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THE PROSECUTION OF GEORGE W. BUSH FOR MURDER |
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PART TWO Chapter 3: PROLOGUE TO THE PROSECUTION OF GEORGE W. BUSH FOR MURDER AS ADULTS, most of us have learned that there are consequences in life for our misbehavior. If George Bush, as I believe, took this nation to war in Iraq on a lie, causing catastrophic repercussions on a scale far larger than the attacks of 9/11, what should we, as a nation, do about it? As of the publication date of this book, apparently nothing. Indeed, and remarkably, there hasn't even been any investigation of Bush's conduct, nor has one even been seriously proposed, [1] In the chapter that follows this one, I will make my own small contribution to "doing something about" what has happened. But before I do, I want to talk in this prologue about the thousands of young American men and women who paid for Bush's conduct with their irreplaceable lives, because if these men and women were not in their cold graves, I obviously would not be recommending what I do in the next chapter. I also want to discuss how the author of these deaths, George Bush, has comported himself through the horror of it all. My anger over the war in Iraq, some will say, is palpable in the pages of this book. If I sound too angry for some, what should I be greatly angry about -- that a referee gave what I thought was a bad call to my hometown football, basketball, or baseball team, and it may have cost them the game? I don't think so. Virtually all of us cling desperately to life, either because of our love of life and/or our fear of death. I'm told there is a passage in a novel by Dostoyevsky in which a character in the story exclaims, "If I were condemned to live on a rock, chained to a rock in the lashing sea, and all around me were ice and gales and storm, I would still want to live. Oh God, just to live, live, live!" So nothing is as important in life as life and death. We fear and loathe the thought of our own death, even if it's a peaceful one after we've outlived the normal longevity. We fear not only the loss of our own lives, but the lives of our parents and sisters and brothers, as well as our relatives and close friends. We don't think of our children too much in this regard because our children, in the normal scheme of things, are supposed to outlive us. When they die before us, the already hideous nature of death becomes unbearable. And that's when they die a normal and peaceful death from illness. If the death is from an accident, like a car collision, the death of the child, if possible, is even more unbearable. So one can hardly imagine the gut-tearing pain and horror when the only child of a couple, a nineteen-year-old son, call him Tim, the center of his parents' lives, whom they showered with their love and lived through vicariously in his triumphs on the athletic field and in the classroom, and who was excited as he looked forward to life, planning to wed his high school sweetheart and go on to become a police officer (or lawyer, doctor, engineer, etc.) dies the most horrible of deaths from a roadside bomb in a far-off country, and comes home in a metal box, [2] his body so shattered that his parents are cautioned by the military not to open it because what is inside ("our Timmy") is "unviewable." (To make the point hit home more with you, can you imagine if it was your son who was killed in Iraq and came home "unviewable" in a box? Yes, your son Scott, or Paul, or Michael, or Ronnie, Todd, Peter, Marty, Sean, or Bobby.) No words can capture the feelings, the enormous suffering, of Tim's parents. But I think we can say that among a host of other deep agonies, they will have nightmares for the rest of their lives over the horrifying image of their boy the moment he lost his life on a desolate road in Iraq. As a mother of a soldier who died in Iraq wrote in a May 17, 2004, letter to the New York Times: "The explosion that killed my son in Baghdad will go on in our lives forever." She went on to say that "seared on" her soul are the "screams and despair" of her family over the loss of her son and the "sound of taps above the weeping crowd at the grave site of my son." Just as Tim's young life ended before he really had a chance to live, so did the lives of thousands of other young men in the Iraq war. Not one of them wanted to die. As one wrote in his diary before he was killed in the battle of Fallouja: "I am not so much scared as I am very afraid of the unknown. If I don't get to write again, I would say I died too early, I haven't done enough in my life. I haven't gotten to experience enough. Though I hope I haven't gone in vain." In letter after letter home by young men who were later killed in combat in Iraq were words to the effect, "I can't wait to get back home and to start my life again." All of the young men who died horrible and violent deaths in Bush's war had dreams. Bush saw to it that none of them would ever come true. It is impossible to adequately describe all the emotions and the magnitude of the human suffering that this dreadful war has wrought. But we can at least begin to comprehend the enormity of it by looking briefly at some stories of those young men who paid with their lives for Bush's monumental crime. As undoubtedly is the case with the reader's local paper, for several years now my hometown paper, the Los Angeles Times, every week without fail -- sometimes it seems every day; under "Military Deaths" -- has an obituary; or two or three, of young American soldiers from Southern and Central California who were killed in Iraq. Many had Hispanic names; almost all were very young and of limited education (only 3.5 percent of the enlisted men in the Iraqi war -- the men who, for the most part, do the fighting, the so-called grunts -- have a college degree); and virtually all appeared to come from low- income homes. There was a story in each obituary of their abbreviated lives, with reminiscences from their parents, brothers and sisters, wives, as well as girlfriends they were already planning to marry. I wish I had kept all of them, although they would number in the hundreds. A typical caption was "Army Cpl. (name), 20, Rialto; killed by a roadside bomb." Here are a few random snippets drawn mostly from the Los Angeles Times, and a few elsewhere. Though not comprehensive, we can suppose they are representative of the others because they all tell the same story of a young life tragically cut short by the war. "How long must I wait to go home?" Luis, 21, who was killed by a roadside bomb wrote. "How long must I wait to marry my girlfriend?" Family and friends said the thing they'll always remember about Luis is how easily he made them laugh. He'd recite favorite lines from movies or from comedian Dave Chappelle ..."He was scared because he was going to Iraq," his younger brother Eric said. "He was telling me he loved me. He was crying. He said he didn't know what to do." His fiancee was planning to surprise him with a scrapbook filled with photographs of themselves. The last page was dedicated to their planned wedding. She included cutouts of a multi-tiered cake, a tuxedo, a wedding dress, and a caption in fancy lettering, "And they lived happily ever after." *** "He was just special," said his mother Maria about her son, Michael (20). "He was always there for me and his brothers and sisters. He did a lot for his family." His sister Sasha, 18, said her brother was her best friend, whom she would seek out for advice about boys and other teenage issues. "He would tell me that he would always be there for me," she added. *** Guy (23) worked at a Home Depot store and joined the National Guard to help pay for his education. Just before he died, he told his mother that when he returned from Iraq his goal was to return to school and get a degree in computer engineering. *** There was something sweetly old-fashioned about Lucente, who was among five Marines killed November 16 in combat in Ubaydi, Iraq. The nineteen-year-old Grace Valley resident went to church regularly, held down a job as a dishwasher, and never failed to tell his family that he loved them. "He was always giving us hugs, always telling us he loved us," his mother said. *** Christopher (21) would flash his 1,000-watt smile and remind his sisters how pretty they were as he grew up in Vallejo, California. His parents, Rudy and Margarita, had been surprised in 2004 when their son, who had just turned 18 and completed high school, told them he had joined the Army. "He was afraid we couldn't pay for college," said his mother, who is a clerk at Target. "I said I'll work two jobs. You'll be able to go to college. He wanted to be a policeman someday. He talked about that even when he was younger." "I always thought I was going to be a kid forever," he wrote for his senior class commencement program. *** Leon (20) and his fiancee planned to be married in December. He was thinking he might join the Los Angeles Police Department and maybe try for the SWAT squad. When he'd call home to his parents he wanted to know about his family and his neighborhood. He'd say; "That's the stuff that keeps me grounded, shows me there is something real, something to hold on to,"' his mother said. "He definitely had the heart of a lion and did your family name proud," wrote a Marine buddy to Leon's parents. Army Cpl. Jarred Speller, who was on the roof with Leon, wrote of the frantic moments after Leon was hit by a sniper as medics tried to stop the bleeding to his head. "I held his head in my hands the whole time and kept trying to tell him he was going to be okay." *** Tom (23) was killed Monday near Baghdad in a grenade explosion. Like so many young men with dreams but not much money, he saw an opportunity: "The Army flashed dollar signs in their [Tom and his brother's] faces. They jumped at it," said Tom's stepfather. Tom wanted to be a school teacher. He and his wife, Paulette, were married for less than two years and had one child. "Tommy enjoyed life to the fullest," his stepfather said. "He was a good Christian boy. His life was cut short. Tommy won't be able to be anything anymore." *** Nineteen-year-old Ryan was remembered by all as a "big kid" with a heart-melting smile. His "easy charm and athletic good looks -- he played baseball and football in high school -- made for no lonely Saturday nights." He was a "ladies man," said his older brother, Sean, noting the number of grieving young women at his kid brother's funeral. It wasn't just young ladies who were taken with Ryan. "Everybody I ever talked to loved Ryan," his father, a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy, said. Ryan's job in Iraq was to root out roadside bombs, but one he didn't see killed two of Ryan's buddies near their Humvee in Ramadi, and severely injured Ryan, with third- degree burns over most of his body He was airlifted to Germany and then Brooks Army Medical Center in San Antonio where he died twelve days later. His father and mother had flown to San Antonio to spend every moment at his side. He was unconscious during most of his hospital stay but had six hours of wakefulness with his family. "I think he fought to get those six hours with us," said his father. "He had a very strong will. He's missed every day" and will be "for the rest of our lives." *** In classic Southern California style, Kyle loved heavy-metal rock music and fast cars, perhaps to extremes. He carried a picture of his Camaro in his wallet and had the lyrics of a Pantera song tattooed on his back. Although he was not interested in school, he was exceptionally intelligent, scoring above 150 on an Army IQ test. He taught himself to play his father's guitar at age 11. His relatives said he excelled at it. When his sister Korra Jean was killed in a car accident four years ago, he had her full name tattooed across his chest. Kyle believed in the U.S. mission in the Middle East, relatives said. During a visit home in February, his half-sister found him quieter than usual. She said he told his friends, "If I don't come home, have a raging party for me," and told her to make sure he was buried in his military uniform. Kyle was among four soldiers killed south of Baghdad when mines detonated near the Humvee they were riding in, setting it on fire. He was 23. *** [Andres, a 23-year-old Army sergeant,] "turned to the gunner in his Humvee while on patrol in Baghdad on July 15, 2006, and insisted on switching seats. When his commanding officer ordered him to stay put, he said he couldn't explain why but he knew that he needed to be sitting in the gunner's seat. His orders were coming from a higher source, he said. Moments after he made the switch, a roadside bomb exploded and killed him. The other soldier was bruised but alive. That was the story of Andres' life in Iraq, always thinking of his fellow soldiers. This is why his fellow servicemen called him a "soldier's soldier," someone distinguished by his selfless regard for others' welfare above his own. There are no plaques, medals or badges that mark a soldier's soldier. "It's a distinguished phrase you don't just give to anyone," said a peer of Andres. "It's one of those things you earn. He definitely had it." Andres had wanted to return home to become a Los Angeles County deputy sheriff. He left behind a four-year-old daughter, Grace, who lived with his former girlfriend. He doted on her, spending his few weeks at home taking her to Knott's Berry Farm and Disneyland. He would shower her with gifts -- lately she favored Winnie the Pooh. Besides his daughter, his survivors were his parents and five younger brothers. *** Joseph, 21, was killed near Baghdad on July 25 in an ambush on his convoy. He had married his childhood sweetheart, Cori, 20, shortly before he left for Iraq the previous fall. In the weeks before his death, the soldier had been counting the days