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Is Bush Out Of Control?
Doug Thompson
August 15, 2005
Buy beleaguered, overworked White House aides enough drinks and they tell a sordid tale of an administration under siege, beset by bitter staff infighting and led by a man whose mood swings suggest paranoia bordering on schizophrenia.\
They describe a President whose public persona masks an angry, obscenity-spouting man who berates staff, unleashes tirades against those who disagree with him and ends meetings in the Oval Office with “get out of here!”
In fact, George W. Bush’s mood swings have become so drastic that White House emails often contain “weather reports” to warn of the President’s demeanor. “Calm seas” means Bush is calm while “tornado alert” is a warning that he is pissed at the world.
Decreasing job approval ratings and increased criticism within his own party drives the President’s paranoia even higher. Bush, in a meeting with senior advisors, called Senator Majority Leader Bill Frist a “god-damned traitor” for opposing him on stem-cell research.
“There’s real concern in the West Wing that the President is losing it,” a high-level aide told me recently.
A year ago, this web site discovered the White House physician prescribed anti-depressants for Bush. The news came after revelations that the President’s wide mood swings led some administration staffers to doubt his sanity.
Although GOP loyalists dismissed the reports an anti-Bush propaganda, the reports were later confirmed by prominent George Washington University psychiatrist Dr. Justin Frank in his book Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President. Dr. Frank diagnosed the President as a “paranoid meglomaniac” and “untreated alcoholic” whose “lifelong streak of sadism, ranging from childhood pranks (using firecrackers to explode frogs) to insulting journalists, gloating over state executions and pumping his hand gleefully before the bombing of Baghdad” showcase Bush’s instabilities.
“I was really very unsettled by him and I started watching everything he did and reading what he wrote and watching him on videotape. I felt he was disturbed,” Dr. Frank said. “He fits the profile of a former drinker whose alcoholism has been arrested but not treated.”
Dr. Frank’s conclusions have been praised by other prominent psychiatrists, including Dr. James Grotstein, Professor at UCLA Medical Center, and Dr. Irvin Yalom, MD, Professor Emeritus at Stanford University Medical School.
As a recovering alcoholic (sober 11 years, two months, nine days), I know all too well the symptoms that Dr. Frank describes and, after watching Bush for the past several years, I have to, unfortunately, agree with him.
Conversations over the last few weeks with longtime friends who work in the Bush White House confirm even more what Dr. Frank says and others have suggested.
The President of the United States is out of control. How long can the ship of state continue to sail with a madman at the helm?
Forum posts
16 August 2005, 08:09
Update: Bush not only uses drugs for his mental problems, he also drinks. Anyone who knows him well knows he is no longer a "recovering" alcoholic, he hits the sauce hard and often.
16 August 2005, 19:18
Sounds more like Bill Clinton.
17 August 2005, 21:29
Yes, Bush exhibits manic behavior. Perhaps it is the dry drunk syndrome, or megalomania, some form of schizophrenia, egomania, narcissism, or even manic-depressive behavior. But he is definitely out of control in one sense, while he is under control of Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Wolfowitz, and a dozen other puppet-masters in the main sense. He is doing what they want desperately..to control the world, to get rich, to have the power to send people to their deaths without responsibiility, and, most of all, to protect their own cowardly lives from the effects or consequences of their actions.
We might also consider that Bush is a sociopath, without responsibility, denying all wrongdoing, blaming everyone around him for bad consequences, and flailing about him in a useless effort to reclaim credibility. We can expect him to exhibit extreme stubborness, to avoid all mention of not passing the buck, to refuse to apologize for anything, or to admit ever having made a mistake. He is under the illusion that he is some kind of junior Savior, a kind of surrogate Jesus, and pictures himself with the halo of heavenly righteousness above his head. And until his devoted followers realize that he is under an illusion, and that God does not tell him to continue killing people in foreign countries, he will continue his manic behavior.