When a s**t sandwich finally comes unstuck

It's worth reading this Time article, which chronicles the last hours of the Bush administration in regard to Dick Cheney's obsession with getting a pardon for Scooter Libby. This is quite an historic thing. George Bush and Dick Cheney were stuck together like a .......ahem...s**t sandwich for eight years. And yet, George Bush, in this episode, finally proved himself capable of taking a decision without Dick Cheney's acquiescence. Incredible.

Bush lives

....And now he's got time to watch basketball matches. Bless.

The poodle gets his chocky snack

Two shoe-ins

Say what you like about George Bush, but there's nothing wrong with his reflexes.

Enjoy the slow motion remix version:

George Bush's "shake 'n' squirt" habit

Taegan Goddard offers a timely quote from Barack Obama's book "Audacity of Hope" relating Obama's first meeting with George W Bush.

What tickles me is that when Bush shakes hands with someone he immediately uses a "squirt" of hand sanitizer so that he doesn't catch anything from that person.

Endearing, eh?

The inside of the White House doesn't have the luminous quality that you might expect from television or film; it seems well kept but worn, a big old house that one imagines might be a bit drafty on cold winter nights.

On a chilly January afternoon in 2005, the day before my swearing-in as a senator, I was invited there with other new members of Congress. At 1600 hours on the dot, President Bush was announced and walked to the podium, looking vigorous and fit, with that jaunty, determined walk that suggests he's on a schedule and wants to keep detours to a minimum.

For 10 or so minutes he spoke to the room, making a few jokes, calling for the country to come together, before inviting us for refreshments and a picture with him and the First Lady... "Obama!" he said, shaking my hand. "Come here and meet Laura. Laura, you remember Obama. We saw him on TV during election night. Beautiful family. And that wife of yours - that's one impressive lady.""We both got better than we deserve, Mr. President," I said, shaking the First Lady's hand and hoping that I'd wiped any crumbs off my face.The president turned to an aide nearby, who squirted a big dollop of hand sanitizer in the president's hand."Want some?" the president asked. "Good stuff. Keeps you from getting colds." Not wanting to seem unhygienic, I took a squirt.

"Come over here for a second," he said, leading me off to one side of the room."You know," he said quietly, "I hope you don't mind me giving you a piece of advice.""Not at all, Mr. President." He nodded. "You've got a bright future," he said. "Very bright. But I've been in this town a while and, let me tell you, it can be tough. When you get a lot of attention like you've been getting, people start gunnin' for ya. And it won't necessarily just be coming from my side, you understand. From yours, too. Everybody'll be waiting for you to slip. Know what I mean? So watch yourself.""Thanks for the advice, Mr. President.""All right. I gotta get going.

You know, me and you got something in common.""What's that?" "We both had to debate Alan Keyes. That guy's a piece of work, isn't he?"I laughed, and as we walked to the door I told him a few stories from the campaign.It wasn't until he had left the room that I realized I had briefly put my arm over his shoulder as we talked -- an unconscious habit of mine, but one that I suspected might have made many of my friends, not to mention the Secret Service agents in the room, more than a little uneasy.

Freudian slip?

This is a beaut.

From Political Wire:

Because John Bush - because John McCain is very much his own man.

-- Former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, on MSNBC commenting on Sen. John McCain's acceptance speech last night.

You can see him saying it on You Tube below:

Dubya's hypocrisy

I don't usually take much notice of web polls. But this poll on CNN.com caught my eye:

Is U.S. President George W. Bush in a good position to criticize China's record on human rights and free speech?

So far 4274 have voted yes. 12281 have voted no. It is difficult to think of any recent US President who would receive such a "no" vote.

Recently, LibDem Voice ran an entertaining competition about George Bush's epitaph. In retrospect, perhaps his epitaph should be "Gauntanamo".

Bush finally gets round to taking Mandela off the US Terror list

Unbelievable.

US President George W Bush has signed a bill removing Nelson Mandela and South African leaders from the US terror watch list, officials say.
Mr Mandela and ANC party members will now be able to visit the US without a waiver from the secretary of state.

Is George Bush the world's most despised person?

I only ask because of this interesting letter to the Guardian's Weekend magazine last Saturday:

In view of the repetitive response to the Q&A's "Which living person do you most despise and why?", should this be rephrased to: "Other than George Bush, which living person..."?

Anthony Pozniak
Uxbridge, Middlesex

George W Bush wins today's "No S**t Sherlock" award

President George W Bush has admitted that his bellicose rhetoric about Iraq encouraged the world to form a mistaken impression of him as a warmonger.