until he came home. He was looking forward to settling down with his bride. "We had saved like pack rats to get a house," Cori said. "He was very anxious to get home. We had spent a good part of his military career apart, and it was just time" to start their life together. *** Raymond (21) was born six weeks early and weighed a scant three pounds. An accomplished basketball player, he graduated from Anaheim's Western High School, attended Santa Ana College, and dreamed of being a fire fighter. "He came home one ay," his mother, Willieta, said, and said to her, "I was talking to a couple of my professors and they said there was a long list for fire fighters. They said the only way I could be a fire fighter without being on the list is joining the military." Willieta begged her only child to talk to her first. "I said, Raymond, I don't object to you going into the military. I object to you going at this time." A few weeks later he signed up. Raymond loved hip-hop music, text messaging, video games and flashy cars. Someday, he said, he would buy a Cadillac Escalade or G.M.C. Yukon with the money he earned fighting in Iraq. Raymond had a big smile, a big heart, a big appetite, a big soul. The best of friends and the sweetest of sons. When he was home on leave, Raymond would buy flowers for his mom. "I want to go on," his mother said, "But I don't know. Do I even have a purpose anymore? It's hard. It's hard. It's hard." *** In these obituaries we see, as indicated earlier, that most of these soldiers dying in Iraq come from very modest or low-income roots. That's why they found even the low pay scale of the military so enticing. That these young men from relatively poor families are fighting a war and dying for multimillionaires like Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, and that companies like Halliburton (Cheney's former company) have made billions, yes billions of dollars off their blood in contracts, is enough to make any decent human being sick to the stomach. What makes the sickness turn into rage is to know that Bush took these young men to war on a lie, and that when they died they thought they were dying to protect their country against those who were involved in 9/11. The additional fact that these soldiers were sent into a war zone without the equipment necessary to protect them not only increases the rage exponentially but shows exactly how little regard Bush and his administration have for those who have been willing to risk their lives fighting Bush's war. As was clear after the first roadside bombs (known as IEDs, improvised explosive devices) killed U.S. troops in their very vulnerable Humvees in 2003, military vehicles designed to withstand them were desperately needed. Yet the Bush administration was unconscionably slow in replacing the Humvees or in armoring them properly. To date, IEDs have been responsible for almost 70 percent of all American combat deaths in Iraq. Can anything possibly be more abominable than this very rich nation sending its young men off to war without providing them with the proper equipment? If the young men dying in Iraq in Humvees were the children of wealthy CEOs, wouldn't something have been done immediately in a crash program (special contracts with multiple manufacturers, twenty-four-hour shifts, etc.) to get the necessary protection for them? In reality, a year and a half after the war started, the only Humvee armoring company in America was operating under capacity because of no new orders from the Pentagon (Newsweek, December 20, 2004), i.e., although protecting our troops should be a top priority in time of war, the Bush administration was not spending the money necessary to do so, nor insuring that more than one factory was working to get the job done. As was reported many times in the media (e.g., New York Times, October 30, 2004), the situation was so bad that American soldiers in Iraq were literally writing home and having their loved ones send requested body and armor parts for the Humvees to them. When Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld visited Iraq and spoke to a group of soldiers on December 8, 2004, one of them (National Guard Specialist Thomas Wilson) stood up and publicly complained about the lack of protection the Humvees were providing them, saying that troops had to forage for "rusted scrap metal and ballistic glass that's already been shot up, busted, picking the best out of this scrap to put on our vehicles to take into combat." He asked Rumsfeld, to loud cheers from many of his fellow soldiers, why they had "to dig through local landfills" for their armor. Rumsfeld, who himself hid out at Princeton on a student deferment when it was his generation's time to fight in Korea, blithely brushed the soldier off, saying, "you go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time." But that terribly arrogant position would only apply if America, for instance, had been invaded by Iraq, in which case we would have to make do with what we had at that particular time. But Bush had all the time in the world to prepare for his war against Iraq. Not only was Iraq never, ever going to attack the United States, or help anyone else do so, but even if it were, it certainly wouldn't be doing so for a long time. While young American soldiers were scavenging for their "hillbilly" armor to protect themselves in a war that only big corporations, like Halliburton, profited from, a story from the December 10, 2004, New York Times (just two days after Specialist Wilson's confrontation with Rumsfeld) was captioned "It's Inauguration Time Again, and Access Still Has Its Price -- $250,000 Buys Lunch with President and More." Can you imagine that? A quarter of a million dollars spent by the nation's very wealthy just for lunch, while young Americans, mostly from low-income families, were dying violent deaths on the battlefield in Iraq because of inadequate protection. Although American soldiers, to this very day, continue to be killed by roadside bombs in Iraq, this, from the August 23, 2007, edition of USA Today: "The Pentagon said yesterday that it will fall short of its goal of sending 3,500 armored vehicles to Iraq by the end of the year [2007]. Instead, officials expect to send about 1,500. Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said that while defense officials still believe contractors will build about 3,900 of the mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles [MRAPs -- these are not armored Humvees] by year's end, it will take longer for the military to fully equip them and ship them to Iraq." This is particularly infuriating because the MRAPs that have been deployed in Iraq thus far have been very effective in withstanding the roadside bombs. The marines requested the MRAPs (whose V-shaped hull at the bottom deflects a bomb's blast to the sides and away from the crew, as opposed to the Humvees whose flat underside takes the full force of a blast through the floor) way back in December of 2003. Yet because of bureaucratic wrangling and the original unwillingness of the Bush administration to adequately fund the very heavy and expensive MRAPs, which only take four months to manufacture, it wasn't until August of 2007, almost four years later, that a small percentage were available for combat operations in Iraq. As expected, by the end of 2007, only 1,500 of the approximately 14,000 the military requested had been delivered to Iraq. And there is more. In June of 2004, the army told the Pentagon it needed 2,600 M1117 armored vehicles (again, not armored Humvees) for its military police. Yet the Bush administration only contracted with one company, Textron in New Orleans, and for only 1,250 vehicles. Why no more? "That's all they had the money for," Clay Moise, the Textron vice president, said in January of 2007. And this is from the administration that gave the super rich in America, those who don't need one dime from anyone, a $1.3 trillion tax break over ten years. What about body armor? A Pentagon study in 2006 found that some 80 percent of the marines who were killed in Iraq between 2003 and 2005 from upper body wounds could have survived if they had had extra body armor there. As of late 2005, over two and a half years into the war, less than 10 percent of 28,000 upper armor plates on order had reached our marines in Iraq. That the Bush administration would send young American soldiers to fight its senseless war in Iraq without adequately equipping them for combat is unpardonable and criminal. As if all of this is not bad enough, consider what the Bush administration has done with our brave young soldiers in Iraq who managed to survive the war but were seriously wounded, many disabled for life. We all know about the subpar performance of this nation's care and treatment of these soldiers as exemplified by the scandal at Walter Reed Hospital. Dr. John H. Chiles, who was chief of anesthesiology at Walter Reed, said that America's military medical system was "underfunded [to repeat, this, from a Bush administration that gave a $1.3 trillion tax break to the super rich], understaffed and overwhelmed." To quote from an Ella Fitzgerald tune, isn't that just delovely? About the $1.3 trillion tax break for the very wealthy in the upper one percent of our society, would you believe it if I told you that the flag-waving, red, white, and blue super patriots in the Bush administration, who want us to believe they love our troops so much more than Democrats do, actually wanted to partially fund the tax give-away on the backs of these poor soldiers dying for them and their wealthy corporate friends in Iraq? Yes, you heard me right. Although it's unbelievable, it's true. Incredibly, in July of 2003, with the base pay of a private starting at only $1,064 per month, the Bush administration decided to discontinue the $75-a-month bonus that soldiers in combat zones in Iraq were getting. The $75 was called "imminent danger pay;" or "combat pay." Bush and his people just felt this was being overly generous with the soldiers at taxpayers' expense, and in the interim budget report sent to Congress by Donald Rumsfeld's Department of Defense, the combat pay was not included. The Army Times, which is distributed widely among army personnel, immediately attacked the White House and Pentagon in editorials for their extremely selfish, callous, and outrageous position. And military families, veterans groups, and Democrats (yes, Democrats) immediately voiced their strong opposition to the Bush administration decision to cut the combat pay of American soldiers fighting in Iraq. These are soldiers, mind you, trying to survive -- on a virtual second-to-second basis in the combat zones -- deadly roadside bombs and guerilla-style attacks. Soldiers weighted down with heavy equipment and combat gear fighting sometimes in 120-degree-plus heat. And back in our nation's air-conditioned Capitol, multimillionaire Republicans in the Bush administration, most of whom were draft dodgers in the Vietnam War, wanted to cut their monthly pay by $75.00. Then-Democratic senator Joe Lieberman said that the Bush administration's proposal was "just unconscionable. The government can afford the billions they give in tax cuts to millionaires, but there's not enough to give a little something to men and women who are putting their lives on the line." Democratic representative Mike Thompson, a Vietnam War veteran, wrote a letter to Bush saying, "This is an outrageous and hypocritical affront to our soldiers who are being killed on a daily basis and to their families." Democratic senator John Edwards said, "Our military deserves every dollar they earn and more. The Bush administration should reverse itself immediately;" which is exactly what Bush and his people did, withdrawing their call for a cut in combat pay the moment they saw their proposal being met with so much opposition. But what does Bush and his people actually wanting to cut the combat pay of American soldiers fighting in Iraq tell you about these people? Is here really anything more to say? [3] Visiting the grave site of a relative in May of 2006, I noticed a nearby grave decorated much more than the others. When I walked over, there was a photo of a young soldier in uniform. He was "SPC Sergio" (Hispanic last name) and the headstone said "March 7, 1983 - December 25, 2005," so he was twenty-two years old when he died on Christmas day in Iraq. The inscription was "Beloved Husband, Father, and Everyone's Hero." Then a biblical reference: "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept my faith, II Timothy 4:7." On a large backboard were written the words "1-64 Armor Battalion Desert Rogers Operation Iraq Freedom 111." Many flowers and six American flags surrounded the grave site. Like all the others, Sergio had a story, and I wondered what that story was. Also like the others, we know he had dreams he never even had a chance to try to make come true. I thought of him in the cold earth beneath me having died, as some liberal commentators have said, "for nothing."
