Sep 7 2004
Kevin Toolis
PRESIDENT George W Bush is proud to be a Texan. So no doubt he can recognise the smell that now fills the halls of the White House.
It's the same smell that wafts out of the mouths of every one of his spokesmen, from creepy Vice President Dick Cheney to film star buddy Arnie The Terminator.
And it's a smell that is emitted by Bush himself, every time he delivers his set piece on why he should be re-elected as president.
It's the stink of, well, I'm sorry, there's no other word for it... bullsh*t. Plain, old-fashioned verbal manure.
No lie is too outrageous to be spun. No truth is too sacred to besmirch.
When I first tuned in to the Republican National Convention last week, I thought I'd hit the wrong channel and caught the party convention of loony North Korean dictator Kim Jong II, whose robotic underlings hail him as a living god while half the population starves.
New York, Pyongyang, it all came from the same propaganda song sheet...
The Republicans told us about how great a leader ol' "Bushie" is. How wise, how wonderful, how terrific it would be for the world if only he were allowed to reign for ever!
It was all lies spun by the rich and powerful to fool the people and hide the disastrous record of the most dangerous, just plain stupid presidency the world has ever known.
The first, and biggest, lie is Bush's favourite - that America needs him as Commander-in-Chief to fight the War on Terror."I will defend America every time," he twangs.But, of course, when Bush really did have the chance to risk his own life - rather than other people's lives - to defend the US, it was a different story.
Both Bush and his Democratic rival John Kerry were young men in the 1970s, when the Vietnam War was raging.
Unlike Bush, Kerry volunteered and fought and killed for his country in the dangerous waters of the Mekong Delta. He was awarded three Purple Hearts, a Silver Star and a Bronze Star.
BUSH, a rabid coward, slunk off for guard duty with the Texas Air National Guard in some patsy little job his daddy's rich pals provided.
Bush spent most of his "war" drunk, partying with other spoiled rich kids. No one ever saw him in uniform and the only way he risked his neck was pouring too much beer down it.
But like conservatives everywhere, Bush and the Republicans have only a passing acquaintance with the truth.
With the aid of Karl Rove, his chief attack dog in the White House, Bush has turned Kerry's heroism into cowardice and his own spinelessness into silence.
Yet Bush remains a coward even now. Yesterday, seven US Marines died in Fallujah. The bodies of those young men will soon be shipped to America for burial. But the man who sent them halfway across the world to die won't be there to welcome these fallen heroes home.
Alone, of all American presidents, "Bushie", the great Commander-In-Chief, does not like to be photographed close to the dead reminders of his failures.
Instead of comfort, he gives the families of the bereaved the cold shoulder. Yet many of those soldiers would not be dead in the first place if they had the proper armoured vests and equipment to stop an AK-47 round - the favoured weapon of the Iraqi insurgents.
Scandalously, 87 per cent of the US military's Humvees (High-Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles) still do not have proper protection and 40,000 troops don't have effective flak jackets.
In desperation, some soldiers' families were forced to spend US$1,500 (£930) on the special plating needed to protect their loved ones.Some Commander-in-Chief.
Lie No.2 comes from Bush's own twisted mouth... "I am running for president with a clear and positive plan to build a safer world," he says.
Yet Bush has waged a disastrous and unnecessary war in Iraq that has removed the ageing, patently useless Arab dictator Saddam Hussein and multiplied the threat of Islamic terrorism a thousandfold.
Al-Qaeda has spread its nihilistic brand of terrorism across the world, from Bali to Madrid, from London to the slaughterhouse of Beslan. Bush has trashed the world economy, sent oil prices rocketing, been responsible for the deaths of 20,000 Iraqis - and more than 1,000 US and British troops - and failed to capture either Osama bin Laden or Taliban leader Mullah Omar.
If that was the plan so far, God save us from four more years.
Dangerously, despite the catastrophe of Iraq, Bush still has his "axis of evil" eye on the overthrow of the Syrian and Iranian regimes - a surefire recipe for global warfare.
But for all the victims overseas, Bush has also added more at home.
Two million Americans have lost their jobs while Bush, the so-called fiscal conservative, has drained the Treasury with profligate tax cuts for the richest one per cent of the population.
The US government is now spending $400billion (£250bn) more each year than it earns. Bush's "tax reforms" - giveaways to his rich friends - left millionaires £62,500 ($100,000) a year better off but gave working families less than $800 (£500). These figures sound abstract... until you see the cruelty of Bush and the poverty of America.In downtown San Francisco, for instance, close to the rich financial district, poor sick people who should be in hospital lie in the street, in scenes reminiscent of the slums of Calcutta.
A total of 42million Americans, 15 per cent of the population, have no health insurance.
THOUSANDS of children also go to bed hungry, while millions of others have been brainwashed into eating junk food that has turned the US into a nation of Mr Blobbys.
"We are making progress and there is much to do," says Bush. And if he is re-elected, there sure will be a lot more death, destruction and tax cuts to be handed out.
A lie told boldly, amid the razzmatazz of a party convention, and then circulated by countless flunkies, is still a lie.
We all know who and what George W Bush represents - the rich and the mean-hearted.And the simple truth is that he is the worst president the United States has ever had. What's more, he's a danger to the rest of the planet as well.
Kevin Toolis is a writer and expert on terrorism
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