I prefer my heroes with clay feet. Hard on the heels of the ugly revelations about Court TV's Nancy Grace comes the following from the Dallas Morning News. "Mr. Bush seemed unfazed by the security risks as he moved quickly around Kabul for four hours, meeting with Mr. Karzai, U.S. Embassy workers and American and foreign forces at Bagram Air Base. Mr. Bush ordered Air Force One, on a flight to India, to make a secret detour to this war-scarred country to show U.S. support for the fledgling democracy led by Mr. Karzai, whose authority has been weakened by suicide bombings and rising insurgent violence."
What a hero! Except, oh yea, Dick Cheney has been to Afghanistan before. And so has Laura. And, oh yeah, he didn't drop into Kabul on a spur of the moment death defying leap through burning hoops, as the DMN account implies. According to the same wire reports the DMN story was "taken from", Mr. Bush got from the Kabul airport to the city in a "fleet of helicopters." Somebody made some rather impressive security arrangements in advance; so much for a "detour" by Air Force One.
The security was clearly required. The door gunner on the press copter even had to unleash a couple of rounds at "something" on the ground. But you don't read about that in the DMN account. The only hero in their version is Bush himself. And evidently, Mr. Bush flying into an urban combat zone to give an ally and front man a much needed pat on the back wasn't scary enough. They had to embellish it. They had to make Mr. Bush more heroic than real.
Hey, I still admire G. Washington even though he did not chop down the cherry tree. Abe Lincoln was ambitious to a fault which is why he became the President who could "save the union", thank God. Jack Kennedy's skills at placating his many female bedmates probably came in very useful defusing the Cuban Missile Crises. And I was outraged when Bill Clinton got a hummer from Monica,...outraged at the press for pretending it was outrageous for infidelity to occur in the White House. And George Bush took some personal risks going to Afghanistan, but it was hardly ala John Wayne. Why do we demand our heroes be super heroic?
Nancy Grace has long claimed "After my fiance's murder, I...entered law school specifically to help other crime victims". Her legend says her fiancie, Keith Griffin, was murdered at random by a life long criminal, that she had to constantly push the prosecutor's office, that the trial was agony, the jury was out for days and she was tortured for years by the defendant's endless appeals.
However, according to the scandal sheet New York Observer, the shooter Tommy McCoy had no previous criminal record. Ms. Grace's role at trial was to identify Griffin's wallet. Mr. McCoy confessed almost immediately. The jury was out for a couple of hours and gave McCoy life because he was mildly retarded. Oh, and McCoy never appealed his conviction.
So the murder of her finance wasn't traumatic ENOUGH for Ms. Grace. A Million Little Tragidies weren't enough motivation or justification for her. She had to invent a bigger reason for becoming a prosecutor. She had to wave her finance's bloody shirt to promote her career. She couldn't be a dedicated prosecutor, she had to be an avenging angel. I wonder how the real angels feel about that. Let's ask Opra.
On the same day Nancy Grace imploded Saddam Hussein, once prince of the padded resume, trashed the entire system of self promotion through exaggeration. When presented with his own signature on the order to execute 148 people he said simply, "Of course I did it." Wow! Unvarnished truth at last and out of the mouth of a heartless dictator; who do you trust?
Saddam might have added, "I was a dictator, you bone heads. They tried to assassinate me, I assassinated them. How do you think this assasination thing works? I tried to kill Daddy Bush, Baby Bush is now trying to have me killed. Maybe next you'll arrest Queen Elizabeth for beheading Mary Queen of Scotts. I wasn't the worst dictator in the world. In fact I was pretty run of the mill. Ask Pinoche. Ask Castro. As the current leadership of China. Now, shoot me and get it over with, you idiots. This trial long ago lost its reason de arte."
And so it seems has George Bush. The headline for the DMN "story" about Bush's heroism reads,"President makes surprise detour, visits Afghanistan. Bush vows to stand by nation, says bin Laden won't elude U.S forever." It turns out there is only one verifiable truthful statement in that entire headline. Bush was in Afghanistan.
The Dallas Morning News then published an online poll, asking, Will bin Laden ever be caught? I visited the site the next day and found that 32% of responders said "No Way", 37% said "It's possible", and only 30% agreed he would "defiantly be caught."
Bad news for the Bush legend makers; only 30% of the people in his home state of Texas believe the hype anymore. Worse, only 247 people in total bothered to take the poll. Hell, the Bush legend isn't even entertaining enough to read about, anymore, let alone believe.
Let's get this jerk a blowjob and impeach his ass. Then maybe Nancy Grace could prosecute him for the port deal.