George Bush and Karl Rove -- Chip Somodevilla/ Getty Images But these liberal commentators are 100 percent wrong. Sergio and all the others didn't die for nothing. They died for nothing worthwhile, yes. But they died for something, make no mistake about that. Although there is an old Turkish proverb that whoever tells the truth is chased out of nine villages, doesn't someone have to tell the truth that 4,000 young Americans decomposing in their graves today died for the two men shown in the photo above, George Bush and Karl Rove, and their friend Dick Cheney? We know they didn't die for you and me. And they certainly didn't die for America. Since Hussein constituted no threat to this country and had nothing to do with 9/11, how could these young Americans have possibly died to protect this country? Indeed, America has only been greatly harmed by the war. Not only by the loss of the 4,000 American soldiers who lost their lives in Iraq, and the 30,000 who have been seriously wounded, but we have spent over $1 trillion there that could have been used to help fix the many ills of this country (Political columnist Nicholas D. Kristof got his calculator out in July of 2007 and computed that "if we take the total eventual cost of the Iraq war, that sum could be used to finance health care for all uninsured Americans for perhaps 30 years." Indeed, Nobel Prize-winning novelist Joseph Stiglitz says that "for a fraction of the cost of this war, we could have put social security on a sound footing for the next half-century or more.") On top of all that, and to repeat what is well known, we've converted a country that was free of terrorists into one with many terrorists in it, and we've alienated almost the entire civilized world. So please don't say that Sergio and his fellow soldiers died for America. Since we know that no American interest was being served by the war, and hence, these young men did not die for America or for you and me, whom did they die for? As ugly and grotesque as it is, the fact is that they gave up their lives to further the political interests of Bush, Rove, and Cheney. No political figures in American history ever so shamelessly exploited a war for political advantage as much as these three. Indeed, Rove built Bush's whole successful 2004 reelection campaign around the war in Iraq. Speaking of the photo of Bush and Rove, do these two "men" look like men of real character, stature, moral strength, and dignity, the type whose word and sterling example could inspire a nation to go to war? I put "men" in quotes, because Bush is obviously not a man of stature. He's a spoiled, callous brat who became president only because of his father's good name. And Rove is a pasty, weak-faced, and mean-spirited political criminal. Neither of them are men of stature, honor, and gravitas, like many of our fine leaders of the past century such as Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson, FDR, Eisenhower, JFK, Ford, and George Bush Sr. These two are human embarrassments, and it's written all over their faces who they are. There's nothing of substance and character on the inside of either of these two "men" for their faces to reflect. These "men" refused to fight for America when it was their time to fight for this country -- Bush using his father's influence to get into the National Guard so he wouldn't be sent to Vietnam, and Rove getting a student deferment. Cheney, for his part, got five deferments, later explaining that "I had other priorities" than going to war. Nonetheless, they had no hesitation sending thousands of American soldiers to die violent deaths on foreign soil against a nation that wasn't our enemy (Hussein was only an enemy of George Bush and his father, not America -- see discussion in notes) and had nothing to do with 9/11. I repeat, because I don't want anyone to make any mistake about this, these are the men whom Sergio and other American soldiers died for. Isn't that nice, that parents raise their son, whom they love with every fiber of their being, to die for these "men"? That their son's ashes come back in a jar from Iraq or his body is too blown into pieces to be viewed in its metal container, because of George Bush, Dick Cheney; and Karl Rove? If you say our young men didn't die for Bush, Cheney, and Rove, then whom did they die for? Hey, I'm talking to you. If you don't think they died for Bush, Cheney, and Rove, I want you to tell me whom you think they died for? Indeed, some poor soldiers expressly said they died for Bush. Like young Mariano, who wrote his parents from Iraq a week or so before he was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq, "I didn't vote for Bush, but I'll take a bullet for him." Can you imagine that? Willing to die for the draft-dodging, arrogant son of privilege from Crawford. The reason Mariano said this, of course, is that because of Bush's lies, as recently as 2006, 90 percent of our soldiers in Iraq still actually believed that Hussein and Iraq were involved in 9/11. As has been said, the epitaph that could be on the gravestone of poor Sergio and other young American soldiers who died in Iraq is "Bush Lied. I Died." Virtually all of the American soldiers who died in Iraq believed they were fighting for their country The mother of one, Cpl. Sean Kelly, said what we have heard over and over from other parents: "He was proud to be there fighting for our country." Cpl. James L. Moore had told his grandmother in a phone call home from Iraq shortly before he was killed: "Grandma, I'd rather be fighting them here than to have them come there [U.S.] to fight." The mother of Lance Cpl. Robert A. Martinez (one of ten Marines killed in combat in Fallouja in December of 2005 -- typically, they were very young ["babies" many Americans have called them], two being nineteen, three twenty, and one twenty-one) -- said her son "wanted to protect his family. He said he was doing it for us. He was a true patriot who believed in his mission and President Bush." When Pfc. Thomas Tucker (twenty-five) called home from Iraq in June of 2006 to inform his parents he was going to be gone on a mission for a while, he left a voice mail message that included the following: "Hey, Mama. I love you. I love you too Dad ... I will be back before you know it ... I worry about you guys, too. I love you, okay. I'm going to be okay. Everything is going to be okay. I'm going to defend my country. Be proud of me." A few days later, the bodies of Tucker and fellow soldier Pfc. Khristian Menchaca (twenty-three) were found, their tattered army uniforms drenched in blood. Both had been brutally tortured and their bodies severely mutilated. One of them had been decapitated, his head sitting next to his body; his chest cut open. A video released by the insurgent group responsible for the killings shows one insurgent picking up the head while another insurgent steps on the face of the other solider. According to his family, Menchaca, who had recently married, believed completely, like Tucker, in the U.S. mission in Iraq. "My little boy," Maria Guadalupe Vasquez, Menchaca's mother, cried out at his funeral. These words were voiced over and over by the mothers of fallen American soldiers. "Please tell me that I'm going to wake up, and this is just a horrible dream," said Marina Beyer in November 2004 as she stood in the chill outside the San Francisco airport, waiting for the body of her son who was killed in Iraq on his twenty-first birthday to arrive. "In my mind he was still my little boy." When his flag-draped container was pulled on a baggage cart into the cargo area, she broke down as she leaned against it, wailing, "No! No!" Bush, the man former Mexican president Vicente Fox has called "the cockiest guy I have ever met in my life," insists on thrusting his audacity in our face. Since he ran away when it was his time to fight for his country, one would think, for instance, that when he speaks to audiences about all "the many brave men and women" who have died for "our freedom," he'd simply leave it at that. But he has consistently gone on to use words that one would think, if he had a conscience that served as a harness, he would purposefully avoid since they compel comparisons with his own cowardly conduct during the Vietnam War. He has a fondness for saying that these dead Americans "answered the call" and "stepped forward" to serve. (Could Bush be adding to himself, "I didn't, but hey, so what? I love America. Always have"?) Bush even has the effrontery to use letters home from innocent young American soldiers who died in Iraq for him as evidence they died for their country, reading the letters at public events. For instance, on Memorial Day at Arlington National Cemetery in 2005, he read a letter from Sgt. Michael Evans, twenty-two, who was killed in Baghdad, to his family in case of his death: "My death," young Evans wrote, "will mean nothing if you stop now. I know it will be hard, but I gave my life so you could live. Not just live, but live free." The outrageous nature of what has happened becomes markedly sicker when one considers the fact that many of the parents of soldiers killed in Iraq just love Bush, the man who, unbeknownst to them, was directly responsible for their son's death. When the parents of a young marine from Clovis, California, tried to e-mail their son in Iraq to give him news that Bush had been reelected, the mother said, "Jared, Bush won. Your Dad and I are so happy; but where are you? Where are you?" The parents learned the next day that Jared and his inseparable childhood friend and marine buddy, Jeremiah, were killed by the same hidden bomb near Baghdad. Jared's mother had to locate stitches in the back of her son's head in his coffin to make sure it was really her son lying before her. Kevin Graves, whose son was killed in Iraq, told Bush in a face-to- face meeting: "It was an honor for my son to serve under you as commander in chief." And then there are the Jennifer Hartings of the survivors' community. Harting's husband, Jay, was killed in combat in Iraq two days before she gave birth to their son. Responding to the antiwar activism of Cindy Sheehan, who lost her twenty-four-year-old son, Casey, in combat in Iraq, Harting took Sheehan to task: "I sympathize with her pain. But I think Cindy Sheehan doesn't get it," Harting said. "You can't just leave when the going gets tough. Even if tough means that soldiers are going to die." Time wrote that "Harting thinks that instead of protesting, Sheehan should take solace in knowing that a soldier's job is to follow the President no matter what." In talking about the horrors of the Iraq war, one of the problems is that numbers on a page are so lifeless and mean little to most people. Saying that 100,000 people have died in the war in Iraq is just a number to them. But obviously, if they could have seen, up close, the horror and carnage of all 100,000 people dying, the number 100,000 would have a totally different meaning to them. As New York Times columnist Bob Herbert put it: "The extent of the suffering caused by the war seldom penetrates the consciousness of most Americans. For the public at large, the dead and the wounded are little more than statistics. They're out of sight, and thus mostly out of mind." That wouldn't be so, he says, if they, for instance, could "imagine a couple of soldiers in flames, screaming, as they attempt to escape the burning wreckage of their vehicle hit by a roadside bomb." On September 29, 2006, I caught on CNN a young Iraqi man, in bone-deep pain, sobbing into the camera over what had happened to his mother. In the sweep of the civil strife in Iraq caused by Bush's war -- in which the Shiites and Sunnis have been slaughtering each other in great numbers -- he related that his mother had gone into a nearby grocery store where a gunman from a rival sect had shot her five times, killing her on the spot. Her son cried on TV that "I picked up her brains in my hand." Is that personal enough? Multiply, if you can, this horror by the thousands upon thousands of Iraqi citizens finding their father, son, sister, husband, or wife dead on the street, their bodies usually mutilated, the victims often beheaded. These are just some of the captions on the hundreds upon hundreds of articles I read the past several years chronicling the horror of the war in Iraq: "5 U.S. TROOPS, 5 IRAQIS KILLED IN BOMBINGS"; "31 AMERICAN TROOPS DIE AS MARINE COPTER GOES DOWN IN IRAQ, 6 OTHERS ALSO KILLED"; "BAGHDAD SUICIDE BLAST KILLS 21 AT IRAQI RECRUITING CENTER"; "8 U.S. TROOPS KILLED IN BATTLE"; "BAGHDAD BOMBINGS KILL 43 IRAQIS"; "5 U.S. SOLDIERS, 22 IRAQIS KILLED ON DAY OF VIOLENCE"; "180 IRAQIS KILLED"; "12 AMERICANS ARE SLAIN IN BAGHDAD"; "30 DIE IN CAR BOMB BLAST IN BUSY BAGHDAD MARKET"; "ROADSIDE EXPLOSION KILLS 5 U.S. SOLDIERS"; "AMERICAN FIGHTER JETS KILL 20 IRAQI CIVILIANS"; "6 MARINES SLAIN BY BOMBS IN WESTERN IRAQ OFFENSIVE"; "AT LEAST 19 U.S. TROOPS DIE IN IRAQ"; "SUICIDE ATTACK AT IRAQI MARKET KILLS 20, 3 G.I.s DIE FROM HOMEMADE BOMBS"; "5 U.S. SOLDIERS DIE FROM ROADSIDE BOMB"; "SUICIDE BOMBING KILLS 4 G.I.s IN IRAQ"; "AT LEAST 5 IRAQI CIVILIANS ARE KILLED BY U.S. TROOPS"; "SUICIDE BOMBER KILLS 33 IN IRAQ"; "IRAQI REBELS KILL 5 U.S. TROOPS AND WOUND 11"; "60 IRAQIS, 7 U.S. TROOPS KILLED"; "36 DIE IN SUICIDE FUNERAL BOMBING IN IRAQ"; "U.S. STRIKES IN IRAQ KILL 19 MILITANTS, 15 CIVILIANS, INCLUDING 9 CHILDREN"; "130 KILLED IN IRAQ, 7 AMERICANS INCLUDED"; "ARMY COPTER CRASH IN IRAQ KILLS 12"; "BOMBER HITS BAGHDAD CROWD -- AT LEAST 73 DIE"; "4 U.S. SOLDIERS KILLED BY ROADSIDE BOMB"; "BOMB KILLS 10 IN BAGHDAD, 22 FOUND EXECUTED"; "5 MARINES DEAD, 11 INJURED IN AN AMBUSH BY INSURGENTS"; "45 DIE IN IRAQI VIOLENCE"; "IRAQI POLICE SAY U.S.