A deaf man spouting

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" Zepp " <zepp

Thu, 09 Mar 2006 12:59:03 -0800

[Zepps_News] Blumenthal: A deaf man spouting

 

 

 

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1726734,00.html

 

A deaf man spouting

 

A videotape of Bush's briefing before Hurricane Katrina exposes him as

out of touch with reality

 

Sidney Blumenthal

Thursday March 9, 2006

The Guardian

 

On the eve of George Bush's presidential campaign in 2000, the

neoconservative Kenneth Adelman cast him as Prince Hal, who " puts the

indiscretions of his youth behind him " and " redeems his father's reign " .

 

After September 11, Bush was wreathed with regal laurels as Henry V by

a clerisy of pundits. From Ground Zero to the deck of the USS Abraham

Lincoln ( " Mission Accomplished " ) the president struck bold poses, but

his choreographed gestures have especially illuminated his hollow

crown in the darkened breach of New Orleans.

 

For the first time, last week, the public has seen the spontaneous

Bush behind closed doors, in a leaked videotape that recorded his

briefing the day before Hurricane Katrina struck. Teleconferenced in

from his Crawford ranch, Texas, Bush listens to disaster officials

inform him that the storm will be unprecedented in its severity and

consequences.

 

" This is, to put it mildly, the big one, " says Michael Brown, director

of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Max Mayfield, director of

the National Hurricane Centre, warns: " This hurricane is much larger

than Hurricane Andrew ever was. " Bush asks not a single question,

says, " We are fully prepared " , and departs.

 

The Katrina videotape is defining for Bush's presidency. It exposes a

deaf man spouting talking points. After the hurricane hit, he stayed

on vacation, went to a birthday party, strummed a guitar with a

country and western singer, and on September 1 said: " I don't think

anybody anticipated the breach of the levees. " On his flight back to

Washington, four days after landfall, his aides gave him a DVD of

television news reports of the hurricane's impact about which he had

done nothing to learn on his own.

 

As the catastrophe of the foreshadowed aftermath unfolded, he clapped

Brown on the back: " Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job. " But soon

the administration settled on Brownie as the scapegoat, prevented him

from defending himself and forced him to resign. He was expected to

fall on his sword.

 

Suddenly, last week, the sacrificial Brown stormed back, the betrayed

turning on his betrayers. He proclaimed on every media outlet that he

would no longer play the fall guy, detailed the warnings he had given,

and named malefactors running up the chain of command.

 

In New Orleans, a sad Mardi Gras has come and gone, while crews from

the morgue continue searching for bodies - still finding them. The

city has lost more than half its population, most of the refugees are

African-Americans, and their neighbourhoods remain scenes of

devastation.

 

Having rejected a plan for rebuilding, Bush travelled to

New Orleans for another photo-opportunity this week to announce a

programme that would supposedly give money to the homeless but

absurdly will not permit destroyed housing to be replaced by new. Not

one penny so far has been spent on new homes. Six months after the

tempest, New Orleans, one of the glories of American life and culture,

lies in ruins, and Bush visits to pose as visionary.

 

In a recently published hagiography on the theme of

Bush-as-Prince-Hal, Rebel-in-Chief, written by the rightwing pundit

Fred Barnes, Bush explained to him that his job is to " stay out of

minutiae, keep the big picture in mind " . To illustrate his

self-conception, he " called my attention to the rug " in the Oval

Office. Bush said that he wanted the rug to express that an

" optimistic person comes here " . He delegated the task to his wife,

Laura, who designed a rug featuring bright yellow rays of the sun. In

his Oval Office, Prince Hal imagines himself grown into a Sun King.

 

· Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Clinton, is

the author of The Clinton Wars sidney_blumenthal