Sheila Samples: Bush, The Man With a SNAFU Plan

Bush—The Man With a SNAFU Plan
By Sheila Samples
Alternative Press Review

"A government that terrorizes its own people can never stop. If such a government ever lets the fear subside and rational thought return to the populace, that government is finished." ~Michael Rivero, What Really Happened

It's a good thing President George Bush doesn't read newspapers or watch TV. If he did, even he could see that people from one end of this nation to the other are rapidly reaching zero tolerance with his bumbling ineptitude each time he is faced with a crisis. Those who watched in amazement as Bush sat paralyzed in a Florida elementary school on the morning of September 11, 2001 as planes were ramming into the World Trade Center and Pentagon -- who watched in dismay as he zigzagged across the country from one hidey hole to another throughout the day -- were not surprised that he dropped the ball when Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast on August 29.

Bush has dropped every ball thrown to him throughout his life. But he's a hell of a cheerleader. It's almost like being back in college. In an instant, Bush can whip a crowd into a frenzy, armed with nothing but a bullhorn and a shell-shocked firefighter. He can divert the attention of an entire nation from what is happening on the field by locking it into one massive, cheering "wave." Life is a game. Go Team.

However, Operation Hurricane Katrina is vastly different from Bush's "freedom is on the march" game that continues to wreak chaos, death and destruction throughout the Arab world. In the aftermath of Katrina, the homeless, bewildered, abandoned and starving citizens may be poverty-striken, they may be dark-skinned, but they are Americans. And, because they are Americans, the cheering has stopped. The media, led by the shaking outrage of CNN's Anderson Cooper and right-leaning curmudgeon Jack Cafferty, followed by the networks and, finally, by the wonderous on-air meltdown of Fox News' Shepard Smith, at long last is doing its job. For a time, however fleeting, the media has been shocked into telling the truth, asking the right questions and holding the administration's feet to the fire.

Thanks to the media, Bush is out there without a bullhorn -- and without a game plan.

The best-laid plans

Of course the neoconservatives who are in control of this country had a plan for Iraq. I've written about it so often I'm almost embarrassed to bring it up again. In 1992, Dick Cheney, Lewis Libby and Paul Wolfowitz laid out their obsesson for world dominance in a secret document, Defense Planning Guidance wherein they boldly asserted, "our overall objective is to remain the predominant outside power in the region (Middle East and SW Asia) and preserve U.S. and Western access to the region's oil."

Although such arrogance caused a furor when released to the media, the war jackals merely retreated into their lair and continued to hone the policy of preemptive war to seize control of the world's resources. That was the plan then, it was the plan in 1997 when they established the warmongering think-tank, Project for a New American Century, it was the plan outlined in the September 2000 Rebuilding America's Defenses, which included another bold assertion -- to achieve their goal they would need "a catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor" -- and it remains the plan today.

It was a stroke of genius in 2000 to rig the election and put George Bush in the Cheerleader in Chief role. Bush is mean-spirited, vindictive, greedy, incapable of feeling empathy, easily manipulated, desperate for attention -- even adulation -- and has no qualms with playing the God card for political gain. Americans are a forgiving people, and most accepted without question this worthless, former booze-and-drug sodden ne'er-do-well's claim that he was born again -- a man of God. They loved him. All Cheney had to do was select himself as Number Two, slip behind the curtain, and the cabal -- as they like to call themselves -- was open for business, and waiting for a new Pearl Harbor.

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