-LED RAID KILLS AT LEAST 17 AT SHIITE MOSQUE"; "ROADSIDE BOMB IN IRAQ KILLS 5 MARINES"; "2 G.I.s, AT LEAST 28 OTHERS KILLED IN SEVERAL ATTACKS"; "9 MARINES DIE AS INSURGENTS MOUNT ATTACKS"; "THREE BOMBS KILL AT LEAST 70 STUDENTS AT UNIVERSITY OF BAGHDAD"; "8 U.S. TROOPS KILLED IN IRAQ"; 5 U.S. SOLDIERS DIE IN BAGHDAD ATTACKS"; "BOMBS IN BAGHDAD KILL 35 IRAQI CHILDREN"; "7 U.S. SOLDIERS DIE IN IRAQ"; "5 G.I.s DIE IN BOMBING"; "INSURGENT VIOLENCE KILLS 4 MARINES, 14 IRAQIS"; " 6 U .S. TROOPS KILLED IN IRAQ DURING DAY OF ATTACKS"; "BAGHDAD BLAST KILLS 35 WAITING FOR FUEL"; "ROADSIDE BOMB KILLS 7 U.S. SOLDIERS"; "2 BOMBS AT SOCCER FIELD KILL 12, MOSTLY CHILDREN IN BAGHDAD"; "100 MORE LIVES END VIOLENTLY IN IRAQ, NEARLY 30 BODIES FOUND AROUND BAGHDAD; "IRAQ VIOLENCE CLAIMS 10 U.S. SERVICEMEN"; "75 IRAQIS KILLED BY INSURGENTS"; "30 IRAQI POLICE, CIVILIANS KILLED"; "NEARLY 90 IRAQIS KILLED IN 2 BAGHDAD MARKETPLACES"; "86 FOUND DEAD IN BAGHDAD STRIFE"; "CAR BOMBINGS KILL 62 IN IRAQ"; "SUICIDE BLAST KILLS 7 MARINES"; "46 IN BAGHDAD FOUND HANDCUFFED, BLINDFOLDED AND SHOT IN HEAD"; "6 MORE GI's ARE KILLED IN IRAQ"; "25 SLAIN AND 40 WOUNDED IN IRAQ"; "TRIPLE BOMBING KILLS 78 AT SHIITE MOSQUE"; "10 MARINES KILLED IN IRAQ"; "16 POLICE RECRUITS KILLED IN IRAQ, 34 OTHER BODIES FOUND; "8 AMERICAN TROOPS KILLED"; "BOMB KILLS 10 MARINES AT FALLOUJA"; "SUICIDE BOMBER KILLS 60 IN IRAQ"; "HELICOPTERS COLLIDE, 17 U.S. SOLDIERS DIE"; "68 IRAQIS, INCLUDING 16 CHILDREN DIE IN IRAQ"; "IRAQ SUICIDE BLAST TARGETING U.S. TROOPS KILLS 24 CHILDREN"; "40 STUDENTS, MOSTLY FEMALE, DIE IN SUICIDE BLAST AT UNIVERSITY OF BAGHDAD"; "IRAQ BOMBING KILLS 4 U.S. WOMEN." I am very convinced (based on conversations with right-wing Republicans and liberal Democrats alike on this) that these almost daily reports in the newspapers of war fatalities in Iraq mean nothing to the overwhelming majority of right-wing Republicans, and even some Democrats, most of them not even bothering to read the short articles. This is the typical response I got, mostly from right-wing Republicans, when I asked them if they became sad or depressed when they read articles in the paper like those above that people were dying horrible deaths in Iraq: "No, not really." "But what if, for instance, you read that a hundred innocent Iraqi citizens, even children and babies, were blown up and killed in a market or mosque in Baghdad. You don't feel anything at all about something like this?" "No, this is what happens during war." But when I learn of such things I am affected by all of them, since I reflexively convert the number of fatalities in my mind into the reality of real human beings -- young American soldiers (as well as Iraqi civilians) whose lives were brutally cut short -- and imagine the horror of their loved ones when they hear from one of the military representatives at their door the worst and most dreaded news they will ever hear in their lives: "On behalf of the secretary of defense, I regret to inform you ... " Some parents don't just scream out in their home upon hearing the news of the death of their son. The Baltimore father of Staff Sgt. Kendall Watersby sobbed in the streets of his neighborhood. Holding up a picture of his marine son, he said, "I want President Bush to get a good look at this, really good look here. This is the only son I had, only son." (Young Watersby, twenty-nine, himself had a ten-year-old son who lost the only father he would ever have.) Another father in Hollywood, Florida, overcome with grief, anger, and incomprehension, after crying out on the street and calling out, to his twenty-year-old son, "Alexander, Alexander, this is not happening," picked up a hammer and started smashing things in the van that had transported the three marines who brought him the terrible news. He then grabbed a propane torch and a five-gallon can of gasoline and set fire to the van, badly burning himself in the process to the extent of $53,000 in hospital bills. "I miss him every day that goes by," he says of his son. "I wake up and I think of him." Some survivors can't even bear to hear the news. When the army messenger came to the door of the home in Los Angeles where the wife of army sergeant Evan Ashcroft was staying with her father, to tell her of Evan's death, Evan's wife, Ashley, stayed upstairs. "I was on the floor, screaming," she said. "I didn't want to let them tell me." And when a soldier dies, it of course isn't only his immediate family that endures great pain and suffering, but also his extended family of cousins, uncles, nephews, nieces, even very close friends. Then there are the great numbers of American soldiers who don't lose their lives in battle, but their arm or a leg (many times both; some all four limbs), even their eyes and eyesight. Or they come back with injuries that maim and shatter. Or they are severely burned, crippled, or paralyzed -- disabled for life. And there's the much greater number of Iraqi veterans who sustain psychic damage from the war that will torment them for the rest of their lives. Many will probably end up, like many Vietnam veterans, as street people. Though just as real, these are the more hidden wounds of battle that have destroyed everything from marriages to careers. A March 1, 2006, report from the Journal of the American Medical Association said that more than a third of the soldiers returning home from the war in Iraq have sought treatment for mental problems including anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Can you imagine trying to erase from your mind something that, as a soldier said, was "the worst thing I ever saw in my life," the last view of his close buddy who was killed in combat? "My friend didn't have a face," he said. And if you are a sensitive human being, can you actually kill another human being without killing a part of yourself? The photos in this book attempt to capture, as much as it is possible, the enormity of what Bush has done -- and so far has gotten away with. With respect to the photos of American soldiers who have died in Iraq, in looking at them, let me quote a Cleveland mother who lost her son Augie in Iraq: "It's not faceless Marines fighting the war. Augie fought it. We want people to see Augie's picture and say 'Damn, that could have been my kid."' *** How has George Bush reacted to the hell he created in Iraq, to the thousands of lives that have been lost in the war, and to the enormous and endless suffering that the survivors of the victims -- their loved ones -- have had to endure? I've always felt that impressions are very important in life, and other than "first impressions," they are usually right. Why? Because impressions, we know, are formed over a period of time. They are the accumulation of many words and incidents, many or most of which one has forgotten, but which are nonetheless assimilated into the observer's subconscious and thus make their mark. In other words, you forgot the incident, but it added to the impression. "How do you feel about David? Do you feel he's an honest person?" "Yeah, I do." "Why do you say that about him? Can you give me any examples that would cause you to say he's honest?" "No, not really; at least not off the top of my head. But I've known David for over ten years, and my sense is that he's an honest person." I have a very distinct impression that with the exception of a vagrant tear that may have fallen if he was swept up, in the moment, at an emotional public ceremony for American soldiers who have died in the war, George Bush hasn't suffered at all over the monumental suffering, death, and horror he has caused by plunging this nation into the darkness of the Iraq war, probably never losing a wink of sleep over it. Sure, we often hear from Bush administration sources, or his family, or from Bush himself, about how much he suffers over the loss of American lives in Iraq. But that dog won't run. How do we just about know this is nonsense? Not only because the words he has uttered could never have escaped from his lips if he were suffering, but because no matter how many American soldiers have died on a given day in Iraq (averaging well over two every day), he is always seen with a big smile on his face that same day or the next, and is in good spirits. How would that be possible if he was suffering? For example, the November 3, 2003, morning New York Times front-page headline story was that the previous day in Fallouja, Iraq, insurgents "shot down an American helicopter just outside the city in a bold assault that killed 16 soldiers and wounded 20 others. It was the deadliest attack on American troops since the United States invaded Iraq in March." Yet later in that same day when Bush arrived for a fund-raiser in Birmingham, Alabama, he was smiling broadly; and Mike Allen of the Washington Post wrote that "the President appeared to be in a fabulous mood." This is merely one of hundreds of such observations made about Bush while the brutal war continued in Iraq. And even when Bush is off camera, we have consistently heard from those who have observed him up close how much he seems to be enjoying himself. When Bush gave up his miles of running several times a week because of knee problems, he took up biking. "He's turned into a bike maniac," said Mark McKinnon in March of 2005, right in the middle of the war. McKinnon, a biking friend of Bush's who was Bush's chief media strategist in his 2004 reelection campaign, also told the New York Times's Elisabeth Bumiller about Bush: "He's as calm and relaxed and confident and happy as I've ever seen him." Happy? Under the horrible circumstances of the war, where Bush's own soldiers are dying violent deaths, how is that even possible? In a time of war and suffering, Bush's smiles, joking, and good spirits stand in stark contrast to the demeanor of every one of his predecessors and couldn't possibly be more inappropriate. Michael Moore, in his motion picture documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, captured this fact and the superficiality of Bush well with a snippet from a TV interview Bush gave on the golf course following a recent terrorist attack. Bush said, "I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers. Thank you." Then, without missing a single beat, he said in reference to a golf shot he was about to hit: "Now watch this drive." Before I get into specific instances of Bush laughing and having fun throughout the entire period of the inferno he created in Iraq, I want to discuss a number of more indirect but revealing incidents that reflect he could not care less about the human suffering and carnage going on in Iraq, or anywhere. *** 1. The first inkling I got that Bush didn't care about the suffering of anyone, not just those dying in Iraq, was from an article in the September 22, 2001, New York Times just eleven days after 9/11. Though 3,000 Americans had been murdered and the nation was in agony and shock, the man who should have been leading the mourning was, behind the scenes, not affected in the tiniest way. The article, by Frank Bruni, said that "Mr. Bush's nonchalant, jocular demeanor remains the same. In private, say several Republicans close to the administration, he still slaps backs and uses baseball terminology, at one point promising that the terrorists were not 'going to steal home on me.' He is not staying up all night, or even most of the night. He is taking time to play with his dogs and his cat. He is working out most days." So right after several thousand Americans lost their lives in a horrible catastrophe, behind the scenes Bush is his same old backslapping self, and he's not letting the tragedy interfere in the slightest way with the daily regimen of his life that he enjoys. In fact, he himself admitted to the magazine Runners World (August 23,2002) that after the Afghanistan war began: "I have been running with a little more intensity ... It helps me to clear my mind." (In other words, Bush likes to clear his mind of the things he's supposed to be thinking about.) Remarkably finding time in the most important job on earth to run six days a week, Bush added: "It's interesting that my times have become faster ... For me, the psychological benefit [in running] is enormous. You tend to forget everything that's going on in your mind and just concentrate on the time and distance." But even this obscene indulgence after 9/11 and during wartime by the man with more responsibility than anyone in the world wasn't enough for Bush. He told the magazine: "I try to go for longer runs, but it's tough around here at the White House on the outdoor track. It's sad that I can't run longer: It's one of the saddest things about the presidency." Imagine that. Among all the things that the president of the United States could be sad about during a time of war, not being able to run longer six days a week is up there near the top of the list. A New York Times article not long after 9/11 (November 5, 2001) reported that Bush had told his friends (obviously with pride) that "his runs on the Camp David trails through the Maryland woods have produced his fastest time in a decade, three miles in 21 minutes and 6 seconds." USA Today (October 29, 2001) reported that Bush used to run 3 miles in 25 minutes and now he was "boasting to friends and staffers" about his new time, and was "now running 4 miles a day." So with his approval rating soaring to 90 percent in the wake of 9/11 -- and with his being the main person in America whose job required that he be totally engaged every waking hour in working diligently on this nation's response to 9/11 -- Bush, remarkably, was working diligently on improving his time for the mile. I ask you, what American president in history, Republican or Democrat, would have conducted himself this way? *** 2. One thing about Bush. He's so dense that he makes remarks an intelligent person who was as much of a scoundrel as he would never make. They'd keep their feelings, which they would know to be very shameful, to themselves. On December 21, 2001, just a few months after 9/11 -- a tragedy that shocked the nation and the world in which 3,000 Americans were consumed by fires, some choosing to jump to their deaths out of windows eighty or more stories high -- Bush, who could only have been thinking of himself, told the media: "All in all, it's been a fabulous year for Laura and me." He said this because that is exactly the way he felt. What difference does 9/11 make? I'm president. I love it, and Laura and I are having a ball. Indeed, on January 20, 2005, right in the midst of the hell on earth Bush created in Iraq -- when the carnage there was near its worst and American soldiers and Iraqi citizens were dying violent deaths every day -- Bush, referring to himself and his wife, told thousands of partying supporters at one of his nine inaugural balls: "We're having the time of our life." Can you even begin to imagine Roosevelt in the midst of the Second World War, Truman during