I like to call it hemispheric in nature because it is a
product that we can find in our neighborhoods." "I also have picked a
secretary for Housing and Human Development. Mel Martinez from the state
of Florida." "Let
me put it to you this way, I am not a revengeful
person." "I am
mindful of the difference between the executive branch and the legislative
branch. I assured all four of these leaders that I know the difference,
and that difference is they pass the laws and I execute
them." "The
great thing about America is everybody should vote." "Dick
Cheney and I do not want this nation to be in a recession. We want anybody
who can find work to be able to find work." "I knew it might put him
in an awkward position that we had a discussion before finality has
finally happened in this presidential race." (Describing a phone call to Sen.
John Breaux.) Crawford, Texas, 12/2/00 "As far as the legal
hassling and wrangling and posturing in Florida, I would suggest you talk
to our team in Florida led by Jim Baker." "The
legislature's job is to write law. It's the executive branch's job to
interpret law." "They
misunderestimated me." "Think about that. Two hundred and eighty-five new or
expanded programs, $2 trillion more in new spending, and not one new
bureaucrat to file out the forms or
the phones?" "They
want the federal government controlling Social Security like it's some
kind of federal program."
"One word sums up probably the responsibility of any Governor, and that one word is 'to be prepared'."
"I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future."
"We have a firm commitment to NATO, we are a part of NATO. We have a firm commitment to Europe. We are a part of Europe."
"When I was growing up, it was a dangerous world, and you knew exactly who they were. It was us versus them, and it was clear who them was. Today we are not sure who they are, but we know they're there." Iowa Community College. 1.21.00
St. Charles, Mo. 12/2/00
"They
said, 'You know, this issue doesn't seem to resignate with the people.'
And I said, you know something? Whether it resignates or not doesn't
matter to me, because I stand for doing what's the right thing, and what
the right thing is hearing the voices of people who work." "Anyway, after we go out and work our hearts out,
after you go out and help us turn out the vote, after we've convinced the
good Americans to vote, and while they're at it, pull that old George W.
lever, if I'm the one, when I put my hand on the Bible, when I put my hand
on the Bible, that day when they swear us in, when I put my hand on the
Bible, I will swear to not—to uphold the laws of the land." "It's your money. You paid
for it." "That's a chapter, the last chapter of
the 20th, 20th, the 21st century that most of us would rather forget. The
last chapter of the 20th century. This is the first chapter of the 21st
century. " (On the Lewinsky scandal) "It's important for us to
explain to our nation that life is important. It's not only life of
babies, but it's life of children living in, you know, the dark dungeons
of the Internet." "I don't want nations
feeling like that they can bully ourselves and our allies. I want to have
a ballistic defense system so that we can make the world more peaceful,
and at the same time I want to reduce our own nuclear capacities to the
level commiserate with keeping the peace." "Families is where
our nation finds hope, where wings take dream." "If I'm the president, we're
going to have emergency-room care, we're going to have gag orders."
"Drug therapies are replacing a
lot of medicines as we used to know it."
"It's one thing about insurance,
that's a Washington term."
"I think we ought to raise the
age at which juveniles can have a gun."
"Mr. Vice President, in all due
respect, it is—I'm not sure 80 percent of the people get the death tax. I know
this: 100 percent will get it if I'm the president."
"Quotas are bad for America.
It's not the way America is all about."
"If affirmative action means
what I just described, what I'm for, then I'm for it." "Our
priorities is our faith." "I
mean, there needs to be a wholesale effort against racial profiling, which
is illiterate children." "It's
going to require numerous IRA agents." (On Gore's tax
plan) "I
think
if you know what you believe, it makes it a lot easier to answer questions.
I can't answer your question." (In response to a question about
whether he wished he could take back any of his answers in the first
debate.) "I
would have my secretary of treasury be in touch with the financial
centers, not only here but at home." "This is Preservation Month. I
appreciate preservation. It's what you do when you run for
president. You gotta preserve."
"I think we need not only to
eliminate the tollbooth to the middle class, I think we should
knock down the tollbooth." "Keep
good relations with the Grecians."
"Kosovians can move back in."
"It
was just inebriating what Midland was all about then."
"The vast majority of our imports come from outside the country."
"If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure."
"The future will be better tomorrow."
"We're going to have the best educated American people in the world."
"I stand by all the misstatements that I've made."
"Public speaking is very easy."
"I
mean, these good folks are revolutionizing how businesses conduct their
business. And, like them, I am very optimistic about our position in the
world and about its influence on the United States. We're concerned about
the short-term economic news, but long-term I'm optimistic. And so, I hope
investors, you know—secondly, I hope investors hold investments for
periods of time—that I've always found the best investments are those that
you salt away based on economics."
