- When President Nixon died, I was assigned to travel to
California and report on the funeral for a group of television stations.
Although Yorba Linda is beautiful, with the kind of appeal that has drawn
millions to Southern California, I was not interested in being a journalist
at the funeral. Sure, this was history, but I despised Richard Nixon. His
lust for power, and his absolute distrust of the public, nearly destroyed
our countryís Constitution.
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- I think God even had some feelings about Nixon. For the
first time in Yorba Lindaís recorded history, hail fell, a half
a foot in a few minutes, just before the eulogies were to begin. After
our satellite trucks had been rattled, and our rental cars dented, the
historical revisionists began to march to podium to try to find good things
to say. Every man, of course, should have friends to speak of him at his
passing. But they should speak the truth. Let the opinions of his enemies
also be heard. None of Nixonís was spoken for, and they were many
and manifest, all across America.
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- Another reporter, knowing that I had come of age during
the Vietnam and Watergate eras, asked me what I thought about the former
president being gone. I tried to remain ambivalent. But it wasnít
easy.
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- "Itís not a good thing to be happy about
someone elseís death," I told her. "But I certainly will
not miss him. Nor do I think will our country. And I know a lot of very
patriotic people who, if they were here, would ask to open the casket so
they could drive a stake through his heart to make certain he was dead."
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- I gave into dark, tasteless humor. But it was true. Nixon
had scared and angered people in a way no president before him ever had.
I was not certain my country was going to survive his lies until I heard
the reassuring timbre in Congresswoman Barbara Jordanís voice as
she said, "My faith in the Constitution is whole."
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- But I only despised Richard Nixon. I never hated him.
I have never known what it is like to hate anyone. Until now.
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- Until George W. Bush became president.
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- I hate Mr. Bush and what he is doing to my country. I
cannot believe the range of duplicities involved in his administration;
the gratuitous lying to serve profit and political purpose. As the president
lies about Iraq, lies about the economy, lies about the environment, lies
about his tax cut, lies about the education bill, lies about the budget,
lies about his real interests in Africa, lies about Halliburton; he is
destroying the American publicís faith in the democratic process.
-
- Mr. Bush has done things in my name, and yours, which
repulse me. I have no doubt that Saddam Husseinís two sons needed
to be brought to justice. But I was disgusted that my country gave sponsor
to the notion of showing their dead faces on television, as though that
might reassure the Iraqis. This was the modern international equivalent
of brutal tribes placing their conquered foes heads on a spike in the town
square. I despise the way Mr. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and all of the neo-cons,
had developed a military plan that sent our brave soldiers to secure oil
fields, rather than protecting the people of Iraq, the institutions of
their culture and commerce, which Saddam Hussein had been misusing for
decades.
-
- The president, and his cynic-in-chief, Karl Rove, are
using a manufactured war to keep Americans scared. And it is working. But
I am ashamed that the president of my country would go back to the United
Nations, the very organization he ignored when he launched the war, to
ask for help in securing Iraq. Mr. Bush grew up in West Texas, where billboards
dot the Permian Basin landscape with the message: "U.S. out of U.N."
And because Rove wants to keep the fundamentalist right happy, Mr. Bush
made clear that he would act without the imprimatur of the U.N. And now
he has the audacity to seek its help.
-
- I am repulsed by my president. He allowed the drums of
war to get hammered over aluminum tubes, which were never meant for anything
more deadly than the making of rockets. The whole notion of the tubes being
part of the construction of a centrifuge had been refuted by several international
organizations, including Americaís own Lawrence Livermore Laboratories,
fourteen months before the story was leaked to a compliant, lazy U.S. media.
The tubes were for the construction of Medusa 81 rockets, an Italian-designed
weapon. Everybody in the intelligence community knew it, and Rove and the
White House Iraq Group sent down orders that government intelligence experts
were to keep their mouths shut about dissenting information.
-
- I am ashamed of the actions that my president has allowed
to take place in our democracy. Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife have
spent most of their lives in service to our country. When he was asked
by the State Department to check on claims that Iraq had tried to acquire
uranium from Niger, Ambassador Wilson came back to report the documentation
was completely fake. The White House ignored his intelligence and the president
put the claim in his speech. Wilson, who has devoted his life to the truth,
wrote an Op-Ed in the New York Times, and not too many weeks later, discovered
that columnist Robert Novak was revealing his wifeís name and her
undercover responsibilities for the CIA. Novak has long been Karl Roveís
favorite leak.
-
- During the presidential campaign, when reporters began
talking about Mr. Bushís time in the Texas National Guard, Rove
suggested, "You guys shouldnít make too much of a few missed
meetings." A few days later, during a discussion of the issue on "CNNís
Crossfire," Novak told other commentators they were getting carried
away over "a few missed meetings." He is Roveís conservative
hand puppet. By leaking Ambassador Wilsonís wifeís name to
Novak, and by Novak writing a column about her, Karl Rove has committed
treason, violated the National Security Act, and should be brought to justice,
as surely and swiftly as Osama bin Laden ought to be. All of the undercover
operatives Mrs. Wilson dealt with during her career overseas, many of them
Americans, are now at risk of being killed by the arms dealers, who thought
they were something other than CIA agents.
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- There are too many lies, too many transgressions to list.
Richard Nixon, in a less cynical era, told only one. And we were all supremely
affronted by what he did to our democracy.
-
- George W. Bush, and Karl Rove, has told dozens, each
one of them more damaging than lying about a break-in of a political headquarters.
And yes, Bill Clinton lied. But nobody died. He told an all too common
male lie about consensual sex. But he did not send the sons and daughters
of America marching off to war wearing the boots of a well-told lie.
-
- George W. Bushís one term will mark a low point
in our countryís history. But if we all pay closer attention, and
vote, we can recover.
-
- I love my country. But I hate my president.
-
- - James C. Moore is co-author of 'Bush's Brain: How Karl
Rove Made George W.Bush Presidential'
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- Unless otherwise noted, all original content and headlines
are © BuzzFlash.
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- http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/03/09/08_moore.html
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