Call Me Crazy, But Think I've Been Here Before

FPF-fwd. Stephen Pizzo

"James Baker warned that the commission's report "should not be treated like a fruit salad, picking this, rejecting that." That missed the point. We are not worried that the commission's report is a fruit salad, but that the guy they wrote it for is."

CALL ME CRAZY, BUT THINK I'VE BEEN HERE BEFORE

By Stephen Pizzo

Remember Watergate? I sure do. I lived through the entire sordid mess. But yesterday a particularly chilling image from those days returned to haunt my imagination. It was at the height of the crisis. Nixon, hunkered down in the Oval Office, buzzed his secretary and asked for his chief of staff, Al Haig.

When Haig walked in Nixon thrust a pill bottle at him. It was Valium. A frustrated Nixon asked Haig to open it for him. The bottle had a childproof cap Nixon could not dislodge. As Haig went to open the bottle he noticed the cap had been nearly chewed off.

I always considered that moment -- an American president, the most powerful person on earth, in emotional free fall and desperately chewing the cap of tranquilizer bottle -- the most frightening image of my life. That is, until this week.

THIS WEEK I SAW THAT LOOK AGAIN. IT WAS THE LOOK RICHARD NIXON HAD JUST WEEKS BEFORE THE VALIUM BOTTLE INCIDENT.

It's hard to describe, but unmistakable -- an unsettling combination of nonsensical defiance, confusion, Captain Queeg-like paranoia with a dash of self-pity.

I saw that look in George W. Bush's face twice this week. The first time was during his Wednesday morning photo-op with the members of the Baker/Hamilton Commission [1]. The best way to describe Bush's manner is that he seemed untethered from what everyone else in the nation considered a momentous moment. He lacked even appropriate voice
inflection, delivering disjointed and rambling comments in a monotone. His comments were so bland and generic he might as well have been responding to a report from a local Rotary Club on the importance of good street lighting fighting street crime.

It was at that moment the thought first popped into my mind, "Whoa! This guy - or someone else - must have gotten the Valium bottle open this morning!"

It was just a guess, but the next day I was certain of it. It was during Bush's press conference with Tony Blair.

At least Tony Blair looked appropriately concerned. Bush, on the other hand, looked lost. His performance reminded me of a stand-up comedian that suddenly discovers no one is laughing at the only jokes he knows any more. So he desperately tries them all, one after the other. When no one laughs at one joke he moves quickly to the next, then the next.... He tries all his golden oldies, but the audience just sits there. Some snicker, not at the jokes, but at the clueless guy on stage. Some get up and leave. A few actually heckle.

No one was buying Bush's old saws at Thursday's press conference. And he tried them all --- The, "Fight them there so we don't have to fight them here," .... The , "if we leave before defeating them in Iraq they will follow us home." .... The, "it's hard. I know it's hard." ...

NOTHING.

Worse than nothing. A British reporter asked him why he seemed to be the only person left not ready to admit things in Iraq are really bad. Bush got a glazed, far away look in his eyes -- the kind of look my dog gets on his fury face when ask if he had anything to do with dog dodo on the living room carpet. The answer was one not part of his usual act. He had to adlib. So it took awhile.

FINALLY HE SPOKE: "OKAY, IT'S BAD." BUSH RESPONDED... FOLLOWED BY ANOTHER LONG PAUSE.

There was no laughter - except his own head-bobbing, "heh, heh, heh," hint to the audience that he had just made a new joke. Only silence.

When no one reacted, he fished, "Is that better?" he pleaded. More silence. "I know it's hard. I understand that..." (It was an echo of Nixon's "Your president is not a crook," declaration. Hell, I assumed most politicians are crooks. I wasn't worried that Dick Nixon was a crook. I was worried he was nuts.)

At a Senate hearing yesterday James Baker warned that the commission's report "should not be treated like a fruit salad, picking this, rejecting that." That missed the point. We are not worried that the commission's report is a fruit salad, but that the guy they wrote it for is.