"Well, I think if you say you're going to do something and don't do it, that's
trustworthiness."
"I don't know whether I'm going to win or not.
I think I am. I do know I'm ready for the job. And, if not, that's just
the way it goes." "You
might want to comment on that, Honorable."--To New Jersey's secretary of
state, the Hon. DeForest Soaries Jr.
"The important question is, How many hands have I
shaked?" (Answering why he hasn't spent more time in New Hampshire) "I
don't remember debates. I don't think we spent a lot of time debating it.
Maybe we did, but I don't remember." (On discussions of the Vietnam War
when he was an undergraduate at Yale) "The
students at Yale came from all different backgrounds and all parts of the
country. Within months, I knew many of them." "It
is incredibly presumptive for somebody who has not yet earned his party's
nomination to start speculating about vice presidents." "I
think it's important for those of us in a position of responsibility to be
firm in sharing our experiences, to understand that the babies out of
wedlock is a very difficult chore for mom and baby alike. ... I believe we
ought to say there is a different alternative than the culture that is
proposed by people like Miss Wolf in society. ... And, you know,
hopefully, condoms will work, but it hasn't worked."
"That's Washington. That's
the place where you find people getting ready to jump out of the foxholes
before the first shot is fired."
"Listen, Al Gore is a very
tough opponent. He is the incumbent. He represents the incumbency. And a
challenger is somebody who generally comes from the pack and wins, if
you're going to win. And that's where I'm coming from." "We'll let our friends be
the peacekeepers and the great country called America will be the
pacemakers." "We don't believe in
planners and deciders making the decisions on behalf of
Americans."
"I regret that a private comment
I made to the vice presidential candidate made it through the public
airways." "The
point
is, this is a way to help inoculate me about what has come and is coming."
(On his anti-Gore ad.) "As
governor of Texas, I have set high standards for our public schools, and I
have met those standards." "Because the picture on the newspaper. It just seems so un-American
to me, the picture of the guy storming the house with
a scared little boy there. I talked to my little brother,
Jeb—I haven't told this to many people. But he's the
governor of—I shouldn't call him my little brother--my
brother, Jeb, the great governor of Texas. "I hope we get to the bottom of the answer. It's what
I'm interested to know." (On what happened in
negotiations between the Justice Department and Elián
González's Miami relatives.) "Laura and I really don't realize how bright our children
is sometimes until we get an objective analysis." "You subscribe politics to it. I subscribe freedom
to it." (Responding to whether he and Al Gore were making
the Elián González case a political issue.) "I was raised in the West. The west of Texas. It's
pretty close to California. In more ways than Washington,
DC, is close to California." "Reading is the basics for all learning." (Announcing his "Reading
First" initiative) "We want our teachers to be trained so they can meet the obligations,
their obligations as teachers. We want them to know
how to teach the science of reading. In order to make
sure there's not this kind of federal—federal cufflink." "Other Republican candidates may retort to personal
attacks and negative ads." (Fundraising letter from
George W. Bush.) "People make suggestions on what to say all the time. I'll give you an
example; I don't read what's handed to me. People say,
'Here, here's your speech, or here's an idea for a speech.'
They're changed. Trust me." "It's evolutionary, going from governor to president, and this is a significant
step, to be able to vote for yourself on the ballot,
and I'll be able to do so next fall, I hope." "It is not Reaganesque to support a tax plan that is Clinton in nature.'' "I don't have to accept their tenants. I was trying
to convince those college students to accept my tenants.
And I reject any labeling me because I happened to go
to the university." "I understand small business growth. I was one." "The senator has got to understand if he's going to
have—he can't have it both ways. He can't take the high
horse and then claim the low road." "Really proud of it. A great campaign. And I'm really
pleased with the organization and the thousands of South
Carolinians that worked on my behalf. And I'm very gracious
and humbled." "I don't want to win? If that were the case why the
heck am I on the bus 16 hours a day, shaking thousands
of hands, giving hundreds of speeches, getting pillared
in the press and cartoons and still staying on message
to win?" "I thought how proud I am to be standing up beside
my dad. Never did it occur to me that he would become
the gist for cartoonists." "If you're sick and tired of the politics of cynicism and polls and principles,
come and join this campaign." "How do you know if you don't measure if you have a system
that simply suckles kids through?" (Explaining the need
for educational accountability.) "I know how hard it is for you to put food on your
family." "I am a person who recognizes the fallacy of humans." "Will the highways on the Internet become more few?" "Well, that's going to be up to the pundits and the
people to make up their mind. I'll tell you what is
a president for him, for example, talking about my record
in the state of Texas. I mean, he's willing to say anything
in order to convince people that I haven't had a good
record in Texas." "One of the common denominators I have found is that
expectations rise above that which is expected." "I will have a foreign-handed
foreign policy."
