As George W Bush's presidency circles the toilet

[ScaryTruth]

As the presidency of George W. Bush circles the toilet, at long last and to the relief of most of America, I try to imagine what it must be like to have the vast majority of a nation of 312 million persons anxious for your departure. To leave office, to vacate the White House, to just go away.

What shame a person with Bush's tangible record must endure. The undeniable series of failed actions and disasterous decisions with the broadest of ramifications.

But George W. Bush is not your average person -- not by a long shot. He is virtually incapable of shame. In a recent interview with Charles Gibson, he was asked what his greatest regret was during his presidency. Bush reponded that he regretted the failed intelligence, (by others), leading to the invasion of Iraq.

No mention of election theft, on two occasions. No mention of the failure to foresee and prevent the attacks of 9/11. No mention of the disasterous failure to effectively respond to hurricane Katrina. No mention of his proclamation that, in the war in Iraq, "the US and its allies had prevailed," (nearly six years ago). No mention of the laundry list of the ways in which long-valued democratic processes have been regularly circumvented.

Any sensible summary of the Bush presidency would, by necessity, have to include the following highlights:

In a presidency founded upon election fraud that made its way to a US Supreme Court decision, Bush seemed doomed to mediocrity and a single term. Al Gore, his opponent, actually won the American popluar vote by more than a half-million votes. On his way to the White House, eggs were literally hurled at the presidential limousine by onlookers as it made its way through the crowd on inaguration day in 2001. This was unprecedented and a genuine harbinger of things to come.

While on an extended vacation on his Crawford Texas ranch in the month before the 9/11 attacks, Bush ignored repeated warnings from quarters far and wide, some from foreign intelligence agencies, some quite specific, and with a US intelligence apparatus later acknowledged as "blinking red" as never before. After the attacks, Bush is widely and remarkably hailed as a hero. "No one could have anticipated such a thing," was the excuse, parroted by any official within eyeshot of a camera.

A critical, blatant lie setting the tone for the Bush years to come.

Bush, Cheney and his inner circle fought vigorously to prevent any investigation into the events surrounding the 9/11 attacks, and only begrudgingly relented to public pressure after 14 months. The so-called investigation was mired with conflicts of interest, hidden agendas, obfuscation, and a deliberate campaign to sidestep the facts surrounding the mass murder that changed America. The investigative commission was staffed at the direction of the Bush legal team and directed by a Bush insider.
Decades-long ties between the bin Laden and Bush families were suppressed. Countless, central aspects of the crime were ignored, timelines surrounding the failures were contradictory and laced with lies, key testimony was expunged from the transcripts, critical witnesses were prevented from testifying. A fairy tale of great significance was carefully woven into American history and mythology, where it resides to this day.

By cleverly tying the 9/11 attacks to Saddam Hussein and alleging Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, the Bush inner circle manufactured intelligence designed to foment fear and a desire for revenge among the American public. The invasion of Iraq has resulted in thousands of US military deaths, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilian deaths and the utter waste of upwards of a trillion dollars in American treasure. Viewing or photographing the returning coffins of US military dead was forbidden. No weapons were found. No ties to the 9/11 attacks existed, ever.
Bush entered the 2000 presidential race and ran with the promise to restore digniity to the US presidency.

In a series of disasters suitable for an episode of the Keystone Cops, stunning ineptitude in prosecuting the invasion and wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan have plagued thousands of wounded veterans returning from the war zones. Soldiers and Marines -- long without appropriate armored vehicles and lack of body armor have suffered immeasuareably -- and needlessly. Many were charged for their medical care and treatment.

With more magic tricks and underhanded tactics that worked so well in the 2000 Florida fiasco, the Bush team manages to secure a second Bush term by caging and subverting the voting procedures in the key battleground state of Ohio in 2004. Bush's brain, Karl Rove, along with his team of opinion makers manage to pull it off, yet again.
Beginning with the Bush presidency, professional public opinion management has emerged as likely the most influential, yet most secretive career option in modern history. The practical results of success are astonishing -- on the world stage. And, in election victories largely through the manufacture of public perceptions, there are no higher stakes -- anywhere.

But this manufacture of consent, this manipulation of public opinion does not work as well beyond our borders, where the media is less suceptible to US government influence and coercion. America is hated around the world as never before in history as the facts about the illegal invasion of Iraq -- and the institutionalized murder -- are not subjected to filtering by our overlords here at home.

In keeping with the Bush administration's deception on grand scales, the widely touted success of "the surge" in Iraq that began in mid 2007, was, in fact, achieved by handsomely paying the enemies of US forces not to fight or attack American forces. What is referred to as "emerging peace" is an uneasy truce that depends entirely on a continuing series of payoffs -- payoffs of enormous sums of money -- and the American people are largely oblivious. We certainly won't hear of this from our tightly controlled news outlets.

