"I understand the anguish that some feel about the death that takes place." - George W. Bush, August 11th, 2005
Dear American:
Like everyone else, I thought I could mind my own life and wait. Like everyone else, I thought, 'Surely it can't get much worse!' So I minded my own modest business and said nothing.
But now I have to speak.
I deal in words. Words are my vocation and avocation. And today I've read words that I cannot abide. Words that chill my soul. If anyone else in the world would have said it, it would have been reprehensible. If Hitler had said it, our ancestors would've gasped. But it's far too reptilian to have come from the leader of the United States. We can only imagine how cold a heart must be to say:
"I understand the anquish that SOME feel..."
Words have denotative and connotative definitions. They have their dictionary definitions and the definitions we assign them personally (and publicly) through association. Everyone knows that.
This literal and associative semantic analysis holds when we heap words together into sentences. Everyone knows instinctively that words often have a meaning deeper than just the surface arrangement of their concepts.
With that in mind, I want to examine "I understand the anguish that some feel about the death that takes place."
Everyone who pays attention knows the history of George W. Bush. He was the wild oldest son of former President, George Herbert Walker Bush. Whether he did cocaine, he won't say. But he has admitted that he was an alcoholic before giving his life to Jesus.
From all evidence Jesus has done a lot with old George since he took him over. George became the Governor of Texas where he set the spiritual record of executing more prisoners than any Governor in any of the United States. He's number one!
Then came the election of 2000....
Stealing elections must make him nervous. Remember? When he was running against the stiff and erudite Al Gore, George just couldn't talk right. Stupid people everywhere loved him for it and voted for him instead of that stuck up "edjumicated idjit".
And once Bush and his father's henchmen had stolen the Presidency—why!—suddenly George could read a speech and give extemporaneous interviews without talking like someone with an injury on the left side of their brain. His "I cain't talk good" act was clearly an act. If you're that linquistically challenged you don't get over it overnight. Not even if you suddenly find yourself almighty. It was part of the plan.
We've had all sorts of other clues to the personality of George W. Bush along the way. And it is personality that gives the greatest clues to the true meaning of words. So, to review what we all know—
1.] His record as the master executioner in Texas juxtaposed his professed Christianity shouldn't be forgotten.
2.] His teachers and classmates at Yale have gone on record as saying that he didn't like poor people and thought they deserved whatever they got.
3.] The first thing he did in office was to rob the people of the greatest surplus we'd ever had and give it away to his super-rich friends.
4.] His vice-president, his secretary of war, his advisers, and his brother signed a document, published during the Clinton Administration, that called for a "new Pearl Harbor" to get the people behind a plan for world domination that he is carrying it out.
5.] Shortly into his stolen presidency the new Pearl Harbor of September 11th, 2001 set Mr Bush out on a glorious "crusade" to leave no stone unturned in the world until the horrific murderers of over three thousand that day were found. In our sorrow, he swore he'd bring those responsible to justice.
6.] He bombed the rocks out of Afghanistan where the purported mastermind of the World Trade Center bombings was said to be hiding. But, later, not long into the Iraq war, Mr Bush said that he wasn't really interested in where Osama Bin Laden was. I guess Jesus talked George out of his extreme belief in capital punishment. Why otherwise would "The Lethal-Injection Ranger" express no interest in Osama being brought to justice? Would recent revelations by a World Trade Center janitor in a court of law that bombs went off in the basement of Tower One just before it collapsed reveal a possible explanation? Was 9/11 the "new Pearl Harbor" his advisors saw the need for? Of course George couldn't be that heartless! Surely he more than understood our national anquish!
7.] Then he spent a year beating the war drum against Saddam Hussein. Saddam had WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION! Saddam was directly linked to INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM!
I haven't been in that many fights. Don't like them. But I do know that when you're planning to jump someone you don't spend almost a full year telling them that you're going to do it.
I'm sorry. Saddam was certainly not nice. But he didn't stay in power as long as he did by being stupid. And you'd have to be dumber than furniture to have billions of dollars while the world's superpower spends a year shouting that its coming to get you; then when they do you don't have a better escape plan than a coffin-sized hole in the ground.
And this sad soul they found in the hole has been proclaimed NOT to be Saddam by Saddam's own wife of many years. I remember that you used to hear, in almost every report about Saddam, that he used many doubles to insure his personal security. Since they caught the guy in the hole you never hear a word about the doubles. Odd, isn't it?
8.] An oil pipeline that the Taliban had prohibited across the northern part of Afghanistan was built by the big oil companies shortly after the conquest of Afghanstan. Richard Bruce Cheney, while he was supposed to be on duty as our vice-president, was in Afghanistan in early 2001 trying to broker a deal with the Taliban for the pipeline. The Taliban said no way. Cheney said we'll see.
How many have died for HALLIBURTON?
9.] The justifiation for our invasion of Iraq was supposed to have been that they had weapons of mass destruction and were linked with Al Qaeda. Okay...both of those assumptions proved to be completely false. So then we weren't there tracking down the killers of 9/11. We were there to liberate the Iraqis! Yeah, that's the ticket!
Well we've liberated a hell of a lot of them from their fleshly envelopes. AND a lot of American young have died thinking that the President of the United States wouldn't have asked them to risk their lives unless it were truly necessary. Was it absolutely necessary that their deaths "take place?"
10.] Since the misplanned, ill-conceived War Against Iraq began 1865 children of American mothers have died in combat.
And George W. Bush can say no more, after the mother of one of those dead stakes out a piece of ditch near his "vacation ranch" in Crawford, Texas, than this:
"I understand the anguish that some feel
about the death that takes place."
The first Republican president was Abraham Lincoln. Though he had to oversee a great and bloody war to preserve the Union, he was a truly caring man. He didn't call himself a "compassionate conservative." But no one could doubt his compassion.
Abraham Lincoln frequently visited the hospitals to comfort wounded soldiers. One day he saw a young man who was near death. "Is there anything I can do for you?" asked President Lincoln. The young man didn't recognize Lincoln.
"Please write a letter to my mother," came the reply. Lincoln sat down and let the young man dictate to him.
The letter read:
"My Dearest Mother, I was badly hurt while doing my duty, and I won't recover. Don't sorrow too much for me. May God bless you and Father. Kiss Mary and John for me." The young man was too weak to go on, so Lincoln signed the letter for him and then added this postscript: "Written for your son by Abraham Lincoln."
Asking to see the note, the soldier was amazed. "Are you really our President?!" he asked.
"Yes," was the quiet answer. "Now, is there anything else I can do?"
The young soldier said, "Will you please hold my hand? I think it would help to see me through to the end." The first Republican president held his hand until he died.
The first Republican president would never have said to a grieving mother:
"I understand the anquish that some feel about the death that takes place."
The reptilian ring of those words would be less chilling if another man had said them.
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August 14,2005 By: Hypatia Clark, Secretary of The Evangelos Society
