156 TUESDAYS LATER

[Ruffhowse]

By UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE/TED RALL

NEW YORK--"We've shown the world New York can never be defeated," Mayor Michael Bloomberg told delegates to this week's Republican National Convention. Nice sentiment, but utterly untrue. Three years after terrorists wiped out zipcode 10048, revised maps of lower Manhattan still read "former World Trade Center site." Thanks to a wounded economy and only token help from the federal government, the WTC-replacement Freedom Tower may never go up. Worst of all, no one has done anything to avenge the deaths of the 2,801 murdered New Yorkers.

Though the war against Iraq (news - web sites) has galvanized the anti-Bush opposition, from the far left to moderate Republicans, the carnage has served the Bush Administration well as a distraction from its cowardly, inept and self-serving early responses to 9/11. Thanks to Michael Moore, we know that Bush had a fratboy-in-the-headlights moment after being told that planes were flying into buildings. But the fog of the Iraq war has so obscured Bush's behavior that even his opponents buy into the myth of a resolute commander-in-chief, neither shaken nor stirred, who grew in stature as he rose to meet the dreadful challenge posed by the horrible day.

On 9/11 Mythic Bush rushed to reassure his subjects that everything was fine and that he would promptly kick whatever asses needed kicking. Real Bush turned tail and ran like a girlie boy, hopscotching Air Force One from Florida to Louisiana to Nebraska. The American people heard nothing from their head of state until over four hours later, when a man clearly in way over his head broadcast an assurance that other officials would carry out "the functions of your government." Half a day later, he snuck back into D.C. under cover of night. The speech everyone remembers, the one atop The Pile with the firefighter, happened three days later--after Bush's underwear had undergone a thorough bleaching.

Among Democrats as well as Republicans, the invasion of Iraq somehow sucked all memory of the wimpy Real Bush down a media memory hole. The more you despise the war, after all, the more you tend to view its chief proponent as a vicious, venal and greedy man--an image of pigheadedness that's hard to square with the scaredy-cat Real Bush.


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=127&ncid=742&e=7&u=/ucru/20040902/cm_ucru/156tuesdayslater

Ha Ha Ha...excellent---"The speech everyone remembers, the one atop The Pile with the firefighter, happened three days later--after Bush's underwear had undergone a thorough bleaching."

[murielm99]

1. Good one.

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