Where's The Accountability, Baby?

"The things that will destroy us are: politics without principle; pleasure without conscience; wealth without work; knowledge without character; business without morality; science without humanity; and worship without sacrifice."~~Mahatma Gandhi

George W. Bush once told The Washington Post's Bob Woodward the great thing about being president was that he didn't have to answer to anybody. "I'm the commander," Bush bragged. "See -- I do not need to explain why I say things...Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation..."

So that's it, then. Houston -- we have your problem. And, like they say in Texas -- anybody with half sense and one eye can see it's out of control. With this guy, the buck never stops -- just veers crazily around corners, never turns back, thunders through the halls of the administration -- scares the hell out of those who try to corral it. The few times it has been caught in the glare of truth's headlights, its eyes were so wildly insane that hunters, even scandal-hardened ones like Woodward, quickly backed off...

It's time for the buck to come to a screeching halt. Life is NOT just a box of chocolates. Nor is it an endless video game or just one big television production. When American soldiers, sailors and marines are riddled with real bullets -- blasted apart by real bombs -- they don't get up, dust themselves off and go home after the "show." They die. And they stay dead.

It's time for the most powerful man in the world to step up and take credit for the massive damage he is causing throughout the world. It's that simple. Bush's modus operendi throughout his private and public life is to shrug and take himself "out of the loop" when the going gets rough. Just walk away. Rise above the clutter. Let somebody somebody else take the hit. Or, what are (we paying) friends for?

That "strategery" may work in Texas, but this is the Big Time. Bush's world is a frightening one where hundreds of "disappeared" American citizens still languish out of sight and out of mind in an Ashcroftian detention maze. It's an Abu Ghraib world where thousands of Iraqi citizens are swept up like stray dogs -- dragged from their homes in the middle of the night and thrown into the pound.

Bush would have us believe that nobody is to blame for the pain and humiliation suffered by human beings who are taunted, sexually abused, tortured, and even murdered. He wants us to believe that nobody is responsible for the wanton destruction of innocent men, women and children who make up war's faceless collateral damage, most of whom must die simply because they are there.

Sorry. Americans understand "chain of command," and we're not buying it.

Bush may be the "guy at the top," but few Americans believe he's actually in charge. They know we're in the grip of a deadly, power-bloated committee whose entire cast of characters is without shame or conscience. They call themselves "Vulcans," and most -- Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, William Kristol, Donald Rumsfeld, Bill Bennett, Douglas Feith -- had waited for more than a decade for the opportunity to savage regulatory corporate controls, pillage the U.S. Treasury, and to set into motion sweeping plans http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf for a New World Order.

Ironically, not one of them was presidential material. Hey -- not even the Supremes could have pulled that one off without sparking a revolution. But they struck oil -- a real gusher -- when they selected the frisky and mean-spirited Bush as their front man. What a find! Bush, a blindly competitive bully, was totally self-absorbed, contemptuous of the disadvantaged masses and -- the best part -- he had no qualms about destroying innocent people if they got in the way of his way. It worked to their advantage that Bush was as dumb as dirt with no sense of history because he very quickly proved he would do as he was told and would stick to the scripts written for him.

Garbage in, garbage out.

Bush's cruel charm also made him an instant media darling. The media's unrelenting efforts to convince us that -- for Bush at least -- life does indeed begin at 40, are legend. They were the wind beneath Bush's wings as he flew crazily to war, and still refuse to expose his relentless, behind-the-scenes attack on the economy, the environment, and the overall health and welfare of Americans themselves. The media refuse to hold Bush accountable, even as he stomps out of press conferences when asked an unscripted question while furiously screaming, "Keep those motherfuckers away from me!" Which reminds me -- Bush is also a "born-again" evangelical Christian. Who is brave enough to court the wrath of a vengeful God by holding one of those folks accountable?

Asking Bush for an explanation can be a frustrating exercise. He can't remember ever making a mistake; is incapable of even mouthing the words, "I'm sorry." For example, in an April 13, 2004 press conference, Bush was asked to cite his biggest mistake since 9/11 -- not his biggest ever, just since 9-11 -- and what he learned from it.

Dissolving into a trembling, unscripted fool, Bush said, "You know, I just -- I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with an answer, but it hasn't yet." Unable to leave well enough alone, Bush then continued babbling incoherently, "I hope I -- I don't want to sound like I've made no mistakes. I'm confident I have. I just haven't -- you just put me under the spot here, and maybe I'm not as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one."

Under the spot? Strange that the constant drumbeat of lies Bush told about WMD to whip the world into a frenzied, needless war didn't just "pop" into his head as maybe being a bit of a mistake. It sure pops into mine as a mistake of gargantuan proportions. Getting it to pop out is the problem, especially today, as the 1097th http://icasualties.org/oif/ coalition body bag is tossed onto the pile, and the stench of tens of thousands of slaughtered Iraqi men, women and children wafts over the international landscape.

Sometimes I wonder if, in hindsight, the Supreme Court regrets installing Bush in the 2000 presidential coup. I wonder if they realize just how grotesque their act of destroying the natural dignity of democracy really is. Surely those five judges did not reach the pinnacle of judicial power without having a sense of history; without having read Thomas Paine's "The Rights of Man." Surely they knew that those who seize power rule their subjects by "force and fraud," and view with disgust the foolish rabble crying out against injustice. To reason with such men, Paine says, is to argue with brutes. Perhaps accountability should begin with the Supremes. Unfortunately -- like Bush -- they appear to feel they don't owe anybody an explanation...