"The most important job is not to be governor, or first lady, in my case." Pella, Iowa. 1.30.00
"It's important for us to explain to our nation that life is important. It's not only life of babies, but it's life of children living in, you know, the dark dungeons of Internet." Arlington Heights, Illinois. 12.24.00
"It's clearly a budget. It's got a lot of numbers in it." Reuters. 5.5.00
"One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic pictures." US News World Report. 1.3.00
"The fundamental question is, 'Will I
be a successful president when it comes to foreign policy?' I
will be, but until I'm the president, it's going to be hard
for me to verify that I think I'll be more
effective." "The only things that I can tell
you is that every case I have reviewed I have been comfortable
with the innocence or guilt of the person that I've looked at.
I do not believe we've put a guilty ... I mean innocent person
to death in the state of Texas." "I'm gonna talk about the ideal
world, Chris. I've read—I understand reality. If you're asking
me as the president, would I understand reality, I do."
(On abortion) "There's not going to be enough
people in the system to take advantage of people like me." (On
the coming Social Security crisis) "I think anybody who doesn't think
I'm smart enough to handle the job is
underestimating." Bush: "First of all, Cinco de Mayo
is not the independence day. That's dieciséis de Septiembre,
and ..." "Actually, I—this may sound a
little West Texan to you, but I like it. When I'm talking
about—when I'm talking about myself, and when he's talking
about myself, all of us are talking about me."
''This campaign not only hears the
voices of the entrepreneurs and the farmers and the
entrepreneurs, we hear the voices of those struggling to get
ahead."
"We cannot let terrorists and rogue
nations hold this nation hostile or hold our allies
hostile.''
"I have a different vision of
leadership. A leadership is someone who brings people
together." "I think he needs to stand up and
say if he thought the president were wrong on policy and
issues, he ought to say where." "This case has had full analyzation
and has been looked at a lot. I understand the emotionality of
death penalty cases." "States should have the right to
enact reasonable laws and restrictions particularly to end the
inhumane practice of ending a life that otherwise could
live." "Unfairly but truthfully, our party
has been tagged as being against things. Anti-immigrant, for
example. And we're not a party of anti-immigrants. Quite the
opposite. We're a party that welcomes people." "I want you to know that farmers
are not going to be secondary thoughts to a Bush
administration. They will be in the forethought of our
thinking." "And if he continues that, I'm
going to tell the nation what I think about him as a human
being and a person." "The only thing I know about Slovakia
is what I learned firsthand from your foreign minister,
who came to Texas." (To a Slovak journalist. Bush's meeting
was with Janez Drnovsek, the prime minister of Slovenia.
) "He has certainly earned a
reputation as a fantastic mayor, because the results speak for
themselves. I mean, New York's a safer place for him to be."
(On Rudy Giuliani) "The fact that he relies on
facts—says things that are not factual—are going to undermine
his campaign." "I think we agree, the past is
over." (On his meeting with John McCain.) "It's clearly a budget. It's got a
lot of numbers in it."
"We must all hear the universal
call to like your neighbor just like you like to be liked
yourself." "Rarely is the question asked: Is
our children learning?" "Gov. Bush will not stand for the
subsidation of failure." "There needs to be debates, like
we're going through. There needs to be town-hall meetings.
There needs to be travel. This is a huge country." "What I am against is quotas. I am
against hard quotas, quotas they basically delineate based
upon whatever. However they delineate, quotas, I think
vulcanize society. So I don't know how that fits into what
everybody else is saying, their relative positions, but that's
my position.'' "When I was coming up, it was a
dangerous world, and you knew exactly who they were," he said.
"It was us vs. them, and it was clear who them was. Today, we
are not so sure who the they are, but we know they're
there." "The administration I'll bring is a
group of men and women who are focused on what's best for
America, honest men and women, decent men and women, women who
will see service to our country as a great privilege and who
will not stain the house." "This is still a dangerous world.
It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mential
losses." "The woman who knew that I had
dyslexia—I never interviewed her." "The best way to relieve families
from time is to let them keep some of their own
money." "They have miscalculated me as a
leader." "I don't think we need to be
subliminable about the differences between our views on
prescription drugs." "This is what I'm good at. I like
meeting people, my fellow citizens, I like interfacing with
them." "We ought to make the pie
higher." "I do not agree with this notion
that somehow if I go to try to attract votes and to lead
people toward a better tomorrow somehow I get subscribed to
some—some doctrine gets subscribed to me." "I've changed my style somewhat, as
you know. I'm less—I pontificate less, although it may be hard
to tell it from this show. And I'm more interacting with
people."