the Korean War, or LBJ and Nixon during the Vietnam War, saying something like this? *** 3. Does it not stand to reason that if Bush were suffering over the daily killings and tragedy in Iraq, he would be working every waking hour to lessen the mounting number of casualties as well as find a way to satisfactorily end the terrible conflict? I mean, as president, that's what you'd expect of him, right? Isn't that his job? Yet we know that although Bush is still in office, he has already spent far more time on vacation than any other president in American history. For instance, by April 11, 2004 (he was inaugurated January 20, 2001), he had visited his cherished ranch in Crawford a mind-boggling thirty-three times and spent almost eight months of his presidency there. Although the office of the presidency follows the president wherever he goes twenty-four hours a day, and at least some part of every day on vacation, no matter how small, was spent by Bush attending to his duties as president, we also know that Bush's main purpose when he goes on vacation, obviously and by definition, is to vacation, not work. CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller, who travels with Bush and keeps track of such things, told me that as of January 1, 2008, in Bush's less than seven years as president, he had visited his ranch in Texas an unbelievable 69 times, spending, per Knoller, "all or part of 448 days on vacation there." As amazing as this is, Bush also made, Knoller says, 132 visits to Camp David during this period, spending "all or part of 421 days there," and 10 visits to his family's vacation compound at Kennebunkport, Maine, spending "all or part of 39 days there." So the bottom line is that of a total of approximately 2,535 days as president, most of them during a time of war, Bush spent all or a part of 908 days, an incredible 36 percent of his time, on vacation or at retreat places. Hard to believe, but true. Nine hundred and eight days is two and a half years of Bush's presidency. Two and a half years of the less than seven years of his presidency in which his main goal was to kick back and have fun. You see, the White House digs, with a pool, theater, gymnasium, etc., weren't enjoyable enough for Bush. He wanted a more enjoyable place to be during his life as president. [4] My position in life is infinitely less important than Bush's, yet during the above same period of Bush's presidency, I not only worked much longer hours every day than Bush, I worked seven days a week, never took one vacation, and only took three days off to go to the desert with my wife to celebrate our fiftieth wedding anniversary. If it had not been for the anniversary, I wouldn't have even taken those three days off. I realize I take working to an extreme, living by the clock each day, always looking up to see how much time I have left, working from morning to morning (retiring usually around two in the morning and starting my day at ten in the morning). Still, it is striking to consider that in seven years, I took 3 days off and Bush, the president of the United States, took 908. Even Americans who lead a more normal life than I, even fat-cat corporate executives, haven't taken anywhere near the time away from their work that Bush has. Indeed, I think we can safely say that even though Bush has the most important and demanding job in this entire land, he has irresponsibly taken far more time off from his job to have fun during the past seven years than any worker or company executive in America!!! Is Bush, or is he not, a disgrace of the very first order? What does this incredible amount of time that Bush spends away from work show? Well, it shows that Bush is a very lazy person, and an irresponsible one. But it also reveals something that has had much more serious consequences for this nation, something I have never heard anyone say before. What I strongly believe (without absolutely knowing) is that this man has no respect or love for this country. I'm not saying he hates it, but he has no particular love for it. Why do I say this? It is obvious that Bush's knowledge of information and events is shockingly low. Even many of those who support him find it very difficult not to acknowledge this reality. For instance, Bush supporter and neoconservative Richard Perle said that the thing that "struck me about George Bush is that he did not know very much." Perle was being kind. Now let's take you, the reader, and assume for the sake of argument that in terms of knowledge you're like Bush. If you were thrust overnight into the office of the presidency of the United States, the most important job on earth, and you knew your decisions could affect the lives of hundreds of millions of people, what would you do if you were a responsible person who loved this country? There's really only one answer to this question. You'd knock yourself out working feverishly to learn as much as you possibly could so you could do as good a job as president as you were capable of doing. You'd do this because you love your country and because your sense of responsibility to it would compel you to do it. Yet Bush, knowing nothing, does the exact opposite, spending, as we've seen, well over one-third of his two terms on vacation or at Camp David or his family's retreat at Kennebunkport, Maine. He prefers to run the most important country on earth not by reading up on what he needs to know, but by lazily relying on what his gut tells him and on what communication he can manage with his God. [5] When Condoleezza Rice was Bush's national security adviser, she said her boss operated by "instinct" and it was her job to "intellectualize his instincts." My neighbor has instincts on things, too, Ms. Rice. Shall we make him president and you can do the same thing for him as you did for George? Bush's determination not to extend himself in any way is so pronounced that even though he apparently has no sense of where major countries of the world are situated on the globe in relation to each other, he did not have enough concern to even bother looking at a map before attending an international summit that Russian president Vladimir Putin was hosting in Strelna, near St. Petersburg, Russia, in July of 2006. While a tape recorder was recording without Bush's knowledge, after saying to Putin that he intended to go back home that afternoon, he asked Chinese president Hu Jintao, seated next to him: "Where are you going? Home? This is your neighborhood. Doesn't take too long to get home?" When Hu said his flight to Beijing was eight hours, Bush said: "Me too." Bush has so little sense of responsibility to his country that a November 5, 2001, New York Times article by a reporter covering the White House beat said that when Bush was elected president, unbelievably, unbelievably, "the plan had been for him to spend nearly every weekend at the Texas ranch, with the White House serving as a kind of Monday to midday Friday pied-a-terre [a term normally used to refer to a small dwelling for temporary use, as an apartment maintained in a foreign city] away from what was really home," his ranch house in Crawford, Texas. In other words, the office of the presidency required the inconvenience each week of taking Bush away from where he really wanted to be, but he wasn't going to let the presidency interfere too much with his lifestyle. Again, unbelievable, unbelievable. I believe that Bush has no strong sense of responsibility to his country because, I maintain, he doesn't love America. His sense of responsibility to his country is so remarkably poor that not only is it well known he doesn't read any reports from those in his administration, so his aides only give him short, one or two-paragraph summaries of lengthy reports, but he frequently doesn't even read these summaries. In his book about Paul O'Neill, Bush's former Treasury secretary, the journalist Ron Suskind writes: "O'Neill had been made to understand by various colleagues in the White House that the president should not be expected to read reports. In his personal experience, the president didn't even appear to have read the short memos he [O'Neill] sent over." This was compounded by the fact that when O'Neill would meet with Bush, "Bush did not ask any questions." Bush, the man with the bumper-sticker mentality, had no interest. So little interest, in fact, that he doesn't even read newspapers. "I glance at the headlines just to get kind of a flavor for what's moving," he told Fox News. Obviously, America has a president who is a man of considerable substance, depth, maturity, and intellectual curiosity. Playboy editor James Kaminsky told USA Today: "It's appalling to think that the man who runs the country somehow finds time for a long gym workout each day but can't muster up the intellectual curiosity to peruse the newspaper." And David Kay, the CIA's first chief weapons inspector for the Iraq Survey Group following the defeat of Hussein's regime, said about Bush: "I'm not sure I've ever spoken to anyone at that level who seemed less inquisitive." I ask you. Is this the attitude and conduct of someone who feels that as president he has a great responsibility to his country? So the flag-waving Bush who wears an American flag pin on his lapel, and patriotism on his sleeve, someone who even John Kerry, his presidential opponent, said loved America, probably has no love for this country at all. Whether I am right or not, I am quite confident that there is enough evidence for the above proposition to be worthy of consideration. In my work as a trial lawyer and author of nonfiction books, I find that when I start out with a sound premise, as I believe the above to be, subsequent events and other revelations virtually always just fall into place with the premise, fortifying my original assumption. Very briefly, here are a few that support my premise about Bush. Perhaps the clearest way one can show one's love for one's country is by being willing to die for it. The first President Bush, President Kennedy, John McCain, John Kerry, and so many others were willing to do that and became war heroes. But we know that the flag-waving phony, Bush, wanted no part of fighting in any American war, so he joined the Texas National Guard, which was the way in those days to avoid fighting in Vietnam. And it wasn't because he was against the Vietnam War. In fact, he is on record as saying he supported it. But consistent with my premise, Bush was unwilling to show his love for his country by putting himself in harm's way for it. He chose to flee in the opposite direction for the friendly skies of Texas. But then again, and in all fairness to Bush, there was always the threat of an invasion from Oklahoma he might have to repel. I mean, Texas and Oklahoma do take heir college football rivalry pretty seriously. When this issue arose in his run for the presidency in 2000, Bush and his campaign staff successfully deflected most of America's attention away from the fact that he ran away from the Vietnam War by lowering the bar so far that an ant would have had difficulty crawling under it. The only legitimate question, they said, was whether Bush had "fulfilled his military obligation." And surely enough, well-known Democratic liberals such as James Carville and Michael Moore actually got suckered into this obvious ploy by accepting it as the main issue, answering that they did not believe Bush had done so, instead of zeroing in on the only fact that was relevant -- Bush hid out from the war. Carville, thinking he was making a point on cable TV with his conservative sparmate, Tucker Carlson, began reciting the evidence that Bush hadn't fulfilled his military obligation in the National Guard. Carlson cut him off midway and said on behalf of his feckless opponent: "Let's get on to something else. We all know Bush joined the National Guard to avoid fighting in Vietnam." Moore, whose film Fahrenheit 9/11 suffered from a lack of credibility (e.g., in addition to taking things out of context, according to Moore we went to war in Afghanistan to pave the way for securing an important natural-gas pipeline, and he even vaguely suggested that Bush invaded Iraq to destroy it so Bush's wealthy corporate friends could get richer by rebuilding it), wasn't any better. For example, not only didn't Moore (who was trying, in his movie, to hurt Bush in the latter's campaign for the presidency against John Kerry) do the obvious by contrasting Bush with Kerry by noting that Kerry was a genuine war hero, but remarkably, the biggest point he made about Bush was not that he ran away from the war in Vietnam but, are you ready, that Bush "failed to take a medical examination" while in the National Guard in Texas. I couldn't believe Moore's ineptitude. The Republican Party could say appropriately about Moore (a good man who has his heart in the right place): "With enemies like Michael Moore, who needs friends?" On the issue of Bush running away from the Vietnam War, I should add that not one member of the hapless media who covered Bush thought to ask, when questioning him about his National Guard service, the only question that was relevant: "Mr. President, why did you prefer to join the National Guard over regular military duty?" There is no way that Bush could have answered that question without sounding exactly like what he was -- a draft dodger who was afraid to fight in the war. Someone who only wanted to wave the flag, not fight for it. Yet this terrible hypocrite urged John McCain in 1992, before the latter was going to speak for George Sr. at the Republican National Convention: "You've gotta hammer Clinton on the draft-dodging." Another good example showing that Bush has no love or respect for his country is the blatant cronyism he has practiced in his federal appointments. A Time magazine inquiry in 2005 found that "at top positions in some vital government agencies," Bush had put "connections [to him] before experience." One of the most well known, of course, was his appointment of his friend Michael Brown to head up FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency), the organization that received an F-minus for its handling of Katrina. It turned out that Brown had absolutely no experience to qualify him for such an important job. But hey, he did have experience working on the rules for Arabian horse competition. It's okay to appoint a friend if they are qualified. But Bush couldn't care less if they're qualified. Why? Because I believe he has no respect or love for the country he leads. My God, until there was a storm of protest, Bush even nominated his personal aide and close friend from Texas, Harriet Myers, to sit as a justice on the United States Supreme Court! Not only didn't she have one day of judicial experience (not by itself a disqualifying factor), but she didn't excel in law school or the practice of law. So she had never distinguished herself in any way in the legal profession, being the most ordinary of lawyers. How can you possibly appoint someone like this to the highest court in the land? You can if you have no respect or love for your country. Another, perhaps even better piece of evidence establishing that Bush has no love for his country is that he places loyalty above everything else. He never fires anyone he likes and is close to, even if they've done a terrible job. There are many examples of this, but the best one is that of former CIA director George Tenet. We have conclusive evidence that Tenet's CIA failed the nation on 9/11. By definition, if it hadn't, and had intercepted the foreign conspiracy, 9/11 wouldn't have happened. Inasmuch as Tenet had thereby proved himself to be unable to adequately perform his duties as the CIA director, obviously (that is, if you love your country), Bush should have let Tenet go. And doubly so when Tenet's CIA was 100 percent wrong in assessing Iraq's weapons of mass destruction before the Iraq war. But Bush not only idn't fire Tenet, whom he liked and became good friends with, he never even showed any irritation with him. Instead, Bush vigorously defended Tenet and ended up giving Tenet the Presidential Medal of Freedom on December 14, 2004, the highest civil award that can be granted to an American citizen. But you see, Bush was much more interested in what he (Tenet) was doing for him (i.e., the friendship, camaraderie, and loyalty they had for each other) than in what Tenet was doing for America. "George [Tenet] and I have been spending a lot of quality time together," Bush said on September 26, 2001, in giving Tenet a vote of confidence when the CIA director was being urged to resign by critics. Of course, the ultimate act by Bush showing a lack of respect and love for this country is leading this nation into a deadly war in Iraq for no justifiable reason at all. I said earlier that while Bush may not love America, he never hated it. But Bush's lying to the people of America to lead them into war shows an absolute, utter contempt for the American people. The son of privilege and entitlement has so little respect for the average citizen that he felt they weren't entitled to the truth, even though he was going to fight his war with the blood of their children. Although I went off on a tributary about Bush not loving America, all of the above goes to the issue being addressed here that if Bush cared at all about the enormous suffering and horror in Iraq, he would be devoting his every available moment to stop or lessen it. We know he hasn't done this. *** 4. Another example of Bush not truly caring about the enormous suffering he has caused is that he went about deciding to go to war in the first place with apparently nary a concern for the consequences. Former lieutenant general Gregory Newbold, a three-star Marine Corps general, was being magnanimous to Bush when he said Bush's decision to invade Iraq "was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions -- or bury the results." The first part of what Newbold said is undoubtedly true, but I believe he errs when he attributes Bush's behavior simply to his lack of experiencing war himself. My sense is that the reason for Bush's behavior is much deeper. After all, other presidents, without having experienced war, never acted remotely the way Bush did. Bush not only went to war with a swagger, he wanted war, was looking forward to it. Hearst White House correspondent Helen Thomas, who has been covering the White House since 1960, almost half a century, said of all the presidents she has known, Bush was the only one who "wanted to go to war." Bush was so eager to go to war that according to author Bob Woodward, Bush told him that he never even bothered to ask Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld if he should do it. He said he knew Cheney was gung-ho and "I could tell what [Powell and Rumsfeld] thought. I didn't need to ask them their opinion about Saddam Hussein or how to deal with Saddam Hussein." Has it ever happened before in American history that a president has gone to war without seeking the advice of his own secretary of state and secretary of defense as to whether he should do it? "I'm a war president," Bush told TV host Tim Russert on February 8, 2004. "I make decisions here in the Oval Office with war on my mind." Televangelist Pat Robertson, a friend and supporter of Bush, met with Bush right before the war and expressed some misgivings he had about it. But Bush would have none of it. Robertson said Bush "was just sitting there, like, 'I'm on top of the world,"' which stunned Robertson. No other American president in the last century (perhaps ever) wanted to go to war. In FDR's America, Japan attacked the United States on December 7, 1941, and four days later Germany declared war on the United States. So FDR can't be cited one way or the other on this issue. But no one in their right mind would ever in a thousand years suggest that FDR would have acted like Bush did. We also know Eisenhower would not have. Recall his saying that "when people speak about a preventive war, tell them to go and fight it." And there's no evidence that Truman was looking forward to and wanted the war in Korea. We know that before his assassination in 1963, which was before the war escalated in Vietnam in 1965, JFK ordered that 1,000 of our military advisers be sent back to America from Vietnam by the end of that year. Although there is a spirited division of opinion as to whether, if JFK had lived, he would have gone to war in Vietnam (my view is that he would not have), both sides to the debate agree that he did not want to go to war in Vietnam. He was very opposed to it. But that is not the equivalent of saying he wouldn't have gone to war if he felt the situation eventually called for it. What JFK would have ended up doing, of course, is lost to history. But it is a calumny to even mention Bush's name in the same breath as JFK's on this issue. With respect to LBJ, contrary to popular belief, LBJ was an extremely reluctant warrior in the Vietnam War, only yielding to hawks in his administration a year and a half after JFK's assassination. But the evidence is incontrovertible that he tried, for a long time, to avoid war with Ho Chi Minh. As to whether he cared about U.S. troops dying, the transcript of a May 27, 1964 (before the Vietnam War), White House tape-recorded conversation between LBJ and Senator Richard Russell of Georgia shows LBJ speaking about the "little old Sergeant who works for me ... He's got six children, and I just put him up as the United States Army and Air Force and Navy every time I think about making this decision [about going to war]. Thinking about sending that father of those six kids in there ... just makes the chills run up my back." LBJ would later tell his close aide Jack Valenti that reading the casualty reports from Vietnam was "like drinking carbolic acid every morning." And Nixon ran for president in 1968 on a platform of ending the war in Vietnam, promising to bring "peace with honor." President Clinton, though being urged on by people like John McCain and Colin Powell to put troops on the ground in Kosovo, regurgitating the old military bromide that you can't win a war from the air -- foot soldiers have to march forward on terra -- didn't want to lose any American lives, which would inevitably have happened on the ground. So the Vietnam draft dodger proved all the military experts wrong by conducting the war against the Serbs entirely from the air and won the war without the loss of one American soldier's life. Even Bush's own father didn't "want" to go to war in the Persian Gulf. The Reverend Billy Graham says, "I tell the story about being with President Bush the night before the Gulf War began ... He didn't want to go to war. And I haven't talked to any president yet who wanted to go to war." Contrast the Reverend Graham's talk with Bush Sr. with the Reverend Pat Robertson's conversation with Bush where he said Bush was "on top of the world" over the upcoming war. Nothing else is needed to distinguish George Bush Sr., a decent man, from his son, but before we move on, one more example is fitting. In a letter to his children a month before the Persian Gulf War, Bush Sr. wrote that ordering American troops into combat "tears at my heart." And on the evening of January 16, 1991, the opening night of the Persian Gulf War, George Bush Sr. expressed his terrible disquietude in his tape-recorded diary before he addressed the nation at 9:00 p.m.: "I have never felt a day like this in my life ... My lower gut hurts ... and I take a couple of Mylantas ... I think of what other presidents went through. The agony of war." Here's how our current president felt about the "agony" of war around 10:00 p.m. on the evening of March 19, 2003, minutes before he would address the nation to inform it the Iraq war had begun. As aides were applying makeup before his televised speech, he pumped his fist and told an aide: "Feel good." In other words, Bush, "on top of the world," felt just wonderful about launching a high-tech war of destruction and death which his people obscenely titled "shock and awe." *** 5. British prime minister Tony Blair told members of his Labour Party about receiving letters from those who lost sons in the Iraq war and blaming him for it. He added: "Don't believe anyone who tells you, when they receive letters like that, they don't suffer doubt" about whether the deaths of British soldiers were worth it. When reporter-author Bob Woodward referred Bush to those remarks by Blair, Bush responded, "Yeah, I haven't suffered doubt." Woodward, incredulous, asked Bush: "Is that right? Not at all?" Bush replied: "No." If Bush cared at all about the enormous human toll and suffering taking place in Iraq, how would it be possible for him to never once say to himself, "God, this is just terrible what's happening over there. I hope I didn't make a mistake," or something like that? If George Bush really and truly cared about the loss of thousands of young American lives in Iraq, and that of over 100,000 Iraqi civilian lives, and was sensitive in the tiniest degree to the feelings of the victims' survivors, how could he have possibly dismissed all the violence and bloodshed in Iraq by predicting it will someday be viewed as "just a comma" in the history of Iraq's struggle for democracy (CNN, September 24, 2006)? Can you imagine how a father and mother who lost their only son in Bush's war, and whose remains came back to them "unviewable" in a box, must have felt to hear the one who sent their son to his death in a foreign land say, in effect, that he was just a part of a comma? *** 6. For some reason, although the death of Iraqi civilians in the war is always distressing to me, I take the reports in the paper of American soldiers being killed in Iraq harder. But there is no rational reason for this, since the Iraqi people want to live just as much as we do and take the loss of their loved ones just as hard. All of them, like American soldiers who die, are innocent victims of Bush's war. In a question and answer session after a speech in Philadelphia on December 12, 2005, Bush was asked how many Iraqis had died so far in the war. "I would say 30,000, more or less," he said. There wasn't the faintest hint in his voice conveying pity, sorrow, pain, regret, or anything. And the reason is that none of these things were inside of him. He was just uttering a number, nothing more, nothing less, like 30,000 barrels of oil, or paint, or oranges. Thirty-thousand human beings in their graves, many of whom were young children and babies, solely because of him, and it couldn't have been more obvious that he couldn't have cared less. What is the source for a human being like Bush being so, well, inhuman? I don't know, but certainly one's mother cannot be discounted in any search for the source. In an appearance on Good Morning America on March 18, 2003, when Bush's mother, Barbara, was asked about the horrible carnage of war that was scheduled to start the next day with her son's invasion of Iraq, Mrs. Bush unbelievably responded: "Why should we [talk] about body bags, and deaths, ... I mean, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that? And watch him [her son] suffer?" Can you imagine that? Absolutely no concern for young Americans (let alone Iraqis) getting killed. Her only concern was that she didn't want her son to suffer over these deaths. As we've seen, she needn't have worried about that. Bush has often said he is more like his mother than his father. For a further insight into the soft and very sensitive Mrs. Bush, recall how, following Katrina, she visited the Astrodome in Houston on September 5, 2005, and said that given the fact that the evacuees from the hurricane who were being put up inside the arena were "underprivileged anyway," things were "working