wrote:
>
> He's down to 33%, on Fox, which as most know is an organization
> that favors the Republican Party. Free fall...
>
> Interesting to watch his body language while meeting with the
> Chinese Premier today. Definitely the weak one. Choppy,
> hesitant, and tense. He has definitely lost his way.
Here's an article that favors the theory that
what he's lost is his fuckin' mind:
A Maniacal Messianic Prepares to Fulfill His Destiny
by Ted Rall
"I have fulfilled my destiny," the president says manically. He has
just entered the nuclear launch codes that will trigger World War
III. Seconds later, he emerges from a bunker. The Secretary of State
squeezes between two soldiers. "Mr. President!" he shouts. "We have
a diplomatic solution!"
He smiles. "It's too late," he replies. "The missiles are flying.
Alleluia. Alleluia."
The above scene, from David Cronenberg's 1983 adaptation of the
horror novel "The Dead Zone," is a classic if slightly preposterous
nightmare of a world destroyed by a demented demagogue. Now,
incredibly, a lunatic out of a Stephen King movie has brought the
United States to the brink of Armageddon.
Until I read Seymour Hersh's expose in The New Yorker and subsequent
follow-up coverage by other journalists about the Bush
Administration's plans to start a war against Iran, I had dismissed
talk of George W. Bush's messianism as so much Beltway chatter.
True, he hears voices, even claiming that God and Jesus Christ talk
to him. "I believe God wants me to run for president," he told a
friend in Texas. Eschewing mainstream religion, he routinely parrots
the apocalyptic ravings of fringe Christianist cults: "And the light
[America] has shone in the darkness [the enemies of America], and
the darkness will not overcome it [America shall conquer its
enemies]," he said during his fevered campaign for war against Iraq.
He mimics Old Testament cadences: "God told me to strike at Al Qaeda
and I struck them," Bush told the Palestinian prime minister in
2003, "and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did,
and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East."
Nooor-mal.
Despite the man's wacky religiosity, I have been giving Bush the
benefit of a small amount of remaining doubt after five years of the
most disastrous rule this nation has ever suffered. I believed that
he was breathtakingly bigoted, stupid and ignorant. But I didn't
think he was out of his mind. Until now.
"Current and former American military and intelligence officials"
tell Hersh "that President Bush is determined to deny the Iranian
regime the opportunity to begin a pilot program, planned for this
spring, to enrich uranium." Of course, uranium enrichment for
peaceful atomic energy is permitted by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty, to which Iran is a signatory. Which is what the Iranians say
they're doing. But the Bush Administration, which knows a little
about lying, doesn't believe them.
Fair enough: One only has to consider the risk of nuclear
conflagration between India and Pakistan to see why the fewer
countries have nukes, the better. Not every country can be trusted
with such terrifying weapons. So how does the trustworthy United
States plan to make its stand against nuclear proliferation?
By nuking Iran.
"One of the military's initial option plans," reports
Hersh, "...calls for the use of a bunker-buster tactical nuclear
weapon, such as the B61-11, against underground nuclear sites." An
intelligence insider says that "Every other option, in the view of
the nuclear weaponeers, would leave a gap. 'Decisive' is the key
word of the Air Force's planning. It's a tough decision. But we made
it in Japan."
"We're talking about mushroom clouds, radiation, mass casualties,
and contamination over years," he went on. Crazy stuff. But whenever
someone inside the Administration opposes the nuclear
option, "They're shouted down." The pro-nuke faction, led by Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, is responding to internal critics with
a "B61 [nuclear bomb] with more blast and less radiation."
You may have heard that Bush dismissed Hersh's article as "wild
speculation." At first I, like you, responded with a sigh of relief.
But I've come to learn that Bush doesn't talk like a human being.
His policy pronouncements are carefully lawyered to give him the
kind of technical out that Bill Clinton could only have dreamed of.
Bushspeak is crafted to ensure that what Mr. Straightshooter says is
rarely what he means. Filtering "wild speculation" statement through
Bushspeak analysis shows that it's no denial at all.
"The doctrine of prevention is to work together to prevent the
Iranians from having a nuclear weapon," Bush said. Notice that,
despite the disaster in Iraq, he still reserves the right to wage
preemptive war. He continued: "I know here in Washington prevention
means force. It doesn't mean force necessarily. In this case it
means diplomacy."
It doesn't mean force necessarily. If and when a reporter reminds
Bush of this statement after he attacks Iran, he will say that he
never took the military option--including nukes--off the table.
Moreover, he'll say, that he told the truth at the time. Thus the
present tense: means.
Bush has not denied Hersh's article. Therefore, we should accept it
as accurate.
We already know that Bush is capable of lying about his willingness
to use diplomacy instead of war. "We're still in the final stages of
diplomacy," he told reporters on March 6, 2003. "I'm spending a lot
of time on the phone, talking to fellow leaders about the need for
the United Nations Security Council to state the facts, which is
Saddam Hussein hasn't disarmed...Iraq is a part of the war on
terror. Iraq is a country that has got terrorist ties."
Actually, Bush had decided to invade Iraq months--probably years--
before. He had moved hundreds of thousands of American troops into
the Persian Gulf. Two weeks later, he ordered an assassination
attempt on Saddam Hussein and began the saturation bombing of
Baghdad. But Bush was still talking as if there were something
Saddam could do to avoid war. "Our demands are that Saddam Hussein
disarm," he went on. "We hope he does." Sure.
Many people have asked me during the last year whether I thought
Bush would attack Iran. I said no, because he's out of troops, out
of cash and out of political capital. He couldn't so he wouldn't.
Those things are still true. Not to mention that Iran would make
Iraq look like a cakewalk. Yet, as Hersh reports, the U.S. may bomb
at least 400 cities and towns inside Iran. "Air Force planning
groups are drawing up lists of targets, and teams of American combat
troops have been ordered into Iran, under cover, to collect
targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic-
minority groups." You don't need troops, money or the support of the
American people when God talks to you. And when you're insane.
Ted Rall is the editor of "Attitude 3: The New Subversive Online
Cartoonists," an anthology of webcartoons which will be published in
May.
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