"It is clear our nation is reliant
upon big foreign oil. More and more of our imports come from
overseas." "A tax cut is really one of the
anecdotes to coming out of an economic illness." "The most important job is not to
be governor, or first lady in my case."
"If the East Timorians decide to revolt, I'm sure I'll have a
statement." "I read the newspaper."
(Answer to a question about his reading habits.)
"We are ready for any unforeseen event that may or may not occur."
"For NASA, space is still a high priority."
"Quite frankly, teachers are the only profession that teach our children."
"It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it."
"It's time for the human race to enter the solar system."
Compiled by |
|
THE DUNCE
His former Harvard Business School professor recalls George W. Bush not just as a terrible student but
as spoiled, loutish and a pathological liar. For 25 years, Yoshi Tsurumi, one of George W. Bush's professors at Harvard Business School, was content with his green-card status as a permanent legal resident of the United States. But Bush's ascension to the presidency in 2001 prompted the Japanese native to secure his American citizenship. The reason: to be able to speak out with the full authority of citizenship about why he believes Bush lacks the character and intellect to lead the world's oldest and most powerful democracy. "I don't remember all the students in detail unless I'm prompted by something," Tsurumi said in a telephone interview Wednesday. "But I always remember two types of students. One is the very excellent student, the type as a professor you feel honored to be working with. Someone with strong social values, compassion and intellect -- the very rare person you never forget. And then you remember students like George Bush, those who are totally the opposite." The future president was one of 85 first-year MBA students in Tsurumi's macroeconomic policies and international business class in the fall of 1973 and spring of 1974. Tsurumi was a visiting associate professor at Harvard Business School from January 1972 to August 1976; today, he is a professor of international business at Baruch College in New York. Trading as usual on his father's connections, Bush entered Harvard in 1973 for a two-year program. He'd just come off what George H.W. Bush had once called his eldest son's "nomadic years" -- partying, drifting from job to job, working on political campaigns in Florida and Alabama and, most famously, apparently not showing up for duty in the Alabama National Guard. Harvard Business School's rigorous teaching methods, in which the professor interacts aggressively with students, and students are encouraged to challenge each other sharply, offered important insights into Bush, Tsurumi said. In observing students' in-class performances, "you develop pretty good ideas about what are their weaknesses and strengths in terms of thinking, analysis, their prejudices, their backgrounds and other things that students reveal," he said. One of Tsurumi's standout students was Rep. Chris Cox, R-Calif., now the seventh-ranking member of the House Republican leadership. "I typed him as a conservative Republican with a conscience," Tsurumi said. "He never confused his own ideology with economics, and he didn't try to hide his ignorance of a subject in mumbo jumbo. He was what I call a principled conservative." (Though clearly a partisan one. On Wednesday, Cox called for a congressional investigation of the validity of documents that CBS News obtained for a story questioning Bush's attendance at Guard duty in Alabama.) Bush, by contrast, "was totally the opposite of Chris Cox," Tsurumi said. "He showed pathological lying habits and was in denial when challenged on his prejudices and biases. He would even deny saying something he just said 30 seconds ago. He was famous for that. Students jumped on him; I challenged him." When asked to explain a particular comment, said Tsurumi, Bush would respond, "Oh, I never said that." A White House spokeswoman did not return a phone call seeking comment. In 1973, as the oil and energy crisis raged, Tsurumi led a discussion on whether government should assist retirees and other people on fixed incomes with heating costs. Bush, he recalled, "made this ridiculous statement and when I asked him to explain, he said, 'The government doesn't have to help poor people -- because they are lazy.' I said, 'Well, could you explain that assumption?' Not only could he not explain it, he started backtracking on it, saying, 'No, I didn't say that.'" If Cox had been in the same class, Tsurumi said, "I could have asked him to challenge that and he would have demolished it. Not personally or emotionally, but intellectually." Bush once sneered at Tsurumi for showing the film "The Grapes of Wrath," based on John Steinbeck's novel of the Depression. "We were in a discussion of the New Deal, and he called Franklin