During Watergate the nation was spared the sad, and potentially dangerous, specter of a sitting president going stark raving mad in office. Adults in Nixon's own party conducted an intervention, leading their emotionally - and increasingly mentally - crippled leader safely off the world stage. It was an act of both statesmanship and patriotism by that handful of sage-like Republicans. It was also an act of kindness and compassion for a mortally wounded leader -- albeit the wounds were self-inflected.

So, is George W. Bush cracked or cracking? Or is what I witnessed this week just more of the uninformed, spoiled, arrogant little putz that 71% of us have come to dislike.

ONLY TIME WILL TELL -- BUT TIME IS SHORT.

President Bush hinted he would give a major speech before Christmas during which he plans to show Americans -- and the world - that he really is in touch with reality. But everything I know about George W. Bush argues against any sudden redemption. Because, as Oscar Wilde correctly pointed out, "Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative." And no president in America's history has been less imaginative than George W. Bush.

But if GWB is anything he's stubborn. Consistently so. Trouble is facts are even more stubborn. And it's facts now --- not Democrats, not surrender monkeys, not cut-and-runners, not the French, not the UN, not Michael Moore, not Cindy Sheehan - but the facts confronting George W. Bush. And facts can't be silenced by calling them names or insinuating
they are "unpatriotic" facts. Facts are just what they are, nothing more, nothing less. And the facts on the ground in Iraq are ugly and will get even uglier in the weeks and months ahead.

The next few months will be very hard on Bush 43. Maybe too hard. We may see the weight of it all too much for a guy accustomed to getting his own way and never having to acknowledge, much less clean up, his own messes.

WHILE WE HAVE NOT YET SEEN GEORGE THE YOUNGER CRACK IN PUBLIC, HIS FATHER HAS.

At a recent award ceremony for his other son, Jeb, George-the-Elder broke down sobbing. He said it was out of pride for Jeb. But I suspect it had a lot more to do with his concern for what he knows is in store for his other son, the one in the White House. He tried to warn young George against whacking Saddam, that doing so could spark a full-scale mob war in that rough neighborhood. Now it's too late. War - civil war - will consume Iraq, and possibly ignite a full scale Sunni v. Shiite war in the Middle East. And Bush Sr. knows that the resulting mess will go down in history with the Bush family name stamped all over it.

The Baker/Hamilton commission has tried to show Bush Jr. a graceful - if unavoidably ignoble - path out of Iraq. But what may really be needed in the weeks ahead is someone ready to, not just crack open the Valium bottle for George W. Bush, but the door leading out of the Oval Office.

"YES MR. PRESIDENT. THE WAY FORWARD. IT'S RIGHT THROUGH HERE SIR."

STEPHEN PIZZO

Originally published: The Smirking Chimp - Url: http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/3797

FPF - RELATED LINKS:

* CONCERNING BUSH: "THEY'RE COMING TO TAKE ME AWAY, HA-HAAA!" is a 1966 novelty song by Napoleon XIV, re-issued by Warner Bros. Records in 1973. Initially it was controversial enough to get the record banned in several markets. - Wikipedia Url.: http://tinyurl.com/ycne6x

* POWERLESS JUDGES: ARE WE ENTERING AMERICA'S DARKEST HOUR? - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/t5v2l

* THE USE OF THE PHRASE 'ANTI SEMITISM' IS PURE NONSENSE - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/y8fwhf

* MORE & RELATED LINKS - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/v9pjs

* Born in The Netherlands, journalist HR this far has lived and worked abroad (never in an English speaking country) for more than 4 decades for national and international media as an independent foreign correspondent. Of which 10 years - also during Gulf War I - in the African/Arab world and the Middle East. Seeing worldwide that every invasion, bullet and bomb logically breeds more and legal resistance. Not only among Muslims, as the Junta Judasses claim, but in all countries surrounding the US and their junta's war machine. - "War criminals, beware!" - Url.http://tinyurl.com/y7wr67

* FPF-COPYRIGHT NOTICE - In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107 any copyrighted work in this message is distributed by the Foreign Press Foundation under fair use, without profit or payment, to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the information.

