 Hypocrisy
as the Race Winds Down
I have said a lot of things about
President Bush in the last few years. Then I went
silent for the last couple of months, but you can
blame that on AP Lit more than any loss of
conviction on my part. I'm back now, as we are less
than a week away from the Presidential General
Election, to call out one of the most egregious
examples of hypocrisy I have seen throughout this
election.
If you have been watching the news you
have probably seen the story in the last couple of days
about 380 tons of "high-test" explosives which may have
been stolen by Iraqi insurgents or other terrorists.
Democrats are, somehow, claiming that it's all Bush's
fault while Republicans and the Bush Administration are
making a point of how ignorant they really are to the
situation in Iraq by saying that they're not even sure
the explosives were ever there in the first place. At
this point in the election, stupid arguments and excuses
are expected.
However, I would like for you to guess
which of the two candidates made this remark during a
campaign speech earlier today:
"A political candidate who jumps to
conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person
you want as your commander in chief."
I agree with that so much that I would
have assumed John Kerry had said it, but it wasn't. It
was George Bush. George Bush: the guy who said Saddam
had vast stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction; the
guy who claimed we would be welcomed by the Iraqi people
as liberators; the very same guy who said Saddam and Al
Qaeda were connected.
Jumping to conclusions without knowing
the facts? That sounds like the Bush Doctrine verbatim.
The President's charge against John
Kerry is indefensible. There is no possible way that
Bush can claim he didn't jump to conclusions without
knowing the facts on Iraq. He didn't know the facts! No
one did! Not even the CIA, who didn't have any good
sources within the nation.
It doesn't even matter that Bush
thought Saddam had weapons. It wouldn't matter if the
whole world had. Saddam had nothing, and we never had
solid evidence that he did - we jumped to conclusions
without knowing the facts. Bush knows this, and that is
why I am labeling him as a hypocrite.
What amazes me is that Bush's
supporters didn't do a double-take when he uttered that
attack line. From everything I could tell before, the
type of people who get to sit behind the President
during his campaign speeches so that they are in the
background of the camera frame were exactly the sort of
people who wanted someone to jump to conclusions without
knowing the facts. Now I realize that those background
extras are chosen simply for their ability to nod and
cheer as Bush rattles off his scripted attacks and take
part in the "Two Minutes Hate" of John Kerry on command.
On a side note, I'm not saying that
John Kerry doesn't have his own scripted speeches and
nasty, unsubstantiated attacks. He definitely does. But
I can honestly say that I never hear him prompt his
audiences to boo Bush. Instead, he makes an attack and
gets the people to cheer when he says how he'll do it
better. Bush prefers to mock Kerry and get people to
laugh at him sometimes and boo him others.
At this point in the election,
probably nothing I can say will sway anyone if they have
decided to support Bush. Then I say, "Ha ha. You live in
Maryland where the Republican vote doesn't matter anyway
thanks to the Electoral College system," but that's not
the point. What is the point? Maybe it's that I'm just
ranting now because I can't believe this race is as
close as it is when the incumbent is this utterly
ridiculous.
Read
other articles written by Scott Zuke
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