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LLOYD WILLIAMS: The New Bush Mantra -- 'It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp'
"These are tough jobs. No question about it. But we've got some very good, very
able, the very talented folks who are devoted to the President, devoted to trying to do what's right for the country ... I didn't ask for this job. I didn't campaign for it. I got drafted." -- V.P. Cheney on CBS' Face the Nation, March 19th
Conveniently ignoring the Coalition death toll which has quietly passed the 2500 milestone (maybe the Bush Administration doesn't count suicides or accidental deaths), the President is presently pimping out the Vice President, having Cheney trumpet a new party line suddenly imploring the country to be patient about an exit strategy for Iraq.
In response to a question about whether we're witnessing the outbreak of civil war over there, the Veep deflected attention away from the rapidly disintegrating state of affairs, with the cavalier remark that "It's not about just today's situation in Iraq. It's about where we're going to be 10 years from now."
In other words, brace yourself for another decade of boys and girls arriving home in body bags, all in the name of war profiteering for Halliburton and like-minded mega-corporations. Let's see, America has already squandered $250 billion on this ill-advised invasion. Do you realize that that amount of tax money would more than covered the cost of rebuilding not only the levees but also the homes of every victim of Katrina across the entire Gulf region?
We now know that the President flat-out lied when he said that nobody ever told him such a disaster could occur, after a damning videotape surfaced in which the National Weather Service personally issued precisely such a dire warning to Bush, Chertoff and Brownie on the eve of the hurricane's arrival.
The most striking thing about that frightening footage was that every damn bureaucrat being briefed in the bunker was white.
So, is it any wonder that not one of them moved a muscle to send a single plane, train or automobile to implement an immediate evacuation, when there wasn't a soul in that room who identified with the color of the folks about to be swept away or stranded? Worse, these heartless creeps compounded their original crime by committing the unpardonable sin of doing nothing for four more days, ordering federal troops to turn away any offers of help.
The official White House reaction is that the pre-Katrina videotape doesn't paint the full picture. I'm sure it doesn't. It certainly doesn't show the continued suffering of all the poor folks, permanently displaced in the interest of corporate profits. And it doesn't show how Bush, in spite of his popularity sitting at an all-time low, is still prepared to pimp out political capital solely in service of those white and rich.
Lloyd Williams is an attorney and a member of the bar in NJ, NY, CT, PA, MA & US Supreme Court bars.