Embarking on his final visit to Europe as president, Mr Bush said his gun-slinging talk leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq made the world think he was a "guy really anxious for war" against Saddam Hussein.

Claiming he had been misunderstood, Mr Bush expressed regret, saying: "I think that in retrospect I could have used a different tone, a different rhetoric."

He said using phrases such as "bring them on" and "dead or alive", had "indicated to people that I was, you know, not a man of peace".

Never!

Do I detect that Dubya is already attempting, however haltingly and with his pen held in his fist, to re-write history? If so, I fear that his efforts may be confounded by Oliver Stone.

Bush: Americans show great discernment - eight years too late

I have been waiting for this moment for a long time. George W Bush "has now become the most unpopular president since the Gallup Poll began asking the question 70 years ago."

So, he's more unpopular than Harry S Truman during the Korean War in 1952.

He's more unpopular than Jimmy Carter when his helicopters broke n the desert and he appeared on TV with wobbly legs/fainting while he was running.

He's more unpopular than Richard Nixon when he was revealed as a foul mouthed white-washer.

And Bush's "surge" plan is showing some benefits in Iraq.

I salute the discernment of the US public. It's a pity that it's eight years too late.

And to think some people predicted that Bush would be another Reagan.....!

Bush is the only person keeping the 'General with no name' in power

It is with considerable satisfaction that I read that the stuffing has been knocked out of Pervez Musharraf.

He is in a 'sulk'. He is "isolated" and "exposed". He has retreated into a "mental bunker". His "aura is fading". He is "obviously not in power". He no longer has "fire in his belly". A supporter says he might not have the stomach for a "Custer's last stand" against an impeachment motion. Even the police have become half-hearted in their treatment of protesting lawyers (one even shaking hands and smiling with one of the protesters).

Oh dear. How awful!

The one thing keeping Musharraf in power is the stalwart support of George W Bush.

Ironic, really isn't it ? In 1999 he didn't even know his name.

The man who will play Bush in the movie

This is Josh Brolin, who will play Bush in Bush:The Movie (or whatever it is eventually called - suggestions?)

Oliver Stone is audaciously planning to make a film of George W Bush's life and release it on the same day that Bush leaves office.

His previous Presidential films (JFK, Nixon) have been released well after their subject left office and died. So he's obviously planning something substantial.

I can hardly wait. Let's just say that he has a broad canvass to work with !

I particularly look forward to the portrayal of the Fratboy years, the incident where Bush choked on a pretzel leaving his dogs in charge of the nuclear deterrent and, of course, the Alabama Years, when Bush went AWOL from his national service (in turn to avoid Vietnam service) by working for some obscure Senate campaign in Alabama. It's all going to be fascinating.

George Bush visits the misery he created

For a moment, I was rejoicing when I read on the Guardian's front page that George Bush had said, in respect of Israel, that "There should be an end to the occupation that began in 1967". On the face of it, that is encouraging.

Sadly my euphoria only lasted until I got to page 22. A strap line read: "US leader implies largest settlements will remain":

The future borders of a Palestinian state, he said, would "require mutually agreed adjustments to the armistice lines of 1949 to reflect current realities".

The use of the phrase "current realities" is a concession to the Israelis that "the largest settlements would remain".

Oh. Dear.

There are two things which have long infuriated me about the Bush administration. One is Guantanamo. The other is Bush's utterly stupid and destructive policy on Israel v Palestine. When you compare the nuanced, concerned, intelligent (though admittedly flawed) policy of Bill Clinton, the Bush policy is enough to make one weep.

He deserves the other headline, over an article by Jonathan Steele, in the Guardian which heralded his arrival in Israel:

Welcome, Mr President, to the misery you've created

Uncle Sam runs out of troops

So Bush is to announce a reduction, next year, in US troops in Iraq.

But the only reason he is doing it is because the USA, bless them, have run out of troops, or will do next year if they don't radically reduce their deployments.

It's nothing to do with the Iraqi political system and its army and police force being able to take the strain. We were told that was the reason for the troops being there in the first place - to enable an orderly transition.

What a mess!

The chilling clarity (and silence) of John Bolton, US Neocon

If you missed it, it's worth listening to the interview with John Bolton, former (unconfirmed) US Ambassador to the UN, on Radio Four's PM tonight (it's about 15 minutes in).

George Bush is forever banging on about spreading democracy across the world. Indeed, one of his retirement plans is to set up a "Freedom Centre", to encourage international democracy.

