This is the most bizarre presidential behavior I have ever witnessed, not just in wandering evasions and tangents, sloooow e-nun-ci-a-shun of words, but in inflection, and very unusual body language between him and Ari Fleischer, who is nodding at the president, and seems to be holding him up with extreme mental effort.

I was amazed that they allowed him to answer questions publicly. The cabinet must be squirming in incredible tension.

"Uhm, diplomacy hasn't worked"
"There is a poison plant in Northeastern Iraq"
"Weapons of Mass Destruction""Dictator""Terrorist""September 11, 2001" again and again and again in mantra."

This man has the mental agility of an average 12-year-old.

America has just entered the Twilight Zone.

I wouldn't have put it that way, but I do admit it was an exceptionally poor showing. I should have videotaped it so I could compare the transcript later.

Wow.

:m:,
Tiassa :cool:

I want to see footage of Ari. It was very bizarre. Either the President had not prepared at all for the very predictable questions, or he could not focus his thoughts. The "Leader of the Free World" should be able to do better, and I don't mean that as a personal slur- It is very strange that those were the best responses money could buy.

This spectacle also left a wake of confusion. Anyone who has had low awareness of events over the past months, and watched this surreal press conference would have to be convinced that the President holds Saddam Hussein primarily responsible for 9-11. "September 11, 2001" was evoked at least half a dozen times. Also, the past tense, and changing tenses, and foregone conclusions about the UN and international diplomacy were to me chilling.

Apparently, this debate has gone nowhere with the Administration since the UN 1441 was drafted, as far as the Administration is concerned. What have they been doing?

No wonder the President has not had a press conference, even a scripted-call one, in a year and a half. Not America's proudest moment for the Presidency:(

Is anyone replaying this anywhere?

There were clips on the recaps, but i think a full replay is too painful for the media to air again. I was foolish not to tape it.

QUESTION: Mr. President, are you worried that the United States might be viewed as defiant of the United Nations if you went ahead with military action without specific and explicit authorization from the U.N.?

BUSH: No, I'm not worried about that.
As a matter of fact, it's hard to say the United States is defiant about the United Nations when I was the person who took the issue to the United Nations September the 12th, 2002.
We've been working with the United Nations. We've been working through the United Nations.
Secondly, I'm confident the American people understand that when it comes to our security, if we need to act, we will act. And we really don't need United Nations approval to do so.
I want to work -- I want the United Nations to be effective. It's important for it to be a robust, capable body. It's important for its words to mean what they say. And as we head into the 21st century: when it comes to our security, we really don't need anybody's permission.
I'm sorry, but Bush sounds like some members of this board. A very specific question is asked and he doesn't answer it. He states that he isn't defaint of the UN, but also states he doesn't care what the vote it. Hmmm....

The rest of the transcript (on CNN's front page) goes the same way. A question is asked, and Bush talks on with rhetoric. I am for disarming Saddam if he is a threat to us, but the prez didn't present any of this. It's one thing to argue but quite another to argue on unproven premises.

Excuse me. But if youve ever watched people in school/college give speechs, then you know that sometimes they say "Ummm." I know I have. Especially if I was giving a speech that the whole world was going to hear, even I'd be nervous.

CounslerCoffee,

You have to admit that he is a fairly poor public speaker. Well you don't HAVE TO, but you should:)

He just doesn't seem prepared usually.

"I'm sorry, but Bush sounds like some members of this board. A very specific question is asked and he doesn't answer it. '
We are going to have to accept it that the reasons we are going to war are not to be aired or debated publicly. This is the most clear aspect of this tortured dialogue, that is patently unbefitting a democracy. The Bush administration knows their reasoning for the bloody occupation ahead would be rejected if revealed openly, and they are arrogantly cramming thin propaganda down the gullet of America, without regard for the consequences.

CC: SciForum.com, et. al.

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From TheAZCowBoy.......

Pity the American people--having had this dyslectic ignoramous thrust into the oval room by the right wingers of the Supreme Court. We now must sit and wait to see just how much more damage he will do to this nation's peace and prosperity in the remaining months left on his failed presidency--not to mention the millions of children he has not only "left behind," but totally abandoned and our elders--many of whom cannot afford the prescription medications necessary to provide them with an acceptable pain free and a reasonable life style.

Having p!ssed away $5 TRILLION(!) in Clinton surplus, having given billions in tax relief to the top 1% of Americans; having trashed the Kyoto treaty while po-poo'ing global warming; having trashed the ABM treaty and restarted the arms race; having loosened up America's prestine forest to the logging industry interests; having fought "tooth & Nail" to defeat the UN's attempts to establish the International Crimes Court ( for the protection of America's future Lt. Kelley's and Capt. Medina's, I suppose--and especially for the ZioNazi thugs and murderers of Israel who seem to find less and less reasons to visit and vacation in Europe these days. < grinning> :eek:

Even those "with brains" in the administration--like Colin Powell and ex-Ambassador Brady Kieslings, among them, go to work in the morning with that "I wanna throw up" feeling, knowing that the head CHICKEN HAWK and his gang-of-four ( Cheney, Perle, Ashcroft & Perle ) haven't the slightest concept of the Armageddon they are about to unleash on the world. :(

Read & live to regret your warpped decisions; Re: The Middle East, DIM BULB!

LETTER OF RESIGNATION FROM US Ambassador John Brady Keisling in February, 2003.

The following is the full text of John Brady Kiesling's letter of resignation to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. Mr. Kiesling is a career diplomat who has served in United States embassies from Tel Aviv to Casablanca to Yerevan.