Roosevelt's policies 'socialism.' He denounced labor unions, the Securities and Exchange Commission, Medicare, Social Security, you name it. He denounced the civil rights movement as socialism. To him, socialism and communism were the same thing. And when challenged to explain his prejudice, he could not defend his argument, either ideologically, polemically or academically." Students who challenged and embarrassed Bush in class would then become the subject of a whispering campaign by him, Tsurumi said. "In class, he couldn't challenge them. But after class, he sometimes came up to me in the hallway and started bad-mouthing those students who had challenged him. He would complain that someone was drinking too much. It was innuendo and lies. So that's how I knew, behind his smile and his smirk, that he was a very insecure, cunning and vengeful guy." Many of Tsurumi's students came from well-connected or wealthy families, but good manners prevented them from boasting about it, the professor said. But Bush seemed unabashed about the connections that had brought him to Harvard. "The other children of the rich and famous were at least well bred to the point of realizing universal values and standards of behavior," Tsurumi said. But Bush sometimes came late to class and often sat in the back row of the theater-like classroom, wearing a bomber jacket from the Texas Air National Guard and spitting chewing tobacco into a cup. "At first, I wondered, 'Who is this George Bush?' It's a very common name and I didn't know his background. And he was such a bad student that I asked him once how he got in. He said, 'My dad has good friends.'" Bush scored in the lowest 10 percent of the class. The Vietnam War was still roiling campuses and Harvard was no exception. Bush expressed strong support for the war but admitted to Tsurumi that he'd gotten a coveted spot in the Texas Air National Guard through his father's connections. "I used to chat up a number of students when we were walking back to class," Tsurumi said. "Here was Bush, wearing a Texas Guard bomber jacket, and the draft was the No. 1 topic in those days. And I said, 'George, what did you do with the draft?' He said, 'Well, I got into the Texas Air National Guard.' And I said, 'Lucky you. I understand there is a long waiting list for it. How'd you get in?' When he told me, he didn't seem ashamed or embarrassed. He thought he was entitled to all kinds of privileges and special deals. He was not the only one trying to twist all their connections to avoid Vietnam. But then, he was fanatically for the war." Tsurumi told Bush that someone who avoided a draft while supporting a war in which others were dying was a hypocrite. "He realized he was caught, showed his famous smirk and huffed off." Tsurumi's conclusion: Bush is not as dumb as his detractors allege. "He was just badly brought up, with no discipline, and no compassion," he said. In recent days, Tsurumi has told his story to various print and television outlets and appears in Kitty Kelley's expose "The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty." He said other professors and students at the business school from that time share his recollections but are afraid to come forward, fearing ostracism or retribution. And why is Tsurumi speaking up now? Because with the ongoing bloodshed in Iraq and Osama bin Laden still on the loose -- not to mention a federal deficit ballooning out of control -- the stakes are too high to remain silent. "Obviously, I don't think he is the best person" to be running the country, he said. "I wanted to explain why."
|
|
Adapted from the introduction to:
The question I am most frequently asked about Bushisms is,
"Do you really think the president of the United States is dumb?" Quotations collected over the years in Slate may leave the impression that George W. Bush is a dimwit. Let's face it: A man who cannot talk about education without making a humiliating grammatical mistake ("The illiteracy level of our children are appalling"); who cannot keep straight the three branches of government ("It's the executive branch's job to interpret law"); who coins ridiculous words ("Hispanos," "arbolist," "subliminable," "resignate," "transformationed"); who habitually says the opposite of what he intends ("the death tax is good for people from all walks of life!") sounds like a grade-A imbecile. And if you don't care to pursue the matter any further, that view will suffice. George W. Bush has governed, for the most part, the way any airhead might, undermining the fiscal condition of the nation, squandering the goodwill of the world after Sept. 11, and allowing huge problems (global warming, entitlement spending, AIDS) to metastasize toward catastrophe through a combination of ideology, incomprehension, and indifference. If Bush isn't exactly the moron he sounds, his synaptic misfirings offer a plausible proxy for the idiocy of his presidency.
