Many Americans believe George W. Bush is uninformed, simpleminded and, in a single word, stupid. But there is a different way to look at the evidence and conclude that while Bush may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, it is he who thinks the American people are the real dullards.
After all, Bush is the one who explains the “facts” about current events as if he’s speaking to people with the mental capacity of a five-year-old. He also assumes - with some justification - that his listeners don’t mind being misled and lied to, as long as he gives them some bromides that make them feel good.
Regarding the Iraq War and the War on Terror, Bush has mastered a few talking points that sound pleasing but are essentially nonsense - and he then repeats them endlessly to appreciative audiences as he did on Jan. 11 in Louisville, Kentucky.
For instance, Bush served up the old canard about how before Sept. 11, 2001, Americans felt they were protected by the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, but afterwards they realized they faced a unique danger that required sacrifice of civil liberties at home and “preemptive” wars against potential enemies abroad.
“You know, when I was growing up, or other Baby Boomers here were growing up, we felt safe because we had these vast oceans that could protect us from harm’s way,” Bush told the “town hall” participants in Louisville.
“September the 11th changed all that. And so I vowed that we would take threats seriously. If we saw a threat, we would take threats seriously before they fully materialized. And I saw a threat in Saddam Hussein.”
The premise to this argument, however, is completely false. No Baby Boomer, who grew up with drills for hiding under desks in the event of a Soviet nuclear attack, felt safe because of the two oceans. Americans of all ages knew that intercontinental ballistic missiles could snuff out their lives in minutes.
Bush must know this reality, too, but his lie about the two oceans lets him suggest that the Sept. 11 attacks represented a completely new kind of danger, which, in turn, justified setting aside centuries of American traditions and giving Bush vast powers as the nation’s “unitary executive.”...
“I went to the United Nations,” Bush told his Louisville audience. “Some of you were probably concerned here in Kentucky that it seemed like the President was spending a little too much time in the United Nations.
“But I felt it was important to say to the world that this international body, that we want to be effective, spoke loud and clear not once, but 15 odd times to Saddam Hussein - said, ‘disarm, get rid of your weapons, don’t be the threat that you are, or face serious consequences.’
“That’s what the international body said. And my view is, is that in order for the world to be effective, when it says something, it must mean it. We gave the opportunity to Saddam Hussein to open his country up. It was his choice. He chose war, and he got war.”
Bush’s listeners applauded this fictional account of the run-up to war in Iraq, which is dishonest both in its assertion that Hussein’s defiance on weapons inspection forced Bush to go to war and in its suggestion that the invasion was done at the behest of the U.N.
But Bush has been presenting this bogus pre-war history since July 2003 when the absence of WMD was becoming obvious and an Iraqi insurgency was beginning to kill scores of American soldiers.
In his first version of this revisionist history two-and-a-half years ago, Bush said about Hussein, “we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn’t let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power.”
In reality, Hussein opened up his country to U.N. inspections in November 2002 and allowed them to search wherever they wanted for the WMD that even Bush’s own inspectors later concluded wasn’t there. Bush forced the U.N. inspectors to leave in March 2003 so the invasion could proceed.
When the mainstream U.S. news media failed to object to Bush’s rewritten history, he continued to spin out this lie in various forms, including at the Republican National Convention and during the presidential debates...
Debate Limits
Bush finished off his presentation to the Louisville “town hall” by saying he doesn’t mind that some Americans disagree with his policies, so long as they don’t question his motivations and his honesty.
“What I don’t like is when somebody said, he lied,” Bush complained. “Or, they’re in there for oil. Or they’re doing it because of Israel. That’s the kind of debate that basically says the mission and the sacrifice were based on false premise.”
So, the question for the American people remains - is Bush so ill-informed that his war policy is guided by a false historical analysis and so forgetful that he can’t remember important events in which he played a leading role?
Or does Bush think that the American people are so gullible that they will buy whatever he sells them - as long as he does it with a folksy charm?
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/011706.html
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