Confessions of a Bush 43 admirer turned hater
I haven't always disrespected President Bush. Quite the contrary, after
the
Twin Towers fell, I was one of his biggest fans. He made me proud to be an
American.
Because of George W.'s soul-stirring leader****p (who could forget the
bullhorn speech to firefighters and cops at the smoldering Twin Tower
site?), I flew a small Stars & Stripes on my car antennae, hung a bigger
flag on my house and displayed a "United We Stand" poster in the front
room
window.
When we attacked Afghanistan, I was an enthusiastic Bush cheerleader and
couldn't wait to see Osama bin Laden get the justice he deserved. Then
something odd happened.
Instead of capturing the evildoer, cleaning up Afghanistan, hunting down
Al
Qaeda, concentrating on homeland security and rebuilding our economy, the
president and his advisors began a steady drumbeat about the "imminent"
threat posed by Iraq.
In the winter of 2002, the tension escalated when Vice President Cheney
went
on "Meet the Press" and said Saddam Hussein was developing an atomic bomb.
Well, being a former USAF pilot and SAC combat crewmember familiar with
nuclear warfare, the Veep's charge got my attention big time.
Because of that potential horror?atomic Armageddon?Cheney's televised
warning captured my imagination and I agreed with his conclusion
completely.
The idea of nukes in the hands of a madman like Saddam Hussein was totally
unacceptable.
My alarm increased even more when President Bush alleged in his 2003 State
of the Union message that Iraq was buying uranium from Africa as well as
aluminum tubes for making centrifuges to concentrate the U235. The
assertions were my last straw and put me firmly in the White House camp,
as
they did Congress. I never wavered. I was 100% for attacking Iraq, totally
gung ho-all the way, USA.
When the invasion began in April 2003, you couldn't have pulled me away
from
my TV set with bomb threats or offers of free gold. Being a retired
person,
I had the luxury of sleeping in during the day and staying up all night,
riding with our troops on CNN as they roared out of Kuwait in a mighty
wave
of steel and raced north towards Baghdad and victory.
Talk about great television!
Or so I thought at the time.
My euphoria eva****ated a few weeks later when I realized that Bush had
jumped the gun instead of giving U.N. weapons inspectors more time looking
for Saddam's so-called WMDs.
Our occupation that should've been liberation also upset me. I'm not an
expert on the Middle East, but it didn't compute in my brain that the way
to
win hearts and minds in Iraq is by breaking into homes, scaring the crap
out
of woman and children with M16s, shouting orders in pidgin Arabic, hauling
away traditional weapons like the AK47 along with blindfolded relatives
suspected of being Baath Party loyalists, whom we financed in the war
against Iran.
How angry would you get if Iraqi soldiers in a white pickup truck stopped
in
front of your house tonight, broke down your door, aimed AK47s at your
family and demanded to know if you were a Republican and owned a shotgun?
Would not such treatment make you want to retaliate with pipe bombs and
Molotov cocktails? God, I hope so. If not, the American Revolution was
fought in vain.
------------------------------------------
Hugh E. Scott, Vietnam vet, lifelong registered Republican, John Kerry
backer in 2004, ARDENT Obama sup****ter and the editor of
www.PhonyFighterPilot.com -- the only website about George W. Bush that
presents irrefutable, smoking-gun proof of White House corruption.
http://www.phonyfighterpilot.com/
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