In reality, however, there's more to it. Bush's assorted malapropisms, solecisms, gaffes, spoonerisms, and truisms tend to imply that his lack of fluency in English is tantamount to an absence of intelligence. But as we all know, the inarticulate can be shrewd, the fluent fatuous. In Bush's case, the symptoms point to a specific malady—some kind of linguistic deficit akin to dyslexia—that does not indicate a lack of mental capacity per se. Bush also compensates with his non-verbal acumen. As he notes, "Smart comes in all kinds of different ways." The president's way is an aptitude for connecting to people through banter and physicality. He has a powerful memory for names, details, and figures that truly matter to him, such as batting averages from the 1950s. Bush also has a keen political sense, sharpened under the tutelage of Karl Rove. What's more, calling the president a cretin absolves him of responsibility. Like Reagan, Bush avoids blame for all manner of contradictions, implausible assertions, and outright lies by appearing an amiable dunce. If he knows not what he does, blame goes to the three puppeteers, Cheney, Rove, and Rumsfeld. It also breeds sympathy. We wouldn't laugh at FDR because he couldn't walk. Is it less cruel to laugh at GWB because he can't talk? The soft bigotry of low expectations means Bush is seen to outperform by merely getting by. Finally, elitist condescension, however merited, helps cement Bush's bond to the masses. But if "numskull" is an imprecise description of the president, it is not altogether inaccurate. Bush may not have been born stupid, but he has achieved stupidity, and now he wears it as a badge of honor. What makes mocking this president fair as well as funny is that Bush is, or at least once was, capable of learning, reading, and thinking. We know he has discipline and can work hard (at least when the goal is reducing his time for a three-mile run). Instead he chose to coast, for most of his life, on name, charm, good looks, and the easy access to capital afforded by family connections. The most obvious expression of Bush's choice of ignorance is that, at the age of 57, he knows nothing about policy or history. After years of working as his dad's spear-chucker in Washington, he didn't understand the difference between Medicare and Medicaid, the second- and third-largest federal programs. Well into his plans for invading Iraq, Bush still couldn't get down the distinction between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, the key religious divide in a country he was about to occupy. Though he sometimes carries books for show, he either does not read them or doesn't absorb anything from them. Bush's ignorance is so transparent that many of his intimates do not bother to dispute it even in public. Consider the testimony of several who know him well. Richard Perle, foreign policy adviser: "The first time I met Bush 43... two things became clear. One, he didn't know very much. The other was that he had the confidence to ask questions that revealed he didn't know very much." David Frum, former speechwriter: "Bush had a poor memory for facts and figures... Fire a question at him about the specifics of his administration's policies, and he often appeared uncertain. Nobody would ever enroll him in a quiz show." Laura Bush, spouse: "George is not an overly introspective person. He has good instincts, and he goes with them. He doesn't need to evaluate and reevaluate a decision. He doesn't try to overthink. He likes action." Paul O'Neill, former treasury secretary: "The only way I can describe it is that, well, the President is like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people. There is no discernible connection." A second, more damning aspect of Bush's mind-set is that he doesn't want to know anything in detail, however important. Since college, he has spilled with contempt for knowledge, equating learning with snobbery and making a joke of his own anti-intellectualism. ("[William F. Buckley] wrote a book at Yale; I read one," he quipped at a black-tie event.) By O'Neill's account, Bush could sit through an hourlong presentation about the state of the economy without asking a single question. ("I was bored as hell," the president shot back, ostensibly in jest.) Closely related to this aggressive ignorance is a third feature of Bush's mentality: laziness. Again, this is a lifelong trait. Bush's college grades were mostly C's (including a 73 in Introduction to the American Political System). At the start of one term, the star of the Yale football team spotted him in the back row during the shopping period for courses. "Hey! George Bush is in this class!" Calvin Hill shouted to his teammates. "This is the one for us!" As governor of Texas, Bush would take a long break in the middle of his short workday for a run followed by a stretch of video golf or computer solitaire. A fourth and final quality of Bush's mind is that it does not think. The president can't tolerate debate about issues. Offered an option, he makes up his mind quickly and never reconsiders. At an elementary school, a child once asked him whether it was hard to make decisions as president. "Most of the decisions come pretty easily for me, to be frank with you." By leaping to conclusions based on what he "believes," Bush avoids contemplating even the most obvious basic contradictions: between his policy of tax cuts and reducing the deficit; between his call for a humble foreign policy based on alliances and his unilateral assertion of American power; between his support for in-vitro fertilization (which destroys embryos) and his opposition to fetal stem-cell research (because it destroys embryos). Why would someone capable of being smart choose to be stupid? To understand, you have to look at W.'s relationship with father. This filial bond involves more tension than meets the eye. Dad was away for much of his oldest son's childhood. Little George grew up closer