’Patience, Mr. Bush? How about impeachment, now?’

After suffering 17 minutes of bobbling homilies, lies, and hand gestures, as if the president were talking in sign language to the deaf and dumb, asking for our patience in pursuing a criminally illegal war, one that so far has cost 2100 American lives, 200,000 Iraqi lives, $200 billion plus (another $80 billion to be asked for), patience is not what is needed. Rather it is Bush’s impeachment and that of his entire administration, now. This is a no-vote on his referendum-seeking screed. But let me be specific . . .

It is not "despair" that we the people feel, but an unmitigated disgust for a president who shamelessly lied his way into this war, claiming Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, nucular and chem/bio weapons, and was about to use them, in league with bin Laden, who in fact was known to be repelled by Saddam, as much as we are by Bush. And, as Ambassador Joseph Wilson pointed out, after his trip to Niger, in his July 7, 2003, article in The New York Times, "What I Didn’t Find," there was no attempt to buy yellow-cake uranium from Niger. For this, Wilson, previously called a hero by several presidents, was richly rewarded by having his wife, a covert CIA officer, Valerie Plame, outed, and consequently all those who worked for her outed, in effect, ending her career as such, and ending who knows how many lives. Reprehensible.

Again it is not "despair" that we the people feel, but disgust at the fact that the president has not spoken to the American people directly since March 2003, when in fact he ordered the unilateral, illegal preemptive strike on Iraq, against the wishes of the United Nations, and specifically Hans Blitz who was still trying to find said WDD in Iraq. Blitz subsequently found none. In fact, the head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, who coincidentally won the Nobel Peace Prize for 2005, said the so-called proof about Niger came from forged Italian documents, which were totally untrue, bogus.

And so it is not "despair" that we the American people feel, but disgust at bold-faced Bush lies again: "Some look at the challenges in Iraq, and conclude that the war is lost, and not worth another dime or another day. I don’t believe that. Our military commanders do not believe that. Our troops in the field, who bear the burden and make sacrifice, do not believe that America has lost."

This is the kind of lie that comes from sheer stubbornness and an unwillingness to deal with reality. It’s delusional. Most notably, the highly decorated, former Marine officer, now Democratic congressman and one-time war hawk, John Murtha, in a speech to the House, called for a withdrawal of troops within six months. He said the unsayable: that the number of attacks in Iraq had increased from a 150 to more than 700 a week in the past year. That an estimated 50,000 American soldiers will suffer from what he called "battle fatigue." That the Americans were seen as "the common enemy" in Iraq. He declared that no more than 7 percent of the Iraq "insurgency," that is, a people fighting an occupying force, "was foreign." The rest were homegrown.

General John Zinni, former commander of Central Command of the U.S. military, and special envoy to the Middle East until he resigned in disgust, said more than a year ago (May 23, 2004) on 60 minutes that, "The plan was wrong, it was the wrong war, the wrong place and the wrong time — with little or no planning. He added there were serious "derelictions of duty," criminal negligence," and plain poor planning that left U.S. forces in harm’s way, after they left Iraq in shambles. These are not far-out liberals, Sparky. Listen up to former Team Bush members.

What’s more, as Seymour Hersh reports in the December 12 New Yorker, in his article "Up In The Air," regarding our formidable air war, "The second military planner added that even today, with Americans doing the targeting, ’there is no sense of an air campaign, or a strategic vision. We are just whacking targets — it’s a reversion to the Stone Age. There’s no operational art. That’s what happens when you give targeting to the Army — they hit what the local commander wants to hit." In other words, the air war is chaotic. Then, without referring to a concrete source, Bush added, "We know from communications that they [the terrorists] feel a tightening noose and fear the rise of a democratic Iraq." The quintupling of weekly military missions as mentioned by Murtha would not indicate a tightening of any noose, except on our forces. Lying about it leads to more disgust, more pointless death.

So it is not despair we the people feel but disgust, that we now also openly admit and practice torture on prisoners of war at Abu Ghraib and other prisons, in contradiction to the Geneva Conventions, thereby jeopardizing the safety of our own troops if they are taken prisoners, let alone being associated with the sheer obscenity of it all.

