Saturday, November 20, 2010

George W. Bush: Dupe or Deceiver?

By Robert Parry
November 20, 2010

George W. Bush’s memoir, Decision Points, is without doubt a self-serving defense of his presidency – and Bush’s own words condemn him as a liar – but there is another nagging question that surrounds this curious book: Has the U.S. media/political system become so polluted with falsehoods that even people at the top now believe the propaganda?

Read on.

9 comments:

bluewombat said...

I vote for "deceiver." While Bush convincingly appears to be a pathetic dimwit, he has a kind of feral shrewdness which no genuinely stupid person could possess. If there were some evidence that he felt remorse for his policies or that he attempted to seek out other points of view but was blocked from doing so by Machiavellian advisers intent on frustrating his natural humanitarianism, I might think otherwise. But I don't.

Deceiver.

Big Em said...

Like the commenter above, I too would strongly vote for 'deceiver'. Some of the additional points not STRESSED in this article were that 1.) Iraq was powerless, being under the ongoing sanctions of the US embargo started during the Clinton era (and resulting in a reported 500,000 deaths of children and civilians), 2.) Iraq had NOT attacked anyone in over a decade, 3.) the invasion plans for Iraq were brought-up within 10 days of Bush's 2001 inauguration, according to reports from his cabinet, 4.) Bush expressed a strong belief to a biographer that the only way to be a 'significant' president was to be a war-time president 5.) Bush/the world had a MAJOR alternative to attacking a non-belligerent/de-fanged Iraq: NOT attacking them and WAITING FOR MORE INFORMATION. Yeah it's not as 'macho', and you don't get to play 'war-time leader' and dress up in flight-suits to do a faux-landing on an aircraft-carrier (to help the world and yourself forget that you had dodged the draft when you COULD have been a real solder), but it's so! SO! much less fatal, less injurious, less disruptive, and even less costly of an alternative.

I don't know, nor at this point particularly care, what W's inner psyche is like, but I would suspect that he's a bit sociopathic and can construct alternative interior versions of reality that he can 'take-on' as 'real' and appear to sincerely believe in, though he may be aware of facts that utterly destroy his alternate reality. He can fit these realities to the occasion at hand and not be bothered by any conflicts with reality.

And let's not forget that as evil as W was, this country 'elected' him a SECOND time, AFTER a lot of this was known (or becoming known) which says some horribly negative things about us....

Morton Kurzweil said...

Self deception, like masturbation, results in an orgasm confused as an epiphany. Coming off a life long drunk, George W. Bush found God during an after dinner talk with Billy Graham.
He never understood that it wasn't God who was lost; it was the hubris of believing that God was looking for him.
God put the OK on the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions, and 9/11 and Katrina were tests, knowing what his leadership could bear.
Enough of the Crackpotism of belief.

rosemerry said...

According to Paul O'Neill,who was there, Bush spoke of invading Iraq (and of leaving Israel to deal with the Palestinians) in his very first meeting in January 2001, using the neocon argument provided in "Clean Break" to Netanyahu in 1996 and enlarged in the PNAC document. It was festering and waiting to be found a pretext. "Hard decision"? Not really. Deceiver? who knows.

Anonymous said...

Deceiver: he honestly doesn't care.

Anonymous said...

There was always good reason to think the mind of George W. Bush was a bit childish and confused and that his confusion and childishness extended into his grasp of reality.

In this context, it is not clear how to distinguish whether he was deceived or a deceiver, probably he was and is both. His reality was shaped by the deception of others, but that does not mean he would avoid deceiving others to achieve his own ends.

Anonymous said...

Have we all forgotten how 'Two Years Before 9/11, Candidate Bush was Already Talking Privately About Attacking Iraq, According to His Former Ghost Writer'
by Russ Baker?
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1028-01.htm

Have we also forgotten how Bush refused to go anywhere to discuss his 'decisions', whether it was before the 9/11 Commission or before Patrick Fitzgerald's grand jury, without holding Dick Cheney's hand?