to his acid-tongued mother and acted out against the absent parent through adolescent misbehavior, academic failure, dissipation, and basically not accomplishing anything at all until well into his 40s. Dubya's youthful screw-ups and smart-aleck attitude reflect some combination of protest, plea for attention, and flailing attempt to compete. Until a decade ago, his resume read like a send-up of his dad's. Bush senior was a star student at Andover and Phi Beta Kappa at Yale, where he was also captain of the baseball team; Junior struggled through with gentleman's C's and, though he loved baseball, couldn't make the college lineup. Pere was a bomber pilot in the Pacific; fils sat out 'Nam in the Texas Air National Guard, where he lost flying privileges by not showing up. Dad drove to Texas in 1947 to get rich in the oil business and actually did; Son tried the same in 1975 and drilled dry holes for a decade. Bush the elder got elected to Congress in 1966; Shrub ran in 1978, didn't know what he was talking about, and got clobbered. Through all this incompetent emulation runs an undercurrent of hostility. In an oft-told anecdote circa 1973, GWB— after getting wasted at a party and driving over a neighbor's trash can in Houston— challenged his dad. "I hear you're lookin' for me," W. told the chairman of the Republican National Committee. "You want to go mano a mano right here?" Some years later at a state dinner, he told the Queen of England he was being seated far away because he was the black sheep of the family. After half a lifetime of this kind of frustration, Bush decided to straighten up. Nursing a hangover at a 40th-birthday weekend, he gave up Wild Turkey, cold turkey. With the help of Billy Graham, he put himself in the hands of a higher power and began going to church. He became obsessed with punctuality and developed a rigid routine. Thus did Prince Hal molt into an evangelical King Henry. And it worked! Putting together a deal to buy the Texas Rangers, the ne'er-do-well finally tasted success. With success, he grew closer to his father, taking on the role of family avenger. This culminated in his 1994 challenge to Texas Gov. Ann Richards, who had twitted dad at the 1988 Democratic convention. Curiously, this late arrival at adulthood did not involve Bush becoming in any way thoughtful. Having chosen stupidity as rebellion, he stuck with it out of conformity. The promise-keeper, reformed-alkie path he chose not only drastically curtailed personal choices he no longer wanted, it also supplied an all-encompassing order, offered guidance on policy, and prevented the need for much actual information. Bush's old answer to hard questions was, "I don't know and, who cares." His new answer was, "Wait a second while I check with Jesus." A remaining bit of poignancy was his unresolved struggle with his father. "All I ask," he implored a reporter while running for governor in 1994, "is that for once you guys stop seeing me as the son of George Bush." In his campaigns, W. has kept his dad offstage. (In an exceptional appearance on the eve of the 2000 New Hampshire primary, 41 came onstage and called his son "this boy.") While some describe the second Bush presidency as a restoration, it is in at least equal measure a repudiation. The son's harder-edged conservatism explicitly rejects the old man's approach to such issues as abortion, taxes, and relations with Israel. This Oedipally induced ignorance expresses itself most dangerously in Bush's handling of the war in Iraq. Dubya polished off his old man's greatest enemy, Saddam, but only by lampooning 41's accomplishment of coalition-building in the first Gulf War. Bush led the country to war on false pretenses and neglected to plan the occupation that would inevitably follow. A more knowledgeable and engaged president might have questioned the quality of the evidence about Iraq's supposed weapons programs. One who preferred to be intelligent might have asked about the possibility of an unfriendly reception. Instead, Bush rolled the dice. His budget-busting tax cuts exemplify a similar phenomenon, driven by an alternate set of ideologues. As the president says, we misunderestimate him. He was not born stupid. He chose stupidity. Bush may look like a well-meaning dolt. On consideration, he's something far more dangerous: a dedicated fool.
|
1. Is it true that the Bin Ladens have had business
relations with you and your family off and on
for the past 25 years? 2. What is the 'special relationship' between
the Bushes and the Saudi royal family? 3. Who attacked the US on September 11 - a guy
on dialysis from a cave in Afghanistan, or your
friend, Saudi Arabia? 4. Why did you allow a private Saudi jet to fly
around the US in the days after September 11 and
pick up members of the Bin Laden family and fly
them out of the country without a proper investigation
by the FBI? 5. Why are you protecting the Second Amendment
rights of potential terrorists? 6. Were you aware that, while you were governor
of Texas, the Taliban travelled to Texas to meet
with your oil and gas company friends? 7. What exactly was that look on your face in
the Florida classroom on the morning of September
11 when your chief of staff told you, 'America
is under attack'? |
|
A short poem made up entirely of actual quotations from George W. Bush. Arranged, only for aesthetic purposes, by Washington Post writer, Richard Thompson.
Rarely is the question asked
How many hands have I shaked?
I know that the human being
Put food on your family! |
| ...With worker
opposition liquidated, the Polyergus queen grabs the
Formica queen and bites her head, thorax and abdomen for an
unrelenting 25 minutes... Within seconds of the host queen's death,
the nest undergoes a most remarkable transformation. The
Formica workers behave as if sedated. They calmly approach
the Polyergus queen and start grooming her-- just as they did
their own queen... At this point, colony takeover is a done deal...
