- 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?
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- © Copyright 2005 Capitol Hill Blue
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