FOREIGN PRESS FOUNDATION
Editor: Henk Ruyssenaars
http://tinyurl.com/gpr4j
The Netherlands
fpf@chello.nl

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Chile under the gun

FPF-fwd. Isabel Allende

"I thought that, if I were arrested, I could explain that I was acting out of humanitarian motives. Apparently, I was somewhere on the moon."

Quote: "I thought I was safe because I wasn't visibly "involved" in politics, in the meantime sheltering desperate fugitives in my home or helping them over embassy walls in search of asylum. - Isabel Allende: Chile under the gun."

The Independent: How did Chile's generals manage to overthrow a democratic government and maintain their brutal junta for 17 years? For novelist Isabel Allende, a close relative of the flawed but idealistic man Augusto Pinochet swept from power, the pain of confronting these questions is acute. As the death of the dictator closes a grim chapter in her nation's history, she describes what living through it was like - and the joy of seeing her homeland heal itself.

Isabel Allende: Chile under the gun

Published in The Independent (UK) on 12 December 2006

To give an idea of what the military coup was like, you have to imagine how a citizen of the United States or Great Britain would feel if the army rolled up in full battle gear to attack the White House or Buckingham Palace, and in the process caused the deaths of thousands of citizens, among them the President of the US or the Queen and Prime Minister of Great Britain, then indefinitely suspended Congress or Parliament, disbanded the Supreme Court, abrogated individual liberties and political parties, declared absolute censorship of the media, and finally, over time, strove mercilessly to extinguish every dissident voice.

Now, imagine that these same military men, possessed with Messianic fanaticism - (like the US junta and its war machine - HR) - installed themselves in power for years, prepared to root out every last ideological adversary. That is what happened in Chile.

The socialist adventure led by Salvador Allende ended tragically. The military junta, presided over by General Augusto Pinochet, applied the doctrine of "savage capitalism", as the neoliberal experiment has been called, but refused to acknowledge that, to function smoothly, it requires a labour force free to exercise its rights.

Brutal repression was used to destroy the last seed of leftist thought and implant a heartless capitalism. Chile was not an isolated case - the long night of dictatorships darkened the continent for more than a decade.

IN 1975, HALF OF LATIN AMERICA'S CITIZENS LIVED UNDER SOME KIND OF REPRESSIVE GOVERNMENT, MOST OF WHICH WERE BACKED BY THE UNITED STATES.

The Allende family - that is, those who didn't die - were taken prisoner, went into hiding, or left the country. My brothers, who were out of the country, did not return. My parents, who were in the embassy in Argentina, remained in Buenos Aires for a while, until they received death threats and had to escape.

Most of my mother's family, on the other hand, were bitterly opposed to the Unidad Popular, and many of them celebrated the military coup with champagne."

[end quote Isabel Allende article]

You can read more of the very interesting information in The Independent (UK) at - Url.:
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2067626.ece

RELATED:

* Indymedia en Santiago de Chile - Url.: http://santiago.indymedia.org/news/2006/12/62250.php

* U.S.-Chile Documents: The memo states that the NSC asked the U.S. Ambassador to Chile ... The memo states that existing U.S. assistance and investments in Chile should be ... more at Url.: www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/nsaebb8.htm

* Declassified Documents Relating to the Military Coup in Chile - Since the coup, however, few U.S. documents relating to Chile have been actually declassified - until recently. Through Freedom of Information Act requests, this is seen at Url.: www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/nsaebb8i.htm

* USA-Chile - The U.S. role in Chile has been an ill-kept secret for over 25 years. In 1975, the U.S. Senate report Covert Action in Chile, 1963-1973 revealed it. - Url.: www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/USA-Chile.htm

Fwd. by:

FOREIGN PRESS FOUNDATION
Editor: Henk Ruyssenaars
http://tinyurl.com/gpr4j
The Netherlands
fpf@chello.nl

FPF-COPYRIGHT NOTICE - In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107 any copyrighted work in this message is distributed by the Foreign Press Foundation under fair use, without profit or payment, to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the information.

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