In spite of this, the president said, "I do not expect you to support everything I do, but tonight I have a request: Do not give in to despair, and do not give up on this fight for freedom." Would that be the freedom to continue bombing Iraq? Or to thinly hold together the recent election with military contractors and CIA men? All as the dominant religious group, the Shiites take a commanding lead, and the secular, American-hand-picked, Ayad Allawi has won only nominal support, even in important provinces where he was expected to do well. Ahmad Chalabi, the former US consultant, tossed for the discovery of previous bank frauds, lags behind with less than 1 percent of the votes. This as one more American marine was killed Sunday in Ramadi, in the capital of Anbar Province. So the victory for democracy Bush is claiming is empty.

The Kurds in their controlled areas, the Shiites, and the resistant Sunnis face their age-old culture and political "war," which will ask of these three groups to resolve their tribal, clan, religious and regional issues sooner or later on their own. It took a decade in Vietnam for us to get out of the way of the North and South. And, after losing 58,000 men and more than $150 billion (which Iraq has already surpassed), we did move and the Vietnamese welded together a country on their own. Those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to live them over.

What’s more, if Sparky were more than a jumpsuit jockey, and his butt was being shot at, I doubt if he would be quite so impelled to fight towards victory or defeat. Each takes an incredible amount of blood, suffering, and money, and cuts resources from needed domestic programs like Medicaid (now facing a proposed budget cut of $55 billion dollars, along with cuts to Medicare, Veterans benefits and student loans, to mention a few). All while the administration will add $60 billion in tax cuts to the rich, largely people who earn a million dollars a year and more. In short, Bush is buying the votes of the rich with the blood of the poor, disabled, aged and fighting Americans.

And so it is not lack of patience that we the people have, but an overriding disgust not only for Bush, but the Republican-led Congress and even the Democratic minority that has largely left him unchallenged in any meaningful way. It is to our disgust that this alcoholic, cocaine addict is running loose like a bull in a china shop, destroying everything in sight.

Deja Vu All Over Again

Bush reminds one so much of Nixon or even Johnson, leaning over into the camera, pleading with his hands, "We will see the Iraqi military gaining strength and confidence, and the democratic process moving forward. As these achievements come, it should require fewer American troops to accomplish our mission." It was like the promises that the South Vietnamese forces were gaining on the Vietcong, and that it was only a matter of time and carpet bombing until we would win, yes, we would prove invincible, and they would fold. After a decade of futility, we were forced to abandon the ship like rats. And it was dark, dirty but gratefully the last page in that sordid chapter of American history. Truly, in god’s name, why are we writing another one?

And so, we the American people are not in need of patience, but suffer an excess of disgust at statements like this: "I will make decisions on troop levels based on the progress we see on the ground and advice of our military leaders, not based on artificial timetables set by politicians in Washington." Why does Bush need to wait for advice from military leaders to exit? He didn’t take it from Colin Powell when he decided unilaterally to plunge into Iraq. The ex-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the Gulf War, then secretary of state, warned Bush that if he "broke Iraq, he would own Iraq." It was a diplomatic way of saying don’t touch it. For his honesty, he became the "black sheep" of the administration (no pun intended), and quietly trotted off after his first term. Att that time, Bush invoked his commander-in-chief role, bulldozed the Congress, and ordered the armed forces to attack. And all this according to an artificial timetable set by neocon politicians in Washington, i.e., Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rove, Rice, Pearle Rumsfeld, et al. Contradictions, hypocrisy, disgust.

And we the American people are not in need of patience, but relief from the idiocy of statements like this: "My convictions come down to them: We do not create terrorism by fighting the terrorists. We invite terrorism by ignoring them." I though we’d spent $350 billion, which includes Afghanistan expenditures, fighting terrorists. And we haven’t caught bin Laden. And the real terrorists are in the White House, bombing away.

The evidence of the administration’s participation in 9-11’s execution continues to grow. That 9-11 was used as a kind of "Pearl Harbor" to enable team Bush to attack Afghanistan, through which it had been considered desirable for at least a decade to build pipelines from the Caspian Sea Basin to Pakistan, then India and the Indian Ocean for oil export. September 11 and the War on Terror also gave Team Bush the needed excuse to attack Hussein and Iraq, though their desire to do same had been expressed since day one of their administration, as reported by former security chief, Richard Clarke, and former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill. So the operative word remains "disgust." And the lack of patience is for Bush & Company to depart.

