By Vincent Bugliosi
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 everyone 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."
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