"You don't have money to fund the war or children," said Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.). "But you're going to spend it to blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the President's amusement."
On the floor of the House of Representatives, October 18, 2007.
Building a case to connect George Bush with Adolf Eichmann, brush clearing with meticulous mopping, with meticulously executed executions. Precision. Banality. The banality of evil. The history is there:
When George W. Bush was 16 or so, the frogs in the pond outside his boyhood home in Midland, Tex., weren't the only targets the future president shot at with his trusty BB gun.
"He said, 'I'm going to count to 10, and you run all the way down the hall,' " the president's little brother, Neil Bush, recalled at a Utah Republican Party dinner in Provo two years ago, according to the Deseret News.
Big brother drawing a bead on the backsides of siblings Neil and Jeb must have left a mark because Neil also told the story to a class of Richmond second-graders. "I was running as fast as I can with my little lightweight summer pj's on, and then '7, 8, 9, 10!' Boom! I felt it on my right [butt] cheek," the Richmond.com news reported his recounting.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Somewhat later, a story of Bush’s frat days at Yale even made the New York Times in 1967:
Cartoonist Garry Trudeau '70 said he thinks a little-known fact about President George W. Bush '68's past -- that his first mention in The New York Times occurred in 1967 when, as former president of the Delta Kappa Epsilon chapter at Yale, Bush defended the fraternity's practice of branding its pledges with a red-hot coat hanger -- deserves more national attention.
On Sunday, Trudeau's cartoon "Doonesbury" featured fictional character Mark Slackmeyer explaining the President's position against current anti-torture legislation by revisiting a series of 1967 Yale Daily News articles that exposed DKE's rush activities, which at the time included brandings and alleged beatings. Soon after these stories were published, the University's Inter-Fraternity Council fined the fraternity for performing "physically and mentally degrading acts," and the Times published an article in which Bush defended the brandings, comparing them to cigarette burns.
http://www.yaledailynews.com/...
Bush has also been infamously called "The Texecutioner." Anthony Lewis is a bit more circumspect in his assessment of the Bush:
There have been questions all along about the depth and seriousness of George W. Bush. They have been brought into sharp focus now by a surprising issue: the way the death penalty is administered in Texas. In his comments on that subject Governor Bush has defined himself, unforgettably, as shallow and callous.
In his five years as governor of Texas, the state has executed 131 prisoners -- far more than any other state. Mr. Bush has lately granted a stay of execution for the first time, for a DNA test.
In answer to questions about that record, Governor Bush has repeatedly said that he has no qualms. "I'm confident," he said last February, "that every person that has been put to death in Texas under my watch has been guilty of the crime charged, and has had full access to the courts."
That defense of the record ignores many notorious examples of unfairness in Texas death penalty cases. Lawyers have been under the influence of cocaine during the trial, or been drunk or asleep. One court dismissed a complaint about a lawyer who slept through a trial with the comment that courts are not "obligated to either constantly monitor trial counsel's wakefulness or endeavor to wake counsel should he fall asleep."
This past week The Chicago Tribune published a compelling report on an investigation of all 131 death cases in Governor Bush's time. It made chilling reading. . . .
http://www.commondreams.org/...
One must also mention in passing Bush’s infamous interview with Tucker Carlson regarding Karla Faye Tucker, as reported in National Review, no less:
In the week before [Karla Faye Tucker's] execution, Bush says, Bianca Jagger and a number of other protesters came to Austin to demand clemency for Tucker. "Did you meet with any of them?" I ask.
Bush whips around and stares at me. "No, I didn't meet with any of them," he snaps, as though I've just asked the dumbest, most offensive question ever posed. "I didn't meet with Larry King either when he came down for it. I watched his interview with [Tucker], though. He asked her real difficult questions, like 'What would you say to Governor Bush?' "
"What was her answer?" I wonder.
"Please," Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, "don't kill me."
This charming little vignette comes from Tucker Carlson's profile of George W. Bush in the premiere issue of Talk. Carlson's attitude toward Bush is clearly positive. But the profile is nonetheless devastating, because Carlson is a good reporter who's captured his subject's unattractive aspects as well as his appealing ones.
http://www.nationalreview.com/...
One grows bored with the banality of Bush’s cruelty. Unfortunately, banality is the rule of law in a goodly part of America and we are saddled with this. . . this freak of a president.
And his obsessive preoccupation with clearing brush at his Crawford Ranch. It evokes Hannah Arendt’s depiction of war criminal Adolf Eichmann in prison, obsessed with the precise mopping of the floor of his prison cell, so many strokes this way, so many strokes that way–irrational anger if his careful and meticulous housekeeping is interrupted, his pattern of preciseness destroyed.
That image of Eichmann and his careful housekeeping, imprinted upon me on a young and impressionable age, has always been with me. And, I have hated and feared thorough housekeeping--things astray reassure me, a hint of chaos means compassion, I don’t know.
And, I am made uncomfortable by the photo op shots of Bush in Katrina-stricken Louisiana, our fearless leader in rolled up sleeves, his entire person immaculate and pressed and tidy, controlled, save for the carefully rolled up sleeves. . .
Or, a shot of Bush clearing brush. Have you ever looked at his gloves? Brand new. Not a drop of sweat upon them. No soil, no grunge, no untidiness. So precise. So careful.
Or photographs of his hands. So soft and manicured. No ugly calluses marring them, subject of the many photographs of Josh Bolten, Bush's chief of staff. One wonders what Adolf Eichmann's hands looked like. . .
So many strokes this way. Exactly.
So many strokes that way. Exactly.
Merely cigarette burns. Death is so tidy.