Through the Bush Looking Glass

[Michael Pollak <mpollak@xxxxxxxxx>]

The New York Times In America
February 12, 2004

The Khan Artist

   By MAUREEN DOWD

   W ASHINGTON

   I think President Bush has cleared up everything now.

   The U.S. invaded Iraq, which turned out not to have what our pals in
   Pakistan did have and were giving out willy-nilly to all the bad guys
   except Iraq, which wouldn't take it.

   Bush officials thought they knew what was going on inside our enemy's
   country: that Iraq had W.M.D. and might sell them on the black market.
   But they were wrong.

   Bush officials thought they knew what was going on inside our friend's
   country: that Pakistanis were trying to sell W.M.D. on the black
   market. But they couldn't prove it until about the time we were
   invading Iraq.

   "The grave and gathering threat" turned out to be not Saddam's
   mushroom cloud but the president's mushrooming deficits.

   The president is having just as hard a time finding his National Guard
   records as Iraqi W.M.D. and those pay stubs look as murky as those
   satellite photos of trucks in Iraq.

   Mr. Bush said yesterday that smaller developing countries must stop
   developing nuclear fuel, even as the U.S. develops a whole new arsenal
   of smaller nuclear weapons to use against smaller developing countries
   that might be thinking about developing nuclear fuel.

   After he weakened the U.N. for telling the truth about Iraq's
   nonexistent W.M.D., Mr. Bush now calls on the U.N. to be strong going
   after W.M.D.

   Gen. Pervez Musharraf pardoned the Pakistani hero and nuclear huckster
   Abdul Qadeer Khan after an embarrassing debacle, praising the
   scientist's service to his country. Mr. Bush pardoned George Tenet
   after an embarrassing debacle, praising the spook's service to his
   country. (So much for Mr. Bush's preachy odes to responsibility and
   accountability.)

   The president warned yesterday that "the greatest threat before
   humanity" is the possibility of a sudden W.M.D. attack. Not wanting
   nuclear technology to go to North Korea, Iran or Libya, the White
   House demanded tighter controls on black-market sales of W.M.D., even
   while praising its good buddy Pakistan, whose scientists were running
   a black market like a Sam's Club for nukes, peddling to North Korea,
   Iran and Libya.

   Mr. Bush likes to present the world in black and white, as good and
   evil, even as he's made a Faustian deal with General Musharraf,
   perhaps hoping that one day maybe even on an October day the cagey
   general will decide to cough up Osama.

   The president is spending $1.5 billion to persuade more Americans to
   have happy married lives, but plans to keep gay Americans from having
   happy married lives.

   Mr. Bush said he wouldn't try to overturn abortion rights. But John
   Ashcroft is intimidating women who had certain abortions by
   subpoenaing records in six hospitals in New York, Philadelphia and
   elsewhere.

   The president set up the intelligence commission (with few
   intelligence experts) because, he said, the best intelligence is
   needed to win the war on terror. Yet he doesn't want us to get the
   panel's crucial report until after he's won the war on Kerry.

   Mr. Bush said he had balked at giving the 9/11 commission the records
   of his daily briefings from the C.I.A. until faced with a subpoena
   threat because it might deter the C.I.A. from giving the president
   "good, honest information." Wasn't it such "good, honest information"
   that caused him to miss 9/11 and mobilize the greatest war machine in
   history against Saddam's empty cupboard?

   Mr. Bush says he's working hard to create new jobs in America, while
   his top economist says it's healthy for jobs to be shipped overseas.

   The president told Tim Russert that if you order a country to disarm
   and it doesn't and you don't act, you lose face. But how does a
   country that goes to war to disarm a country without arms get back its
   face?

   Mr. Bush said he was troubled that the Vietnam War was "a political
   war," because civilian politicians didn't let the generals decide how
   to fight it. But when Gen. Eric Shinseki presciently told Congress in
   February 2003 that postwar Iraq would need several hundred thousand
   U.S. soldiers to keep it secure and supplied, he was swatted down by
   the Bush administration's civilian politicians.

   Yes, it all makes perfect sense, through the Bush looking glass.

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