Dubya

Now that Scott McClellan has released his book, and attendant inexplicable shitstorm, it seems appropriate to comment on Mr. Bush's Ill-advised Middle Eastern Adventure, or How I Learned to Eat Sand With My Bullshit.

The shitstorm is inexplicable not because I don't understand why people are pissed off, but because I don't know why they're pissed off now.

So let's look back with fondness and nostalgia, shall we? Eyes moist with sadness and a soft, subtle joy, to a time when things were simple, and the US was still a force for good in the world. Sort of.

Then 9/11, and all the xenophobic screeching, and one stupid invasion.

At least this stupid invasion had a warm and inviting patina of legitimacy to it: the Taliban was harbouring Al-Qaeda, and NATO had to go bomb the mountains to get revenge on a dozen Saudis who were already dead.

It sounded sensible at the time.

Iraq, though, was a really bad idea. I don't understand how some people didn't see that, but there it is. Iraq was a bad fucking idea (Afghanistan was, too, but nobody wanted to hear that, either), and George Bush had to distort the truth beyond recognition to get that done. Again, I don't understand how any sensible person could not see that he was a liar or a madman, but there it is.

So, 66 months ago, George Bush et al. were making their case for war, and they were either:

1. Stupid, or
2. Lying

Now that Scott McClellan has written his book, we know that the White House Staff was:

1. Insane (fabricating the grounds for invasion, ignoring good advice, and generally adhering to an ideology without any reason), or
2. Evil (knowing they were wrong, and just not caring)

and Dubya was either:

1. Insane (possibly a persecution complex, or some serious father issues, and an unstable religious ideology that unhinged a mind severely damaged by growing up a Bush and then pickling the shit out of it),
2. Evil (knowing he was about to kill over a million people for no good reason, which makes him a special kind of sociopath), or
3. Stupid (and very probably afraid of everything).

I don't think he's stupid. He sounds stupid, to be sure, but that's because he's smart enough to know that Americans apparently don't like to elect really smart people: Al Gore, John Kerry, Ralph Nader and Dennis Kucinich are four very good examples. So he fabricates his aw-shucks down-home, farm boy accent, and mangles the idioms of his native tongue, in order to appeal to the lowest common denominator of Americana. Dude went to two ivy league colleges, for god's sake, and money can get you in, but it can't keep you there. (I hope.)

Having eliminated stupid, is it worse if he's evil or crazy? I'm leaning toward crazy, because then he cannot be held accountable. I hope he's just evil, so we can try him for his crimes, and though I normally don't support the death penalty, but in his case, I'd make an exception.

Further, if he is as stupid as he appears, then he should be tried in Texas, where you are very likely to see the chair if you have a mental handicap and have killed any Texans. Since over 4000 Americans have been killed in Iraq alone, many are likely to be Texans. I'd say he's a candidate.