Lack of space prohibits a complete rundown of the wounds Bush is inflicting upon this country. He had scarcely removed his hand from the Bible on inauguation day before he began trashing hundreds of domestic regulations http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/20010123-4.html put in place by President Bill Clinton. Bush began with a pre-emptive attack on wetlands and turned over the country's 155 national forests to the logging industry, kicked off a crusade to allow oil drilling in the nation's national monuments, and began an assault on job protections for both government and corporate workers.

And that was just his first day on the job...

To be fair, Clinton -- in a last-minute effort to protect the people and the environment -- left a stack of industry-opposed regulations, to include 800 pages of protections for Medicare programs. Bush made short shrift of those, while ending federal funding to groups that provide abortion counseling abroad, broke his campaign promise to regulate power plants for lower C02 emissions, and horrified the international community by trashing the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 for controlling global warming. Never worked up a sweat. For a listing of treaties and protocols shredded or rejected by the Bush regime, from Kyoto to land mines to women's rights, see http://motherearth.org/bushwanted/laws.php#rogue

Threatening the world with deadly consequences of being against him rather than with him is the hallmark of Bush's presidency. He boasts proudly that he doesn't bother reading the news -- the Vulcans tell him everything he needs to know. The decisions he makes are from his "gut," Bush says, and he vows to hold anybody who has a problem with that personally accountable.

Accountability. Six big syllables. One of Bush's favorite words. It's time he defined it for us.

As more Americans realize the sheer scope of the damage Bush is causing here at home, they must wonder how he gets away with it. One reason could be that trusting the President of the United States is genetically American. We are all but incapable of coming to grips with the idea that a US President would deliberately harm a US citizen. Another reason, and probably the most viable, is that the shock of 9-11, the rush to war, the litany of lies, the tragic loss of our servicemen and women and the metallic taste of fear as a result of sudden dire warnings of cold-blooded killers headed our way has forced most of us to "compartmentalize" our lives in order to retain our sanity.

Bush is responsible for stealing billions from the WTC victims' compensation fund, for cutting veterans health benefits, for cutting his much-heralded Head Start and Leave No Child Behind programs in order to fund his tax cuts for the wealthy. The reality is that, as a result of Bush's "gut" decisions, real American people are losing real American freedoms and benefits. Those are real American children being deprived of education, social services, medical care and, all too often, even of food and shelter because of the heartless decisions of the Bush regime. If you haven't been ravaged, it's probably because Bush's corporate "Rangers" and "Pioneers" haven't gotten around to you yet.

It's a real cattle drive out there, folks. Yippee-ki-yoh...

On Monday, Aug. 23, as many as six million Americans lost their right to overtime pay http://www.freep.com/cgi-bin/forms/printerfriendly.pl and, according to Ross Eisenbrey, director of the Economic Policy Institute, employers now have the "flexibility" to work their employees 50 or 60 hours a week without paying any more than they would for 40. Theft, pure and simple -- of citizens' money, their time and, ultimately, their lives. Eisenbrey points out, "It took 100 years of struggle to pass the Fair Labor Standards Act and create a 40-hour week. It has taken the Bush administration less than four years to turn back the clock."

Bush's Labor Day Message to working Americans -- Go Cheney yourselves!

But the most egregious example of man's inhumanity to man was Bush pressuring the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to assure New York City residents that the air at or near Ground Zero was safe to breathe when he knew it was not. Although tons of concrete, glass, furniture, carpets, insulation, computers and papers burned at the site until mid-December, then EPA director Christine Todd Whitman was forced out there just one week after the twin towers collapsed to assure New Yorkers the air quality was safe.

According to a Reuters article, http://www.enn.com/news/2003-09-11/s_8326.asp a study conducted by scientists at the University of California and released in Sept. 2003 found that, "The burning ruins of the World Trade Center spewed toxic gases 'like a chemical factory' for at least six weeks..." The study went on to say the White House "convinced the EPA" to delete cautionary statements. In other words, Bush -- who brays constantly that his mission is to "protect the American people," assured them with no thought for their safety that it was okay to breathe asbestos, lead, concrete dust and pulverized glass...

If there is a God, George W. Bush will be held responsible for this one heartless, barbaric and immoral act above all others.

I doubt that Bush can recall from speech to speech what he promises, but those of us who have developed an ear for his rhapsodic prattlings know, as Freud said, his gaffes inevitably reveal his true thoughts. Bush told us long before his selection the direction his regime would take, but we were too busy laughing at his convoluted syntax to hear him. In January 2000, the Financial Times reported that, while at a gathering in South Carolina, Bush attempted to describe the world of terror in which he lives with a tortured, "It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mential (sic) losses."

In May 2000, he was at it again in Albuquerque when he warned us of terror and evil and evildoers and madmen and missiles when he said, " ...You see, even though it's an uncertain world, we're certain of some things. We're certain that even though the evil empire may have passed, evil still remains. We're certain there are people that can't stand what America stands for...We're certain there are madmen in this world, and there's terror, and there's missiles and I'm certain of this, too: I'm certain to maintain the peace, we better have a military of high morale, and I'm certain that under this administration, morale in the military is dangerously low."

If you listen closely to him -- if you notice the security precautions that must be taken before he will venture out in public in his iron bubble -- it's easy to see that Bush is mightily concerned about protecting at least one American -- himself. Bush is far more terrified than we are. In his world, a terrorist lurks behind every tree, crouches under every bed -- and they're all out to get him.

Maybe so. But then, again, maybe all they want is for the buck to stop. Maybe they think he should assume responsibility -- and be held accountable -- for the needless slaughter. Maybe they just feel he owes them an explanation.

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Sheila Samples is an Oklahoma freelance writer and a former US Army Public Information Officer. She is a proud member of the Order of Saint Barbara -- the Field Artillery's Patron Saint. She will accept praise and atta-boys at: rsamples@sirinet.net. Complaints and death threats should be directed to her cousin, Junior Samples, at BR-549.