out very well" for them. Barbara, apparently, didn't realize (or didn't care) that poor black people didn't want their lives to be totally disrupted, nor to lose forever the warm familiarity of their homes as well as most of their possessions (such as family photos and personal letters) any more than she and her very rich white friends from River Oaks (the correct address in Houston) would have. *** 7. On July 2, 2003, in response to a question about the military situation in Iraq, the reader will probably recall that Bush said, "There are some who feel the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is bring 'em on." Can you imagine that? The media, who can always be counted on to do a minimum of thinking, naturally missed the main point in attacking Bush for the remark, focusing in on how "ill-advised" and "reckless" it was because it could provoke the enemy. But it's just conjecture whether his macho, Joe Six-Pack remark would deter the enemy, or cause them to take Bush up on his invitation. Because it's just conjecture I only gave a moment's thought to it. But two things were not conjecture, and I never saw where the media talked about them. One is that the remark couldn't possibly have been less presidential. I can't even conceive of any other American president talking this way. But what instantly angered me was that this punk who hid out during the Vietnam War, and who is now safe and sound here in America being protected by the Secret Service, dared to issue a challenge to the enemy to attack American soldiers. There's only one translation for his "bring 'em on" remark. "Come on and attack us. You'll kill some of our soldiers, but we'll kill more of yours." How dare this wimpish punk invite the enemy to kill American soldiers? In December of 2005, Bush said, "To all who wear the uniform, I make you this pledge. America will not run in the face of car bombers and assassins as long as I am your commander-in-chief." (Now, I personally would run, as I have, if I were in your shoes. But you and America won't.) *** My view from the foregoing is that in Bush we're dealing with an extraordinarily callous, arrogant, self-centered person. The above examples, I believe, demonstrate that Bush does not have much concern at all for the American and Iraqi blood that flows every day in Iraq. For the deaths, burnings, beheadings, screams, and suffering that he has caused. That it is something that probably hasn't caused him a moment of distress. But let's go now to some examples that testify to the fact that he could hardly have cared less by showing he actually had fun and enjoyed himself throughout the hell he gave birth to. That while thousands of young Americans have been blown to pieces by roadside bombs, and thousands upon thousands of Iraqi civilians, including children and babies, have been brutally killed, and thousands of American mothers and fathers have fallen to the floor or couch, screaming and crying out at the news that their son had been killed in Iraq, this small man of privilege has had a smile on his face through it all. He has lived life to the fullest, bicycling, joking with friends, eating hot dogs and blueberry pie, virtually always appearing to be in good spirits. *** 1. In the photo section of this book are just some of the photos that appeared regularly in the newspapers of Bush smiling broadly throughout the last five years of the war. Not just smiling broadly, but whenever there was a photo of Bush and six or seven other people all smiling, who is seen smiling the most? You guessed it. George Bush. Look at photos of FDR during the Second World War, Truman during the Korean War, and LBJ and Nixon during the Vietnam War. Nearly always the photos of their faces reflected the grimness of the wars. It was a very serious time, not time for fun and laughter. But while the horrors of the war in Iraq continued on a day-to-day basis for the past five years, and the death toll continued to mount in an ocean of blood, Bush laughed and smiled his way through the entire war, right up to the present time. The very wide smiles on his face, almost by themselves, tell the entire story. *** 2. As American soldiers were dying violent deaths in Iraq in August of 2005, Bush was on vacation bicycling with the biggest of smiles on his face at his Crawford ranch in Texas, seemingly without a care in the world. Reporters covering Bush spoke of how much he seemed to be enjoying his bike riding, and he confirmed it. "There's a great sense of exhilaration," he said, "riding a bike up a hill. It is fun. It brings out the child in you. I hope to be biking for a long time. I love the outdoors. Biking provides a sense of freedom." As thousands of humans were dying horrible deaths in Bush's hell in Iraq, at the very same time, far away at his ranch in Texas, he told reporters biking with him: "This is a chance for me to show you a little slice of heaven, as far as I'm concerned." So we know that Bush, right in the midst of the horror he created, was having a ball. At a time when so many people, including children and babies and American soldiers, were being killed in Iraq, for a president to be playing like a kid on his bicycle sent a very frivolous message. And it showed a total lack of sensitivity and compassion for those American parents who were not going on a vacation themselves because their son was in harm's way in Iraq, or they had already lost him to the war. You think about things like this if you care about the suffering of others, don't you? *** 3. In April of 2004, four American workers for a security company were ambushed and killed in Fallouja by a mob that burned their bodies and then dragged them through the streets. The mob then hung two of the charred corpses from a bridge over the Euphrates River. Several news crews filmed the horror. (Fifteen miles away, five American soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb.) Just hours after the gruesome pictures were shown in the United States and around the world, Bush, instead of canceling his appearance, showed up at a $2,000-a-plate Republican fund-raiser in an affluent Washington, D.C., neighborhood "all smiles," per the media. One would think that even the coldest heart would be affected by what had just happened, but unbelievably, Bush never said one word about the grisly murders of four Americans earlier in the day. He did, however, crack several jokes to the well-heeled Republican donors, which they laughed heartily at over their elegant lunch. Back at the White House, presidential spokesman Scott McClelland told reporters that Bush had denounced the acts as "horrific, despicable attacks," cheap, meaningless words that Bush's press department perfunctorily drafted. One thing we most likely do know. What had happened to the four Americans in Iraq was not horrific enough to have had the slightest effect on Bush, who had much more important things to do -- telling jokes, eating a great lunch, and having fun with his wealthy Republican friends. Even if Bush insisted on going to the fund-raiser and telling his jokes, couldn't he have had the decency to at least start out his speech with a concerned, pained look on his face and a brief reference to the tragedy? But there was nothing. Just smiles and jokes and good food. All this took place while the survivors of the four Americans in North Carolina were crying out in agony over what happened to their loved ones. Bush has taken coldness, vulgarity, crudeness, and self-indulgence by an American president or any high public figure in American history to previously unimaginable heights. *** 4. Speaking of Scott McClelland, the day in April of 2006 that he resigned from his position, Bush said, "Some day Scott McClelland and I will be in our rocking chairs talking about the good old days." The good old days? A Freudian slip? No, McClelland was with Bush for three years (2003-2006) of the Iraq war, and to Bush, looking back, these will be the "good old days" because Bush, by all appearances, enjoyed every day during the war. There was a lot of fun and joking back at the White House through it all. *** 5. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, though no one would quibble over a few days of vacation time here and there for Bush, when antiwar activists started complaining in 2005 about Bush taking his five-week summer vacations right in the midst of the war in Iraq, listen to what Bush had to say: "I think the people want the president to stay healthy." But it's preposterous to believe that without a five-week vacation Bush's health would suffer. At Bush's relatively young age, and with his excellent health, he could easily have taken a much shorter vacation. In fact, if the situation had warranted, he could have worked seven days a week with his advisers on how to satisfactorily end our involvement in the Iraq war, and still have done well healthwise throughout his term in office. I'm seventy-three and have been working seven days a week for many years, and I'm still able to run around the block. More importantly, I'm not responsible to anyone but my family. Bush is responsible for running the most powerful nation on earth. When you say, Mr. Bush, that you're at the ranch for your health, that is a g-d-lie. You were down there for five weeks because you wanted to have five weeks of fun and enjoyment. Bush went on to say, "It's also important for me to go on with my life, to keep a balanced life." In other words, no sacrifices. (Ask 1,000 politicians if they'd be willing to give up a balanced life if they were given the job of president. At least 998 out of a 1,000 would not only say yes, but "I'll work fifty days a week, if that's possible, and what part of my body do you want me to give you, my left leg or my right arm?") [6] Bush continued, "I'm also mindful that I've got a life to live and will do so." Translation: "I'm not going to knock myself out on this job. I want to have fun and enjoy myself, too. You know, you only live once." But Mr. Bush, the teenagers and young men you sent to fight for you in Iraq have no time for fun and pleasure, being at risk of being blown up twenty-four hours a day. And those thousands who have died will never have one second of fun ever again. In a June 28, 2005, speech at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Bush said what he has said many other times: "Amid all this violence [in Iraq], I know Americans ask the question, Is the sacrifice worth it? It is worth it." This is easy, of course, for Bush to say, since other people are dying. Although Bush feels that thousands of young American soldiers being killed in Iraq is a worthwhile sacrifice, we've seen that he doesn't believe he himself (or any of his rich friends) should have to sacrifice in any way at all. In fact, remarkably, Bush hasn't asked anyone, anyone at all in America to do so. In every other major war this nation has fought, the whole nation was expected to help in some way, either through the draft, increased taxes (always), rationing of certain products, or what have you. But in the Iraq war, though Bush has invoked the word "sacrifice" over and over in his speeches, the only people in America whom he expects to make sacrifices are the soldiers and their families. No one else. This fact hasn't been lost on the soldiers themselves, particularly when they return to America for a short respite from another tour of duty. They see a nation that is identical to the way it was before the war. As one Iraqi war veteran put it: "The president can say we're a country at war all he wants. We're not. The military is at war. And the military families are at war. Everybody else is shopping, or watching American Idol." *** 6. This, from Tbilisi in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, on May 9, 2005, a time when the very worst and deadliest fighting in Iraq was taking place. A newspaper article reported that Bush seemed "exuberant" upon landing in Georgia, that he was in a "good mood" as he and his wife, Laura, had a long dinner with the Georgian president. Bush loved the fare. "He didn't just eat. He ordered more food," a Georgian official said. "Great food, really good," Bush said. Bush had worked up a healthy appetite before the meal by climbing up on a street stage with Georgian dancers, proceeding to "swivel his hips, Elvis-like, in tune to blasting folk music." Just think for a moment about Leon, the twenty-year-old American marine I mentioned earlier who had dreams of becoming a Los Angeles police officer and died in Iraq when he was shot in the head by a sniper. Recall that while his life blood was flowing out of him his marine buddy cradled Leon's head in his hands telling him he was going to be okay. At the same time that people like Leon and other young American soldiers and Iraqi women and children were dying similar, horrible deaths, a smiling George Bush was dancing on a street stage in Russia, swiveling his hips like Elvis to blaring music, just having a ball. Life is fun. And wonderful. The screams and the blood and the deaths were far, far away from Tbilisi. Bush had learned that in the previous two days eight American soldiers were killed in Iraq. But who cares? Certainly not Bush. In a similar vein, on April 25, 2007, Bush, giving no indication that he had anything on his mind other than having fun, danced energetically and with obvious gusto and relish alongside the dance director of the West African Dance Company in the White House Rose Garden, his arms flailing in the air and his open mouth bellowing out the heavy, rhythmic African music. The previous day's New York Times had reported that nine GIs were blown up in a suicide car bombing on April 23. Likewise (and these are just some of many examples), on January 15, 2008, with the terrible war in Iraq showing no signs of ending, Bush, on a state visit to Saudi Arabia, took a ninety-minute tour of the Saudi National