It is remarkable that George Bush's enthusiasm for world democracy stops at the Pakistani border. It's as if there is a sort of force field around Pakistan that flips Bush's logic on its head, unexplained, cheerfully accepting a dictatorship.

Mr Bolton, with chilling clarity, explained why this is. Basically, Musharraf has nukes and is cracking down on Al-Qaeda. Hold onto nurse for fear of something worse.

So, democracy is fine. But where there are nukes held and terrorists to crack down on, a dictator is best.

Bolton put it as protecting "command and control". The US, therefore, prefers "command and control" under a dictator than under a democracy. In Pakistan.

It all goes back to that interview before George Bush's election when he was asked the name of the new leader of Pakistan. "General" he answered. "General who?" pressed the interviewer. "General" replied Bush with one of his frat boy smirks.

It was amusing at the time, but, upon reflection now, it reveals, perhaps, a deeper truth. I suspect that Bush didn't actually care which General was in charge. He was just happy with it being a General who was a "good man".

The PM interview had one remarkable aspect. John Bolton said that terrorist-searching efforts in Pakistan "take priority over democracy". Interviewer Eddie Mair allowed Bolton to expand on his answer by pausing.

I actually joined the interview a this point, listening on Long Wave. There was a long silence (ten seconds long in the end). I wondered whether I was about to treated to an Emergency Test Match Special ("The Batsman's Holding, the Bowler's Throat") or a Hurricane-strength Shipping Forecast. But no. It was a sort of Mexican Stand-off. As Eddie Mair says on his blog, he (Mair) "blinked first" and asked: "Why?"

John Bolton was not born yesterday.

It reminds me of the advice I have always been given for speaking with auditors:

Answer the question, then stop talking.

Vindication for Ming on Iraq - Brown is exposed as Bush's Poodle 2

I have blogged fairly regularly about Ming Campbell's strong and authoritative interventions on Iraq, which have often been backed up by his conversations with army commanders on the ground.

Last month, Ming was asking why British soldiers seemed to be lingering in Iraq simply to shore up a lame duck US President. Gordon Brown replied to Ming's letter on the matter, saying that the soldiers were in Iraq based on British interests.

Well, today comes vindication for Ming - in spades. And a major embarrassment for Brown who is exposed as Bush's Poodle 2:

LONDON (AFP) - Britain was prepared to withdraw its forces from the southern Iraqi city of Basra in April, but held off for five months after the United States asked it to stay, Britain's military commander in Iraq said in an interview published on Monday.

Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, Brigadier James Bashall, commander of 1 Mechanised Brigade, said that he wanted to leave Britain's Basra Palace base in April, something he said would have been "the right thing to do."

"In April we could have come out and done the transition completely and that would have been the right thing to do but politics prevented that," Bashall, 44, told the paper.

"The Americans asked us to stay for longer," he said, adding the decision to stay in the city was a result of "political strategy being played out at highest level."

"Political strategy being played out at highest level" ? That's a very grand way of saying:

"Covering George W Bush's posterior"

So, if a parent has a son or daughter in Iraq and they were in Basra between April and September, they were put at risk (indeed many injured and some killed) not for "Queen and country", not even for "Uncle Sam" (given that the Congress is mostly against the "surge") but "To save George Bush's bottom".

Marvellous.

Bush: 'We're kicking ass' in Iraq

Oh well, that's alright then.

At least, I suppose, you can't accuse him of verbosity.

George Bush's priorities after office: Money and teaching people to repeat his mistakes

The New York Times reviews Robert Draper's book "Dead Certain", about George W Bush.

It gives some fascinating glimpses into the priorities of the great man.

Take his plans after leaving office. He wants to make lots of money and establish a "Freedom Institute" to tell young people how to mess up countries - like he did in Iraq:

Mr. Draper quotes him saying that he plans to build a 'Freedom Institute,' a sort of think tank where young leaders from abroad can learn about democracy. Mr. Bush, who has a net worth estimated at $8 million to $21 million, also said he would like to make some money -- 'replenish the ol’ coffers,' as he put it.""He said he could make 'ridiculous' money out on the lecture circuit: 'I don’t know what my dad gets. But it’s more than fifty, seventy-five' thousand dollars a speech."

He can make "ridiculous money", can he? Has anyone told George W that his dad actually had a brain?

Thanks to Political Wire.

A tiny tick could have brought down the world's most powerful man

Lyme disease is an appalling illness, spread by ticks, which can be prevented by simple precautions such as tucking your trousers into your socks when you go for a country walk.

President George Bush can count himself lucky that, in his case, it was spotted early on and dealt with.