Body Double by Chris Floyd

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Sat, 26 Mar 2005 12:58:01 -0500

Body Double by Chris Floyd

 

 

 

Body Double by Chris Floyd

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8359.htm

 

03/25/04 " Moscow Times " - Far from the hurly-burly in Florida, where

the Bush brothers and their shameless minions have sought to milk

maximum " political capital " from the ravaged body of a brain-dead

woman, the true moral values of these gilded hypocrites were on stark

display last week in a quiet corner of the Bushes' adopted homeland:

Texas.

 

This week, U.S. President George W. Bush melodramatically cut short

one of his innumerable vacations and flew back to Washington to

intervene in the case of Terri Schiavo when a Florida court granted

her husband's request to cut off her life support after she had spent

15 years in a vegetative state. But days before, even as the president

was supporting his brother, Florida governor Jeb Bush, and

congressional Republicans in " defending the culture of life " in the

Schiavo case, doctors in Houston were pulling the breathing tube from

the throat of an ailing infant. The boy suffocated within seconds,

legally killed -- against the wishes of his anguished mother -- in

accordance with a draconian law signed as a " cost-saving " measure by

the state's former governor: George W. Bush.

 

There were no frenzied protests, no camera-friendly prayer vigils, no

preening politicians at Texas Children's Hospital when 5-month-old Sun

Hudson took his last breath. There was only his mother, Wanda, holding

him in her arms as he died, the Houston Chronicle reported. Sun

suffered from an extreme form of dwarfism, which is incurable and

usually fatal. Early on, doctors recommended cutting off the breathing

tube that kept his undersized lungs working. He was inert, they said,

unresponsive -- essentially comatose.

 

Wanda Hudson disagreed. " I talked to him, " she said. " He was

conscious. " Moving, looking around, he responded to her. Although the

odds were long, she wanted to give him more time to develop, not give

up on him after just a few months. Wishful thinking, a despairing

parent's denial? Perhaps. But the law signed by Bush in 1999 took the

decision out of her hands and gave it to hospital bureaucrats,

allowing them to shut down a patient's life support -- even against

the wishes of the patient's family or guardian -- if the medical brass

decide that treatment is " nonbeneficial, " the Chronicle noted.

 

Indeed, why throw away good money pumping air down the gullet of some

defective infant, just to mollify his nobody of a mother? For, unlike

Schiavo -- a nice middle-class white woman, a political marketer's

dream -- Wanda Hudson was just another worthless black woman living in

poverty, unable to afford prenatal care. Who would waste a dime on

trash like that? It's much more beneficial to funnel that cash into

the coffers of your political patrons -- like George and Jeb, now

wallowing happily in the swamp of campaign grease they get from giant

medical corporations. In return, they push government policies

designed to keep Big Medicine's profits sky-high while gutting public

obligations to provide health care for the hoi polloi.

 

So the hospital invoked the Bush Law on Sun Hudson. Just as in

Florida, a local judge ruled that life-support systems must be

removed, and the patient allowed to die a natural death. But strangely

enough, the Texas judge was not reviled in the halls of Congress as a

would-be murderer, as was his counterpart in Florida -- even though

the latter was carrying out the wishes of Terri Schiavo's husband, her

legal guardian, while the Bush Law used state power to override a

mother's choice. Nor was the Texas judge subjected to death threats

like the ones the Florida judge received from Bush's " armies of

compassion. "

 

No, Sun's mother stood alone. Those compassionate armies and

congressional kibitzers failed to materialize on her behalf. President

Bush -- usually so eager to wade in a with a few scripted words of

pursed-lipped piety about " family values " and " defending life " -- kept

his big mouth shut. The hospital would not allow the media to see Sun

or interview Wanda Jackson -- again, against her wishes. " I wanted

y'all to see him for yourselves, " she told the press after Sun's

death. But so what? When nobodies die, nobody cares.

 

Why the stark contrast between the two cases? Simple: There was no

political hay to be made from Sun Hudson's plight. Spotlighting his

situation might reflect badly on the Dear Leader -- and on the

religious extremists now banking millions in contributions from their

slick campaign to " save " Schiavo. For it turns out that the spearhead

of Bush's Christian army in Florida, the " Right to Life " organization,

actually helped Bush craft the 1999 law that took Sun Hudson's life,

the Chronicle reported. The family-bashing measure was drawn up in

backroom sessions between the Right-to-Lifers, Bush staffers and Big

Medicine. It seems the " culture of life " ends where power politics and

corporate money begin.

 

Bush doesn't care if Schiavo lives or dies. Her body -- like the

bodies of the 100,000 Iraqis he has killed, like the bodies of the

American soldiers being chewed up every day in his Babylonian

conquest, like the bodies of the poor and working people whom he is

methodically and remorselessly cutting off from medical care,

financial protection against catastrophic illness, and legal redress

against corporate predators -- is just a means to an end, the only end

Bush cares about: increasing the power and wealth of his own rapacious

circle of privileged elites.

 

There is nothing, absolutely nothing, he will not do to serve this

end. He'll wage war on false pretenses, he'll pervert the democratic

process, he'll spit on the Constitution -- and he'll exploit the

private suffering of families facing hideous dilemmas of life and

death. There is no honor, no morality, no values in his " culture. "