History Museum. A Los Angeles Times reporter wrote that during the welcoming ceremony Bush "held a sword over his shoulder, grinning broadly and swaying to the beat of drummers. When he met with reporters early in the afternoon, he said he was in 'a great mood."' I mean, as recently as March 4, 2008, when Bush showed up before John McCain did for a White House press conference in which Bush was scheduled to endorse McCain's candidacy for President, Bush, smiling and having fun, spontaneously started doing a soft shoe tap-dancing routine to entertain the assembled media. This, I tell you, is a happy man. Before moving on, we should note that Bush being so insensitive to the suffering and tragedy of others is not surprising. It's his MO. Just one example from the past. Author Frank Bruni, who covered Bush for several years for the New York Times, recounts in his not unfriendly biography, Ambling into History: George Bush, an incident in September of 1999 when Bush was governor of Texas. It took place at a memorial service at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth for seven people who had been shot to death days earlier by a crazed gunman who entered a nearby church. Bruni writes that the outdoor stadium where the memorial was being held was "a scene of eerie stillness and quiet, its thousands of occupants sitting or standing with their heads bowed." Bush, Bruni says, was seated up front, and the print reporters, including Bruni, positioned themselves as close to Bush's rear as possible. He writes: "As preachers preached and singers sang and a city prayed, Bush turned around from time to time to shoot us little smiles. He scrunched up his forehead, as if to ask us silently what we were up to back there ... At one point, when someone near our seats dropped a case of plastic water bottles and caused a clatter, Bush glanced back at us with a teasing, are-you-guys-behaving-yourselves expression, and he kept his amused face pivoted in our direction for an awfully long time." *** 7. Not finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq -- the reason Bush gave for the Iraqi invasion -- was a pretty serious matter. Right? Certainly not something that Bush, of all people, should want to joke about. Wrong. At the Radio and Television Correspondents Association dinner in Washington, D.C., on March 24, 2004, Bush showed the audience photographic slides on a big screen of himself on his hands and knees in the Oval Office looking under furniture and behind curtains for the missing weapons. "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere," he cracked to the audience. "Nope, no weapons over there, maybe over here." Here we have Bush having fun about the alleged basis for his war, a war with over 100,000 people dead. And this is funny? It was to Bush. Just another fun-filled evening for Bush as the blood continued to flow in far-off Iraq. *** 8. After visiting, in January of 2006, the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio where American soldiers who lost their arms and legs in Iraq were being treated, Bush nevertheless was able to find cause to fashion a light-hearted joke. He told reporters: "As you can possibly see, I have an injury myself -- not here at the hospital, but in combat with a cedar. I eventually won. The cedar gave me a little scratch. I was able to avoid any major surgical operation here." I mean, Bush wasn't about to let any soldiers he saw that day with one or more arms or legs missing from fighting his war interfere, not even for one moment, with his right to be funny. *** 9. August 13, 2005, a Saturday, Bush was enjoying his summer vacation at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. At the start of the week on August 8, the New York Times reported that three American soldiers had been killed over the weekend, and thus far, 1,821 American military men and women had died in the war. The next day, August 9, 5 more U.S. soldiers were killed in combat, 4 by insurgent fire near Tikrit, and 22 Iraqi civilians were killed in violence throughout the country. The August 10, 2005, Los Angeles Times reported that "At least 43 Americans and 124 Iraqis have been killed by insurgent attacks over the last two weeks." The week commencing on August 15, 2005, was another typical week in Iraq. Through August 19, a period of five days, 9 American soldiers had lost their lives, 4 being killed by a roadside bomb on August 18. Among other civilian deaths during the five-day period, on August 17 three car bombs in and around a crowded bus station in Baghdad killed at least 43 people and injured 88. "The explosions began at 7:50 a.m.," the New York Times reported, "sending body parts flying across the bus terminal. Horrified survivors rushed in a wailing frenzy" from the area. On August 13, 2005, right in the midst of all this violent death, and with hundreds of Iraqis and Americans crying out uncontrollably over the deaths of their children, parents, brothers, and sisters, and in many cases only receiving back the dismembered parts and limbs of their loved ones, and finding no way to cope with the unspeakable horror of it all, Bush, after a hearty breakfast, mapped out for reporters what his schedule was for the rest of the day: "I'm going to have lunch with Secretary of State Rice, talk a little business; we've got a friend from South Texas here named Katherine Armstrong; take a little nap. I'm reading an Elmore Leonard book right now, knock off a little Elmore Leonard this afternoon; go fishing with my man, Barney [Bush's dog]; a light dinner and head to the ball game. I get to bed about 9:30 p.m., wake up about 5:00 a.m. So it's a perfect day." When I read those last words, I said to myself, "No, you son of a bitch -- if I may call you that, Mr. President -- you're not going to have a perfect day. Or, I should say, you're not going to have another perfect day as long as you live if I have anything to say about it. Because I'm going to put a thought in your mind that you're going to take with you to your grave. It's the least I can do for the young American boys who came back from your war in a box, or in a jar of ashes, and for the thousands of innocent Iraqi men, women, children, and babies who died horrible deaths because of your war. That's the least I can do." To fully appreciate the dimensions of Bush's "perfect day" comment, I would ask the reader, if you can for a moment, to think, really think, about how indescribably horrible it would be if your son -- the one now on the high school football team, or in college, or married and working -- had been blown up and killed in Iraq, his shattered body coming home in a box. It's so horrible a thought you can't even keep it in your mind for more than a few moments. And then imagine reading in the newspaper that the man who caused your son's death, taking him to war under false pretenses, told reporters, smiling, that he was going to have "a perfect day." I don't know about you, but if I ever killed just one person, even accidentally, like in a car accident, I'd never have another perfect day as long as I lived. And I'm very, very confident that if any other American president had ordered the war in Iraq, and over 100,000 people died in the war, none of them, even if the war was a righteous one, would have a perfect day right in the middle of the hellish conflict. When we add to this the fact that not only was this not a righteous war, but that Bush took this nation to it under false pretenses, and over 100,000 people died directly because of it, for him to be happy and have plans to have "a perfect day" goes so far beyond acceptable human conduct that no moral telescope can discern its shape, form, and nature. With all the death, horror, and suffering he has caused to hundreds of thousands of people, wouldn't you at least expect just a little remorse, a little depression from Bush? If you're waiting to see it, it's kind of like leaving the front porch light on for Jimmy Hoffa. "I'm feeling pretty spirited," Bush said at a December 4, 2007, White House press conference, "pretty good about life." Can you imagine that? Can you imagine that? He's turned almost the entire civilized world against us; he's cost this nation over $1 trillion with no end in sight; he's literally destroyed the nation of Iraq; and most important by far, he is directly responsible for over 100,000 precious human beings having died violent, horrible deaths, yet he says he is feeling "pretty good about life." This is simply too unbelievable for words. With all of the death, horror, and suffering he has caused, even if Bush was only guilty of making an innocent mistake in taking this nation to war in Iraq, not murder as I firmly believe, what kind of a human monster is it who could be happy with his life? Can anything be done to bring George Bush to justice? That is what the next chapter is all about. _______________ [1] Yet the outrageously monstrous Ken Starr (about whom longtime Manhattan district attorney Robert Morgenthau said, "He violated every [prosecutorial] rule in the book") conducted, with federal authorization and funding no less, a seven-year, $70 million investigation of Bill Clinton's involvement in a small and losing real estate venture (Whitewater) in Arkansas fifteen years before his presidency, and finding nothing, decided to investigate Clinton's private and consensual sexual life. In the process, Starr almost destroyed the Clinton presidency, substantially incapacitated the executive branch of government, and made America a laughingstock around the world. [2] It is not a casket or coffin, which the survivors of course later put the remains in. The military refers to the aluminum receptacle as a "transfer case," and the case is draped with an American flag. [3] If more need be said about these absolutely shameless and hypocritical human beings, when Congress, in 2007, passed a bill providing for a 3.5 percent pay raise for U.S. soldiers, the Bush administration, which only was willing to give a 3 percent raise, said it "strongly" opposed the additional .5 percent, calling it "unnecessary" (right, like the $1.3 trillion tax break for the super wealthy), and Bush actually vetoed the bill, though he finally signed it in January of 2008 after Congress made certain changes in the language of the bill. Nothing more has to be said to make the point about George Bush and his people, but in 2007, the base pay per month (after four months) of a private in the U.S. Army fighting in Iraq was $1,301.40. Canada, not nearly as wealthy as we are, was paying its privates fighting in Iraq as part of the coalition $2,366.73 per month. For sergeants it was $1,854 (U.S.) and $4,570.53 (Canada). Isn't that remarkable? And terrible? [4] Remarkably, during his campaign for reelection in 2004 Bush very frequently spoke of the "hard work" he and his administration were engaging in. This was the first time I had ever heard an American president speak of the "hard work" involved in his job. I have heard them speak of the immense "burden" of the office of the presidency in being responsible for the destiny and welfare of millions of people. But you see, for someone like Bush who was born on home plate and thought he had hit a home run, anything he does, any effort at all, he considers "hard work." [5] As has been reported often, Bush said he was "called" (obviously by the Lord) to seek the presidency, and said, "I believe that God wants me to be president." And when he was asked whether he was seeking his father's advice on whether to go to war in Iraq, he responded: "you know, he is the wrong father to appeal to in terms of strength. There is a higher father I appeal to." Isn't it so very reassuring that we have a president who told a Houston Post reporter on the day in 1993 that he announced his intention to run for governor of Texas that one "had to accept Christ to go to heaven"? (In other words, Jews, Muslims, and nonbelievers, among others, need not apply.) Who said on Fox News in 2004 that "I am reading Oswald Chambers' My Utmost to the Highest ... on a daily basis to be in the Word." And what is that Word? Delightful gems such as this (that help explain part of the Bush we know): To do what is right, "do not [Chambers, an obscure British Protestant itinerant preacher of the early twentieth century, is telling his pupil Bush] confer with flesh and blood, that is, your own sympathies, your own insight -- anything that is not based on your personal relationship with God." And, "Never ask the advice of another about anything God makes you decide before Him. If you ask advice, you will nearly always side with Satan ... [You] know when a proposition comes from God because of its quiet persistence. When [you] have to weigh pros and cons, and doubt and debate come in, [you] are bringing in an element that is not of God." Chambers tells Bush and his other readers that anytime they are confronted with a pressing problem, they should say "'Speak Lord' and make time to listen." In other words, don't use your mind (the one that God supposedly gave us to think with) or those of others around you to guide you in your conduct. Do what God personally tells you to do. My God. [6] They would say this not only because becoming president of the United States is the greatest honor that can be bestowed on a person, but because, being mature, they would realize that giving up a balanced life would be necessary. For instance, when Barack Obama was asked, before he ran for president, what thoughts ran through his mind when he thought about himself and the presidency, he answered, "That office is so different from any other office on the planet, you have to understand that if you seek that office you have to be prepared to give your life to it. How I think about it is that you don't make that decision unless you are prepared to make that trade-off."
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