With Bush at the helm, America now tortures our enemies, both real and imagined. We imprison suspects without charges, without access to legal representation and without trial. It's just not called torture these days, as our managers have adopted terms with words designed to reduce the shock value.

Bush also ran in 2000 on a pledge to restore honor to the White House.

Inheriting a US budget surplus when Bush was selected in 2000, the United States is now drowning in red ink. Our children and grandchildren have been saddled with unimaginable lifetime obligations, the interest on which threatens to permanently imprison the American people under crushing, perpetual debt.

The income gap between the rich and the poor has reached historic proportions.

More children than ever live below the poverty line.

American primary education continues to fail.

More Americans than ever do not have access to preventative health care.

An ostensibly unforeseen financial disaster, unprecedented in breadth and scope, has threatened to collapse the American economy and cripple markets worldwide. As in the so-called surprise 9/11 attacks, the economic meltdown is explained as the great machinery of the world's only remaining superpower being left unattended. The institutions and agencies designed to protect against and prevent disasters of immese magnitude have supposedly been staffed by persons asleep at the helm -- with unimaginable consequences.

Again, with any meaningful overview of events during the Bush presidency -- are the Keystone Cops running the show from the marbled halls of our nation's capital -- or are the inmates running the asylum?

At the direction of his criminal co-conspirators and handlers, through a wide array of signing statements and executive orders, Bush has managed to transform the office of the American presidency into a virtual dictatorship. Given the right circumstances, the US president would wield stunning powers that would make any dictator, despot, tzar or king genuinely envious. These extraordinary powers have been created outside the purview of democratic processes. They are permanent, and they carry stunning abilities for executive control over all aspects of American industry, commerce, inventories, communications, transportation, utilities and law enforcement. Martial law, travel restrictions, forced labor projects and US combat troops patroling American cities are only a single "unforeseen disaster" away.

During the Bush years, a wide array of one-time guarantees under the US Constitution have been widely discarded, circumvented, devalued -- all in the name of national security. And power acquired by high government officials and agencies is never easily surrendered and seldom wrested away.

The known causes of the 9/11 attacks and widespread hatred for the United States, especially throughout the Islamic world has not changed, and remains America's dirty little secret that is not open to public discourse. The blind, unconditional US support for the State of Israel continues, both militarily and economically, while the ongoing theft of Palestinian land goes on. Israel has turned the remaining Palestinian lands into the largest open-air prison on earth and the cruelty wrought upon the Palestinian people is profound -- and continues daily.

And Americans support this -- militarily and economically -- year after year. But the reality presented to the American public is carefully managed and disguised. Or simply sidestepped altogether.

But caution is warranted. Discussing such matters, even in a fair-minded, reasonable way is not permitted. There are terms of derision awaiting for those that do. The topic is taboo -- and what better way to frame the discussion than to make it off limits?

With blatant, repeated ineptitude and malfeasence littering his eight-year tenure, certainly, Bush is the most undignified person to have ever occupied the Oval Office in US history. Often buffoonish in public, and unable to string together coherent sentences or to grasp the gravity of his office, Bush has been the focal point of widespread ridicule and disdain. A perverbial laughing stock -- a surreal chapter in American history that most Americans seem anxious to simply forget. The jokes are never-ending but are far from humorous, considering the measureable results of his presidency.

Bush has frequently evoked his Christian values -- his faith in God -- and has said that it was God's will that he be the president of the United States.

What must it be like to know that most of a nation and world population eagerly awaits your term of office to simply end? For you to go away -- for you to become invisible, forever? Or more sadly, what could it be like to be completely oblivious to such deep, widespread disdain?

When it comes to George W. Bush, he is a stunning example that a shameless man cannot be shamed.

But caution is warranted in these critical times. With 40 days remaining in office, and with a plethora of potential "unforeseen disasters" to choose from, we as the owners of America should not make the mistake of counting Bush out on January 20th, 2009. And, based on their methodology, Bush's handlers of the last eight years may not go quietly. In 40 days, a nearly unimaginable variety of "disasters" could occur.

In any reasonable assessment of the tenure and practical results on America by the man-child George W Bush, can there be doubt that the puppet Bush has been the ideal face to disguise a deliberate series of steps in an agenda to undermine America by those within the shadow government -- the faceless persons that maintain a firm grip on the genuine levers of power -- in their pursuit of the darkest, secretive agendas imaginable?

Or is is actually possible that such an inane, morally and intellectually challanged man could rise to the office of the US presidency and amass such an extensive list of unimaginable failures through shear ineptitude and idiocy, and all the while, the balancing mechanisms within the power hierarchy are asleep at the wheel? And if so, is our ultimate demise to be what we once relied on and cherished -- American democracy -- simply in the wrong, subversive hands?

Michael McCoy