February 27, 2003

Dear Mr. Secretary:

I am writing you to submit my resignation from the Foreign Service of the United States and from my position as Political Counselor in U.S. Embassy Athens, effective March 7. I do so with a heavy heart. The baggage of my upbringing included a felt obligation to give something back to my country. Service as a
U.S. diplomat was a dream job. I was paid to understand foreign languages and cultures, to seek out diplomats, politicians, scholars and journalists, and to persuade them that U.S. interests and theirs fundamentally coincided. My faith in my country and its values was the most powerful weapon in my diplomatic arsenal.

It is inevitable that during twenty years with the State Department I would become more sophisticated and cynical about the narrow and selfish bureaucratic motives that sometimes shaped our policies.

Human nature is what it is, and I was rewarded and promoted for understanding human nature. But until this Administration it had been possible to believe that by upholding the policies of my president I was also upholding the interests of the American people and the world. I believe it no longer.

The policies we are now asked to advance are incompatible not only with American values but also with American interests. Our fervent pursuit of war with Iraq is driving us to squander the international legitimacy that has been America's most potent weapon of both offense and defense since the days of Woodrow Wilson. We have begun to dismantle the largest and most effective web of international relationships the world has ever known. Our current course will bring instability and danger, not security.

The sacrifice of global interests to domestic politics and to bureaucratic self-interest is nothing new, and it is certainly not a uniquely American problem. Still, we have not seen such systematic distortion of intelligence, such systematic manipulation of American opinion, since the war in Vietnam.

The September 11 tragedy left us stronger than before, rallying around us a vast international coalition to cooperate for the first time in a systematic way against the threat of terrorism. But rather than take credit for those successes and build on them, this Administration has chosen to make terrorism a domestic political tool, enlisting a scattered and largely defeated Al Qaeda as its bureaucratic ally.

We spread disproportionate terror and confusion in the public mind, arbitrarily linking the unrelated problems of terrorism and Iraq. The result, and perhaps the motive, is to justify a vast misallocation of shrinking public wealth to the military and to weaken the safeguards that protect American citizens from the heavy hand of government.

September 11 did not do as much damage to the fabric of American society as we seem determined to so to ourselves. Is the Russia of the late Romanovs really our model, a selfish, superstitious empire thrashing toward self-destruction in
the name of a doomed status quo?

We should ask ourselves why we have failed to persuade more of the world that a war with Iraq is necessary. We have over the past two years done too much to assert to our world partners that narrow and mercenary U.S. interests override the cherished values of our partners.

Even where our aims were not in question, our consistency is at issue. The model of Afghanistan is little comfort to allies wondering on what basis we plan to rebuild the Middle East, and in whose image and interests.

Have we indeed become blind, as Russia is blind in Chechnya, as Israel is blind in the Occupied Territories, to our own advice, that overwhelming military power is not the answer to terrorism? After the shambles of post-war Iraq joins the shambles in Grozny and Ramallah, it will be a brave foreigner who forms ranks with Micronesia to follow where we lead.

We have a coalition still, a good one. The loyalty of many of our friends is impressive, a tribute to American moral capital built up over a century. But our closest allies are persuaded less that war is justified than that it would be perilous to allow the U.S. to drift into complete solipsism.

Loyalty should be reciprocal. Why does our President condone the swaggering and contemptuous approach to our friends and allies this Administration is fostering, including among its most senior officials. Has "oderint dum metuant" really become our motto?

I urge you to listen to America's friends around the world. Even here in Greece, purported hotbed of European anti-Americanism, we have more and closer friends than the American newspaper reader can possibly imagine. Even when they complain about American arrogance, Greeks know that the world is a difficult and
dangerous place, and they want a strong international system, with the U.S. and EU in close partnership.

When our friends are afraid of us rather than for us, it is time to worry. And now they are afraid. Who will tell them convincingly that the United States is as it was, a beacon of liberty, security, and justice for the planet?

Mr. Secretary, I have enormous respect for your character and ability. You have preserved more international credibility for us than our policy deserves, and salvaged something positive from the excesses of an ideological and self-serving Administration. But your loyalty to the President goes too far.

We are straining beyond its limits an international system we built with such toil and treasure, a web of laws, treaties, organizations, and shared values that sets limits on our foes far more effectively than it ever constrained America's ability to defend its interests.

I am resigning because I have tried and failed to reconcile my conscience with my ability to represent the current U.S. Administration. I have confidence that our democratic process is ultimately self-correcting, and hope that in a small way I can
contribute from outside to shaping policies that better serve the security and prosperity of the American people and the world we share.
_______________________________________________

Epilog: *Yes Fishman--it's long and wordy--but decency needs to be heard in its entireity here on WWW.SciForum.com, and elsewhere. It has become such a rare commodity in todays facsist and unusally imperialistic Bush ( league ) America.

"May you slip on a banana peel DIM BULB--and may you fall and hit where little harm can occur ( your bone head! )--and may GOD BLESS AMERICA!" :mad:

The following is the AZCowBoy's tribute to the desperate young Palestinian boy--going to nowhere on a bus in Haifa--that gave his life up this week so that his brothers and sisters of Palestine might someday live in a J/rat free and posperous independent Palestine.... :(

Risk--"To triumph without risk--it to triumph without glory," R.I.P little Palestinian brother--for God made us all in his image and delegated no one to murder "any" of his children!" :o

TheAZCowBoy, :)

And I say to the LIKUDNIK thugs of ZioNazi Israel, always remember: "He that sows the wind--reaps the whirlwind!" :o

*wipes a tear from his eye*
amen.

I watched the address again, and I think this man is under medication. I am not kidding.

Of course he is, they have to keep him drugged up or else he would take one look at himself and jump off the nearest balcony.

I think this man is under medication. I am not kidding.

Yeah, AzCowboy needs help. Oh, wait. Who were you talking about? :D

They should make Collin Powell president, he makes better public speeches than most lawyers, I bet Powell could have saved Ted Bundy from the electric chair....