This would also include the payola suppliers, like Halliburton, of which VP Dick Cheney was CEO and remains on the payroll, as his old company makes billions on the war on no-bid, open-ended contracts. While Cheney recently made an unannounced trip to Iraq, a secret even from its prime minister, whom Cheney joined (surprise surprise) in a meeting, there remained a backdrop of renewed violence, over 30 people dying in suicide bombings and various attacks since Saturday night.

What’s more, Bush’s statements like these add to our disgust: "We would cause tyrants in the Middle East to laugh at our failed resolve and tighten their repressive grip. We would hand Iraq over to enemies who have pledged to attack us." Who would those tyrants be? The vanished Osama bin Laden? Do we think he’d come out, come out wherever he is and head a movement to topple Iraq? Would the tyrant be Muammar al Qadhafi, the former "Hitler" of GHW Bush fame, who has now gone western? Would the tyrants be the Saudis, and lose all that oil revenue? Or the fundamentalist Muslim Wahabes, who are funded by the Saudis? Would it be Iran, who we keep threatening to attack? Or would it be Israel?

Now there’s a contender which perceives Iraq as a threat to its existence, at least under Hussein. I think Bush’s statement is vague beating of the tyrant terror drum. Bush in fact is the one acting the tyrant’s role, usurping a country. Pick the troops up tomorrow, go home, give the people their country, and let them work it out. Period. As Howard Dean recommended before Bush’s second term, stating the war was unjust, illegal, and should be ended immediately. He was then summarily sandbagged by the Democrats as a candidate and we got the other bobble-doll, John Kerry. An excess of disgust, that is what we the American people have.

The true lack of patience we do have is to see Bush and his awful gang gone, like a pox, like the anthrax after 9-11, which turned out to come from an Army bio-warfare lab in Fort Detrick, Maryland, not Baghdad. This killer anthrax was sent to members of Congress to enhance the panic of 9-11. But the terrorists, at least all the prominent suspects, turned out to be homegrown.

And for statements like this, disgust: "Defeatism may have its partisan uses, but it is not justified by the facts. My fellow citizens, not only can we win the war in Iraq, we are winning the war in Iraq." If you believe that political schizophrenia, after Murtha, Zinni and Hersh’s comments, and dozens of others you can find on your own, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn I could let you have for cheap.

Additionally, the president closed with words from the carol written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "Christmas Bells," written during the Civil War." As expected he avoided the dark verses of the poem, "And in despair I bowed my head; ’There is no peace on earth,’ I said . . ." Bush skipped right to "God is not dead, nor does he sleep; the wrong shall fail, the right prevail, with peace on earth, good will to men." That was another Hallmark card to put us to sleep. Yet questioning Americans all over the country are waking up, regarding Bush’s rightness and goodness in Iraq, Afghanistan, and America.

In fact, George Bush’s very "election victories" are still being questioned due to rigged electronic voting machines What’s more, the latest revelation is that George Bush has been undermining the constitutional protections of Americans. There are reports that the Pentagon has been gathering information and creating databases to spy on ordinary Americans whose only sin is to choose to assemble. That Americans who question the administration’s flawed policy in Iraq are actually labeled by this administration as domestic terrorists.

As Senator Robert Byrd (D-Va.) has pointed out in a recent mass email, "We now know that the FBI’s use of National Security Letters on American citizens has increased one hundred fold, requiring tens of thousands of individuals to turn over personal information and records. These letters are issued without prior judicial review, and provide no real means for an individual to challenge a permanent gag order . . .

"Now comes the stomach-churning revelation through an executive order, that President Bush has circumvented both the Congress and the courts. He has usurped the Third Branch of government — the branch charged with protecting the civil liberties of our people — by directing the National Security Agency to intercept and eavesdrop on the phone conversations and emails of American citizens without a warrant, which is a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment. He has stiff-armed the People’s Branch of government. He has rationalized the use of domestic, civilian surveillance with a flimsy claim that he has such authority because we are at war. The executive order, which has been acknowledged by the President, is an end-run around the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which makes it unlawful for any official to monitor the communications of an individual on American soil without the approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court."

Ladies and gentlemen, Big Brother is alive, unwell and living in the White House. The question is, how long will it take to sum up his cumulative, documented crimes and sentence him and his cronies? And that is up to us, we the people, who now say 60 to 40 we are not satisfied with the job being done. And so, what? Let him stay on to bury us even deeper in malfeasance? Or turn him off today, like that bobbling talking head. And get on with our lives and what is left of our democracy.

Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer residing in New York. Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net.

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