Through the Nyquil Haze

With or without Nyquil, I always enjoy reading an interview with Gore Vidal.

GV: When I said I am not a prophet that doesn't mean I can't occasionally guess what's coming. I knew that what those they call the neo conservatives in the United States (the old word that was used to describe them was "fascist"), they want to use American power in order to get the corporations which are generally gas and oil to maximize profits. They want to manipulate the constitution so that it is rendered meaningless. They want supreme power, and circumstances allowed us to elect a man that's a real fool, literally a fool.

If the American people had a free press, an alert media, he could never have been elected anything. He's not competent; if you listen to him talk for ten minutes its clear he doesn't know what he is talking about. He's desperately trying to read a teleprompter and nothing really makes sense, and without one of his advisors he can't face anybody when it comes to a question.

* * * * * * * *

Which brings us to the latest absurdity, the George W. Bush Presidential Library.

Local TV reporter Gary Reeves' report on WFAA Wednesday evening featured the usual boosterism, but it wasn't all high fives. William McElvaney, SMU Professor Emeritus - of Preaching and Worship - wasn't in favor of the university hosting the sixty-foot tall, gilded versions of The Very Hungry Caterpillar and My Pet Goat. "I'm concerned that so many of the practices of this administration have violated basic United Methodist social principles about peace and war, about the environment, about habeus corpus," said McElvaney.

Reeves reported that a presidential library can draw as many as a half-million visitors annually. Given Bush's propensity for murder, there's a pretty decent chance a few of those visitors will have known and/or loved one of his many victims. Rest assured, it will be the most high-tech, hyper-surveilled building ever created - which tells you all you need to know about the level of risk associated with hosting a shrine to a war criminal. Although an omnipresent security apparatus will record every burp, hiccup and fart released within a ten-mile radius of the "library", it is highly unlikely to deter dissidents from pissing on the carpet.


* * * * * * * *

I try not to think about the Bush Administration crimes yet to be discovered because many of them will approximate the magnitude of this:

SHERWOOD ROSS, TRUTH OUT - In violation of the US Code and international law, the Bush administration is spending more money (in inflation-adjusted dollars) to develop illegal, offensive germ warfare than the $2 billion spent in World War II on the Manhattan Project to make the atomic bomb.

So says Francis Boyle, the professor of international law who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 enacted by Congress. He states the Pentagon "is now gearing up to fight and 'win' biological warfare" pursuant to two Bush national strategy directives adopted "without public knowledge and review" in 2002. . .

Terming the action "the proverbial smoking gun," Boyle said the mission of the controversial CBW program "has been altered to permit development of offensive capability in chemical and biological weapons!" . . .

For fiscal years 2001-2004, the federal government funded $14.5 billion "for ostensibly 'civilian' biowarfare-related work alone," a "truly staggering" sum, Boyle wrote.

Another $5.6 billion was voted for "the deceptively-named 'Project Bio Shield,'" under which Homeland Security is stockpiling vaccines and drugs to fight anthrax, smallpox and other bioterror agents, wrote Boyle. Protection of the civilian population is, he said, "one of the fundamental requirements for effectively waging biowarfare."

Rest assured the Anthrax Killer is on that payroll.

Guess I better enjoy the Nyquil now, because it damn sure won't be of any use against Bush's Pentagon germs. Considering his impressive track record of unleashing death and misery, it would be the height of foolish to assume King George's germ warfare will turn out any differently than his other ventures. They all end badly.