* What's Wrong with This President?

On my mind today is Bush's upcoming speech on his "new" plan for Iraq. I am dreading what he might say, i.e., that more troops are needed. Today's New York Times headline and yesterday's are stealing my hope for a rational and compassionate plan for Iraq from him. The most crucial part of these articles, for me, is that, "Mr. Bush ... plans to send as many as 20,000 additional troops," which isn't really news of late.

There are probably a thousand articles which were written over the past several years about Bush's lack of intelligence, his combination of religious faith and arrogance, but maybe not as many about what I see as his frightening lack of compassion.

I remembered a perhaps under-reported incident in 1999 in a Tucker Carlson interview where Bush mocks death row inmate Karla Faye Tucker pleading for her life. Whether we agree with the death penalty, or not, Bush presented himself as a cold-hearted jerk.

Wikipedia: "In 1999, during the 2000 Republican Presidential primary race, Carlson interviewed then-Governor of Texas George W. Bush for Talk magazine. Carlson reported that Bush mocked soon-to-be-executed Texas death row inmate Karla Faye Tucker and "cursed like a sailor." Bush's communications director Karen Hughes publicly disputed this claim. Carlson did not vote in the 2004 election, citing his disgust with the Iraq war and his disillusionment with the once small-government Republican party."

From "Devil May Care" by Tucker Carlson, Talk Magazine, September 1999, p. 106, "Bush's brand of forthright tough-guy populism can be appealing, and it has played well in Texas. Yet occasionally there are flashes of meanness visible beneath it.

"While driving back from the speech later that day, Bush mentions Karla Faye Tucker, a double murderer who was executed in Texas last year. In the weeks before the execution, Bush says, Bianca Jagger and a number of other protesters came to Austin to demand clemency for Tucker. 'Did you meet with any of them?' I ask.

"Bush whips around and stares at me. 'No, I didn't meet with any of them,' he snaps, as though I've just asked the dumbest, most offensive question ever posed. 'I didn't meet with Larry King either when he came down for it. I watched his interview with [Tucker], though. He asked her real difficult questions, like 'What would you say to Governor Bush?'

'What was her answer?' I wonder.

'Please,' Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, 'don't kill me.'

"I must look shocked -- ridiculing the pleas of a condemned prisoner who has since been executed seems odd and cruel, even for someone as militantly anticrime as Bush -- because he immediately stops smirking.

'It's tough stuff,' Bush says, suddenly somber, 'but my job is to enforce the law.' As it turns out, the Larry King-Karla Faye Tucker exchange Bush recounted never took place, at least not on television. During her interview with King, however, Tucker did imply that Bush was succumbing to election-year pressure from pro-death penalty voters. Apparently Bush never forgot it. He has a long memory for slights." [Carlson, Talk Magazine, 9/99] Washington Monthly

The whole incident, and much more is recounted here in Death in Texas, including discussion of the "over 152 executions" that Bush presided over as governor:

Death in Texas
The New York Review of Books

January 13, 2005
by Sister Helen Prejean

An excerpt:

"Bush was receiving thousands of messages urging clemency for Tucker, including one from one of his daughters. "Born-again" evangelists such as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, normally ardent advocates of execution, urged him to commute Tucker's sentence. When Pope John Paul II urged Bush to grant mercy to Tucker, Bush responded disingenuously in a letter to the Pope, saying, "Ms. Tucker's sentence can only be commuted by the Governor if the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles recommends a commutation of sentence." On several occasions, Bush stated publicly that in deciding Karla Faye Tucker's fate, he was seeking "guidance through prayer," adding that "judgments about the heart and soul of an individual on death row are best left to a higher authority."

"But there was no way Bush could avoid the godlike power thrust on him as governor. When Russian president Vladimir Putin declared that life-or-death judgments should be "left to the Almighty," he meant that such supposed judgments, even if they are believed to be divine, cannot properly be discerned and administered by flawed human agents. This recognition led him to oppose government executions. But while Bush claimed to leave the judgment of Karla Faye Tucker to God, in reality he exercised his own political judgment and authorized her death."

I wonder what glee Bush expressed over Saddam Hussein's death.

METAXY War Casualties in Iraq,
US and Iraqi and,

$ Cost of War