Then there was congressman Paul Kanjorski's account of a meeting at the White House where the CIA produced falsified evidence to support Bush's case to go to war in Iraq: http://www.counterpunch.org/brasch09032007.html
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/05/26/dick-cheneys-torture-kabuki/
http://emptywheel.firedoglake. com/2009/05/19/torture-appropriations/

And how can we have forgotten this?:
Report Says Hussein Was Open To Exile Before 2003 Invasion
http://articles.cnn.com/2005-11-02/world/saddam.exile_1_uae-arab-league-hussein-aide?_s=PM:WORLD
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9864433/ns/world_news-mideast/n_africa


Secret US plans for Iraq's oil
By Greg Palast

The Bush administration made plans for war and for Iraq's oil before the 9/11 attacks, sparking a policy battle between neo-cons and Big Oil, BBC's Newsnight has revealed.

Two years ago today - when President George Bush announced US, British and Allied forces would begin to bomb Baghdad - protesters claimed the US had a secret plan for Iraq's oil once Saddam had been conquered.

In fact there were two conflicting plans, setting off a hidden policy war between neo-conservatives at the Pentagon, on one side, versus a combination of "Big Oil" executives and US State Department "pragmatists".

"Big Oil" appears to have won. The latest plan, obtained by Newsnight from the US State Department was, we learned, drafted with the help of American oil industry consultants.

Insiders told Newsnight that planning began "within weeks" of Bush's first taking office in 2001, long before the September 11th attack on the US.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/4354269.stm

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Oil_and_War_in_Iraq


The only building that Coalition forces secured after the invasion of Iraq was the Oil Ministry? Coalition forces stood back while the entire country of Iraq fell into lawlessness.

Anonymous said...

Have we all forgotten how 'Two Years Before 9/11, Candidate Bush was Already Talking Privately About Attacking Iraq, According to His Former Ghost Writer'
by Russ Baker?
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1028-01.htm

Have we also forgotten how Bush refused to go anywhere to discuss his 'decisions', whether it was before the 9/11 Commission or before Patrick Fitzgerald's grand jury, without holding Dick Cheney's hand?

Then there was congressman Paul Kanjorski's account of a meeting at the White House where the CIA produced falsified evidence to support Bush's case to go to war in Iraq: http://www.counterpunch.org/brasch09032007.html
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/05/26/dick-cheneys-torture-kabuki/
http://emptywheel.firedoglake. com/2009/05/19/torture-appropriations/

And how can we have forgotten this?:
Report Says Hussein Was Open To Exile Before 2003 Invasion
http://articles.cnn.com/2005-11-02/world/saddam.exile_1_uae-arab-league-hussein-aide?_s=PM:WORLD
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9864433/ns/world_news-mideast/n_africa

Anonymous said...

Secret US plans for Iraq's oil
By Greg Palast

The Bush administration made plans for war and for Iraq's oil before the 9/11 attacks, sparking a policy battle between neo-cons and Big Oil, BBC's Newsnight has revealed.

Two years ago today - when President George Bush announced US, British and Allied forces would begin to bomb Baghdad - protesters claimed the US had a secret plan for Iraq's oil once Saddam had been conquered.

In fact there were two conflicting plans, setting off a hidden policy war between neo-conservatives at the Pentagon, on one side, versus a combination of "Big Oil" executives and US State Department "pragmatists".

"Big Oil" appears to have won. The latest plan, obtained by Newsnight from the US State Department was, we learned, drafted with the help of American oil industry consultants.

Insiders told Newsnight that planning began "within weeks" of Bush's first taking office in 2001, long before the September 11th attack on the US.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/4354269.stm

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Oil_and_War_in_Iraq


The only building that Coalition forces secured after the invasion of Iraq was the Oil Ministry? Coalition forces stood back while the entire country of Iraq fell into lawlessness.


I think both words, dupe and deceiver, are too kind.

George W. Bush is a war criminal, and everyone who is protecting him and preventing justice from being done is a co-conspirator.