From the Lord It’s Bushit satire newswire
“I think I did something for the worst possible reason — just because I wanted to,” a contrite former President George Walker Bush tells 60 Minutes as his soon-to-be best selling autobiography “My Weapon of Mass Destruction” hit the shelves. The “something” he references is an unbelievably bizarre sequence of events spanning just a few years; from the initial months of his presidency, to the shock and horror of 9/11, to Operation Shock and Awe, the capture and liberation of Private Jessica Lynch, the capture of Saddam Hussein and, finally, the return of the Iraqi government to the Iraqi people.
Four people especially affected by Bush along the way share their retrospective musings with reporters.
“The intelligence we were using for this WMD claim I believed to be insufficient,” Colin Powell tells the BBC, referencing the president’s defense. “I knew then that it was an unsatisfactory position, but I could see in Mr. Bush’s eyes that he would stop short at nothing to go through with it.” When asked whether he believed Mr. Bush had lied to the world, he tries hard to conceal his contempt for former President Bush. “It’s hard to not think that when you hear someone say ‘I wanted to’.”
But is Former Secretary Powell bitter? Not quite. “He has children about as old as the ones he sent to Iraq to assure them that this time [unlike the effort of the previous decade] we are making sure things won’t get worse. And when you remember that this could be his kids, I do believe he was reacting as a parent and not a Commander in Chief.”
Saddam Hussein, given a rare chance for interview in his jail cell, had this to say through an interpreter: “I never thought, from the moment [Former President] Clinton left office, that someone would actually get the UN to make me show them what was in those 47 palaces.” He laughs, his cheeks slightly sunken, a scraggly beard growing on his chin, and takes a sip from a cup of weak tea. “To know that I am here, and Bush sealed his own fate pursuing me on the intelligence given by an Iranian of all people,” he continues, trying to stifle a laugh, “gives me to wonder who he would not have trusted if they said to him ‘Mr. President, we have irrefutible evidence that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction.’”
In this book, former President Bush says that Karl Rove was interested only in seeing just what he could get away with. The man who drove his political machine through the most treacherous of land and weather has a high opinion of himself. “It says a lot about a guy who demands the best and gets Karl Rove to help him. I don’t know that anyone else would have been able to do what I did. To think that months before the election some folks still thought … well, I was paid very well and I did my job. There are only so many people who will hold out hope for something the rest of the world know isn’t coming.”
Rove is retired now, living comfortably. He sits and reads his heavily-thumbed copy of Animal Farm, chuckling to himself whenever Squealer makes an appearance. “And of course,” he goes on to say slowly, “we’re sorry it had to happen that way, but looking back on it I think it was one of my finest hours when I managed to keep the President’s opinion rating so high as everything was starting to come to light. It takes a special effort to get that to happen."
Mr. Rove says that he looks forward to working with the former president again some day. “He brought out the finest work I had. He challenged me to go out there and do the impossible, and it was enormously satisfying to know I could turn [excrement] into gold. I think you do your best work when you’re under pressure from the nation, and to some extent the world, and I think that really showed.”
What Baghdad Bob remembers most fondly is Mr. Bush’s determinism, and his never-surrender courage and heart. Again, through an interpreter, “When I heard that we were going to be bombed, I think to myself no way, this will not happen. He does not have the … we have a phrase for it in Arabic, we call it ‘the essence of the lion.’ Anyway, I say to myself before Operation Hock and Shawl, this will be over any second. And I tell the Iraqi people that they are not being bombed.” He chuckles to himself, then continues, “Maybe a little white lie, but I am supremely confident back in oh, March of a few years back? I know this will not last. That is why I tell the Iraqi people that American pig-dogs will not do what they say they are doing. I think they are just putting on a show trying to make [Former President] Bush look stronger than he is.”
Baghdad Bob pauses and smiles for the camera, adding “You all Americans thought I was just a tool of Saddam … you never thought to think that we Iraqis never in our wildest dream think that [Former President] Bush will do what he says he will do. [Former President] Clinton waved his arms around a lot and bombed some abandoned warehouse or whatever, we think to ourselves ‘Bush will just do the same moving and talking.’ Never expected him to come after us, now look what has happened.”
Baghdad Bob’s only regret is that he did not cash in on his involvement. “You Americans love to sit and scream at the TV even though it cannot hear you, silly beings. You love to talk back to things that don’t talk to you. If I had played my cards right – maybe Karl Rove had helped me – I could have a newspaper column now, Ask Baghdad Bob. I could play on ignoring people’s actual problems, telling them nothing of the sort is going on and to return to their lives. But no, I stay in line one day too long with Mr. Hussein and now …”
Pride goeth before a fall, they say. Supporters point out that it is remarkable how President Bush endured the country’s protests, the world’s disagreement with his effort to secure the world – from what has yet to be determined – and to ensure that he would never be forgotten. Others say that the former president might share a portion of the blame since, after all, he did order Operation Shock and Awe. No one really knows what history will say, but now that Mr. Bush has confessed all, perhaps history will be kind, and record that in the end he said, “I cannot tell a lie. I did invade that country under false pretenses.”