From an article about predator ants: Slave-Making Queens, Scientific American 11/99 |
|
Gary Trudeau (Doonesbury) remarking on the Bush election in The New Yorker: "It's as if Quayle had won. Plus you have the wonderful narrative of how he got where he now is. It took his brother, his father, his father's friends, the Florida secretary of state, and the Supreme Court to pull it off. His entire life gives fresh meaning to the phrase assisted living." |
|
Justice John Paul Stevens: "Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law."
|
From an article quoting a Zimbabwe politician saying that children should study the U.S. presidential election 2000 closely for it shows that election fraud is not only a Third World phenomena. |
|
| 1. | Imagine that we read of an election
occuring anywhere in the Third World in which the
self-declared winner was the son of the former prime minister
and that former prime minister was himself the former head of
that nation's secret police (CIA ). |
| 2. | Imagine that the self-declared
winner lost the popular vote but won based on some old
colonial holdover (electoral college) from the nation's
pre-democracy past. |
| 3. | Imagine that the self-declared
winner's "victory" turned on disputed votes cast in a province
governed by his brother! |
| 4. | Imagine that the poorly drafted
ballots of one district, a district heavily favoring the
self-declared winner's opponent, led thousands of voters to
vote for the wrong candidate. |
| 5. | Imagine that the members of that
nation's most despised caste, fearing for their
lives/livelihoods, turned out in record numbers to vote in
near-universal opposition to the self-declared winner's
candidacy. |
| 6. | Imagine that hundreds of members of
that most-despised caste were intercepted on their way to the
polls by state police operating under the authority of the
self-declared winner's brother. |
| 7. | Imagine that six million people
voted in the disputed province and that the self-declared
winner's 'lead' was only 327 votes. Fewer, certainly, than the
vote counting machines' margin of error. |
| 8. | Imagine that the self-declared winner and his political party opposed a more careful by-hand inspection and re-counting of the ballots in the disputed province or in its most hotly disputed district. |
| 9. | Imagine that the self-declared
winner, himself a governor of a major province, had the worst
human rights record of any province in his nation and actually
led the nation in executions. |
| 10. | Imagine that a major
campaign promise of the self-declared winner was to appoint like-minded
human rights violators to lifetime positions on the high court of that
nation. None of us would deem such an election to be representative of
anything other than the self-declared winner's will-to-power. All of us, I
imagine, would wearily turn the page thinking that it was another sad tale
of pitiful pre- or anti-democracy peoples in some strange
elsewhere. |
| VOTE COUNTING ON MARS by Brad Schreiber:
To citizens of the United States of America: We would also be more than happy to offer our services. Admittedly, we are a different species. But our civilization makes yours look like a group of Zapharidian mudhogs foraging for krimpuscule roots. Also in our favor: we are not Communists. Yes, we have laughed until our cortical air flaps are numb, not only at your inability to tabulate votes in the utterly inept and corrupt state of Florida but at your choice of candidates. You are cursed with one sterling representative who promises anything to anyone and claims to have invented your laughably antiquated Internet. And another exceptional statesman who executes criminals without benefit of your simplistic DNA testing and cannot speak your own language properly. We have numerous political parties and public funding for all of them. Our coalition governments never fight with each other. No “soft money” or corporate lobbying or PACs. Candidates are never locked out of debates. No electoral college, invented when your dark-skinned citizens were slaves and your women could not vote. And we don’t use different ballots for each area. By the cerebrum of the Great Frunobulax, you people are savages! You argue over such things as hanging chads, swinging chads, and dimpled and pregnant ballots. No wonder you still haven’t colonized any other planets. (The rest of the universe is thankful.) We are tempted to offer you our own transipient notification subsystem, which instantly records our voters’ touch-screen preferences in a memory bank backed up by physical copies for the government and the voter. Probably, you’d break it. May we suggest you all go back to putting a big “X” next to the candidates’ names? As we entertain ourselves by watching your coverage of the election stalemate, via our mentholithium quadrangle cable, we puzzle over another bizarre facet of your sophomoric society: Pundits. Any rational sentient being can tell you, pundits are talk show hosts, former government employees and columnists who are hired by individual networks to shout their opinions at each other and take wild guesses at what might happen in the future. We expect it will only be a matter of time before you issue trading cards with their images. It has come to our attention that there may be Congressional hearings on televised coverage of your elections. Apparently, some of your citizenry found it annoying that all your networks relied on one source of information, Voter News Service, which led to Florida being prematurely awarded — twice. And if you are so intent on knowing the winner of an election immediately, why do you allow absentee ballots to be postmarked via your ancient postal system on election day? Helpful hint: insist the ballots arrive so they may be counted by election day. It’s either that or figure out how to build one of our global conductive proclivity dispensers. (And how likely is that?) In essence, we wonder why you Americans must know all the results ten minutes after polls close in your Eastern time zone. Why do you announce any national results when other states are voting? We thought you liked suspense. You have plenty of it now.
Disgustedly yours,
From Development Hell |