Osama's Endorsement
By John Chuckman
01 November, 2004
Countercurrents.org
It
has been a bad few weeks for Bush with discoveries startling enough
to kill, or at least stun, a normal candidate. But there is nothing
normal about Bush. He just keeps plunging ahead, grunting and gasping,
like one of the undead.
We learned that
Bush wears a radio device at important events. This fact alone could
explain his strange plodding movements and words, a creature waiting,
eyes blinking mechanically, for each new word in its ear to register
before reacting.
I understand that
the existence of a radio device has not been proved, but it takes a
much greater stretch of the imagination than a radio device to explain
the strange shape photographed on the President's back, and science
always favors simple, clear explanations. Some of his legions of loyal
followers in trailer parks across the nation likely favor the idea of
a device grafted to his back by aliens - this is a possibility I suppose
- but reason casts some doubt.
How easy it would
have been for Bush to dispel the radio-device idea. He just needed to
call a brief press meeting with the hump in place, removing his jacket
to reveal how a wrinkled shirt could create the distinctive three-dimensional
shape. It would have been a very effective demonstration, but I think
we all know why he didn't try it.
I hesitate to suggest
a drug-pumping device similar to that worn by dying cancer patients,
but the damning revelation by Kitty Kelly that Bush was still doing
cocaine during his father's term as President leaves one wondering.
Genuinely-recovered addicts are not that common, and here was a man,
a weak man, addicted to two drugs, alcohol and cocaine. I know the Good
Lord can work miracles, but most experience suggests He lets humans
clear up their own messes.
Perhaps Bush is
on some kind of experimental methadone-like treatment. Yes, I know Kitty
Kelly is not a serious biographer, but she is a tough investigative
reporter against whom legal challenges generally fail. The public recanting
by Bush's sister-in-law, the source of the story, means nothing because
Kelly went over her notes with an editor after the original interview.
She called the sister-in-law in the editor's presence and reviewed the
points of her story, having them all confirmed as accurate.
The disappearance
of a huge stock of high explosives in Iraq following the invasion -
enough apparently to fill about forty semi-trailers - was to say the
least a rather unfavorable revelation. Please note there can be no doubt
that Bush was aware of this cache which had been under close guard of
UN officials, yet he took no measures to secure its safety during the
invasion, any more than he did for Iraq's priceless cultural artifacts
looted from museums at the time. Note also that analysis of the explosions
that have been killing American troops surely reveals the stolen stock
has been used, it being a distinctive and unusual explosive. Note, finally,
that we did not learn of this dangerous event from Bush, but from that
horrid organization, the UN.
Then we had the
matter of a study in the Lancet from scientists at America's own Johns
Hopkins University concluding that civilian deaths due to the invasion
of Iraq were at least 100,000, half women and children. Lancet is Britain's
best-known medical journal, and it does not publish rumors. It is peer-reviewed
and highly regarded.
Of course, we have
had no counts from the Pentagon of civilian deaths. An American woman's
non-government organization made an effort to count deaths and came
up with more than 10,000, the number most widely cited. Not long ago,
an Iraqi group, people in a much better position to communicate and
be accepted throughout Iraq, came up with the number 37,000, a number
generally ignored in the American press. Now, we have a statistical
study showing, at minimum, 100,000 civilian deaths.
So much for claims
of pin-point bombing accuracy, although we should have all been conditioned
to the utter falseness of such claims after the first Gulf War. I wish
American journalists would in future insist that any Pentagon official
making such claims publicly demonstrate them by having planes bomb dummy
homes near one he or she is in on some military proving ground. We know
this will never happen.
The fact remains
that aerial bombardment is a crude weapon that always kills many more
civilians than soldiers. The Pentagon favors it because pilots do not
see the details of the terrible things they do and because many more
ground troops would themselves be killed if it weren't for death from
the skies. Clearly the Hitler idea of a terror weapon remains in the
thinking of those who talk of "shock and awe." It has many
home-town supporters, too, who enjoy full-color explosions and flames
over dinner without the details of broken, mangled human beings. Oh,
it's like being there, where real history is happening, only in complete
safety from the couch.
Now, suddenly, just
days before the election, we have Osama's Jesus-like face again appearing
on every front page in the world. Who benefits from Osama's re-appearance?
At first, you might say Kerry because the face is such a vivid reminder
of Bush's utter failure. He didn't get the guy responsible for 9/11
(and from this tape we receive, for the first time, genuine evidence
of Osama's involvement), but Bush sure managed to kill a lot of innocent
people.
Almost certainly,
the re-appearance serves Bush's interests, who for some unknown reason
manages to hold a strong rating in polls narrowed to the specific issue
of security. I know it's a mind-numbing puzzle, but the man who shirked
duty in Vietnam, the man who went AWOL from the National Guard, the
man who spent years frying his brain with alcohol and cocaine, the man
who continued reading about goats after being informed of the strike
against the WTC, the man who has created armies of America-haters with
his insane war in Iraq is regarded as strong on security by Americans.
The only rational
explanation for this phenomenon is that Americans sense Bush's psychopathic
qualities and are re-assured by them at a time of absurdly-exaggerated
fear. After all, I had Americans writing me seriously, after 9/11, that
Afghanistan should be reduced to a chunk of radioactive glass. American
fundamentalists' much-beloved Old Testament and Book of Revelations,
not to mention the entire history of Christianity, overflow with such
bloodshed and ravings. Were a poll taken in America about the idea of
"just killing them all," I think the results might be painfully
revealing.
Osama and the boys
chose a critical moment to endorse Bush because they know four more
years of his violent, incompetent arrogance does more damage to western
interests than any attack they could hope to mount.