Freedom From Bush

For the third time in two weeks, President Bush interrupted his vacation to speak in defense of his war in Iraq, using increasingly hyperbolic rhetoric to spin and manipulate public opinion in light of his plummeting approval ratings. “If we just scream loud enough and use words like ‘freedom’ and ‘God,’ the American people will change their minds and like us again.”

But it’s too late. The public is fed up with half-truth and outright deception. Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11, was contained, and had little bearing on our pursuit of Osama and Al Qaeda. Yet just today, in a speech commemorating the end of WWII, the President implied that the war in Iraq had something to do with 9-11. He even compared it to the great war. Yes, both involved people with guns. But that’s where the similarities end.

During the ’04 debates, Bush was asked by an audience member about his track record on the environment. His face reddened and drew into an absurd grin, the kind a teenager sports when caught raiding the cookie jar, and Bush said, almost laughing, that he considered himself a good steward of the environment. Nice words, but a total deception, if not an outright lie. In fact, just this week a secret policy draft by an Interior Department appointee and former Cheney aide demonstrated the Bush environmental hoax perfectly. The policy statement essentially removed protections and redefined the role of the Park Service, allowing an array of destructive, pleasure-based activities previously prohibited. Following the fundamentalist delusion that “God put the Earth here for humans to plunder,” the Bush Administration has presided over wholesale changes to the status of our environmental compact with little explanation and no discussion. He’s been a good steward of the environment like Richard Nixon was good friend of the constitution.

When a jury recently awarded a woman two-hundred-plus million for the Vioxx-related death of her husband, we could almost hear the Bush team howling bloody murder. After all, one of their giant funding sources had been financially hammered. So how long will it take for Republican-sponsored legislation capping or prohibiting lawsuits against big Pharma to surface? They’ve made similar laws before, remember?

When President Bush mentions freedom, what is he really talking about? Freedom to deceive about our rationale for war. Freedom to plunder our national parks. Freedom to commit corporate fraud without consequence. Apparently, that’s what his God wants.