Commentary
~ May 23, 2004: George Bush, not known for spending much time on the job, took a tumble on his bicycle yesterday while vacationing at his Texas ranch, suffering scrapes and scratches.
The metaphor could not be more appropriate.
Bush is sinking deeper and deeper into the abyss of negative popular opinion. Each new poll, from whatever source, show Bush's approval ratings slipping below 50 percent amid growing doubts among voters about his handling of the war in Iraq and of the economy.
The fact that Bush was on vacation - again - while the country is dealing with the Iraqi prison/ human rights abuse scandal comes as no surprise.
Records show that Bush has spent more than 40 percent of his presidency at one of his three retreats.
Bush was at his ranch, for example, on August 6, 2001 as part of a month-long holiday when he was warned of Osama bin Laden's determination to attack the United States. Rather than doing something about it, he set it aside and continued with his vacation.
Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup poll, told Reuters that Bush's slowly declining approval rating -- down to 46 percent in his latest survey -- was similar to the dropping trajectory of the last three incumbents to lose their elections -- George Bush, the current president's father, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford.
And is it any wonder?
With nearly 800 dead American soldiers in Iraq and over 3,000 maimed for life, an increasing number of Americans at home are starting to ask:
What the hell are we doing in Iraq?
It obviously wasn't for Weapons of Mass Destruction, a myth that has been debunked as a fabrication of Ahmad Chalabi and his corrupt crew of opportunistic oligarchs. Chalabi was the Iraqi lobbyist who was convicted by a Jordanian court in 1992 of embezzling millions from Petra Bank. The bank's collapse shook Jordan's political and financial system, forcing it to spend in excess of $400 million to bail out depositors. A sentence of 22 years hard labor awaits Chalabi should he ever set foot in Jordan.
Despite his established reputation as a charlatan, Chalabi somehow found favor with Bush and the Pentagon and was given more than $27 million of American taxpayer funds.
And then there's the growing prisoner abuse scandal. They could not just stop with humiliation - we now know soldiers filmed a 15-year-old boy being raped by a U.S. Army interpreter, they forced Moslem men to eat pork and drink alcohol, and forced them to masturbate while being photographed. That's really sick stuff.
We are supposed to believe that the American soldiers were acting alone. If this is so, what were their commanding officers doing, and why was Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez in the room while some of this was going on?
Tell me again why we even went into Iraq to begin with? Oh yeah, the Weapons of Mass Destruction and to protect Iraqis from human rights abuses.
