December 16, 2003

And I find it very interesting that when the heat got on you dug yourself a hole and you crawled in it.

Okay, I'm not trying to be incediary or partisan, given my penchant for berating Dub I know this hard to beleive, but I'm honestly interested in this without it turning into a mock the moron thread. Honestly. This morning all the news outlets were carrying a sound bite of Bush discussing the capture of Saddam. The quote was this; "Good riddance. The world is better off without you, Mr. Saddam Hussein. And I find it very interesting that when the heat got on you dug yourself a hole and you crawled in it." Now I burst out laughing when I heard this, and here is why. (And before I go further, I admit that my opinion of the man taints any and everything I see/hear regarding him.) The reason I laughed was because on September 11, 2001 he did the exact same thing when the heat was on, crawled into an albeit more sophisticated high tech hole, but a hole none the less. Even more so with Dick Chenny. Here's my question for those that approve of the man, or even more interestingly, may be truly non-partisan. When you hear this statement isn't the hypocrisy overwhelming? Doesn't this immediately trigger thoughts that Bush doesn't think too highly of your intelligence, ability to remember the recent past or put two and two together?

posted by Keith Talent 20 years ago
  • Well, I definitely don't approve of the man, but I feel that this is an irrelevant criticism. He used a folksy turn of phrase that fits in with the image he's trying to project of himself as a Big Tough Texan. A rhetorical device, not a lie, not a cover up, just Bush-baby being a smart ass and playing a role. Really, there are many many reasons to doubt Bush's ability to lead our country, but I don't think this is one of them.
  • To be precise, he skedaddled.
  • And a naked confession: I'm a dyed-in-the-wool lefty-Bush-Loather-par-Excellance, but as I sat here and read through the transcript, I thought,"Wait. Will there be a punchline at the bottom of this post? Because the man sounds fairly COGENT and almost ARTICULATE about these events." If I'd HEARD the man say the same words on NPR, or SAW the man say them on CNN I know my snark-gland would be all juiced up by now. And I'd be jeering. Is this like the famous Nixon-JFK debate, where due to the vagaries of human response and a million little perceptions working overtime most of the radio LISTENERS thought Nixon had trounced his adversary, whereas most who WATCHED it on CBS thought JFK had won? Doesn't change my mind for a second about ol' George, but I'm just saying it really struck me. Am I alone on this?
  • And Naxosaur-- Point taken, but so far we're trying to be respectful of each other, and the topic, so I find your concerns pre-mature. And rather than stifling discussion, Nax, please tell what you think...
  • Just looked through the archives - 5 iraq threads, 1 Guantanamo bay thread, 2 warblogger threads, 4 Bush threads (NASCAR address, Medicare, an op-ed by someone, a flash movie) and this one. So five threads about George Bush, and another five which are tangentially about Bush, I suppose, in that they are about his foreign policy decisions. We're hardly drowning in them yet, Naxosaxur. If it was a light hearted jab at metafilter, or at what this site might become, I can see your point. But I don't think we have anything to worry about yet. (Maybe I can't see the slippery slope right in front of me though. Thats certainly happened before. Falling down hills is great fun, too...)
  • We all get it: a good number of you don't like Bush and want him gone. Fine. Thanks for sharing. Do we really need to hear you repeat your message everyday? Memo 2: This is not Metafilter.
  • This is Monkeyland. All monkeys, all the time :)
  • jb, those are some nice monkey links. Sea-monkeys are just fucking great (although why the hell they are called monkeys, I really do not know)
  • Heh. Monkey.
  • (I really wish we could post images. Is the tag disabled intentionally?)
  • You said that your question was "for those that approve of the man, or even more interestingly, may be truly non-partisan.", so that doesn't include me, as I'm opposed to him. However, I don't find the statement overwhelmingly hypocritical. Nick Danger expressed my opinion perfectly: it's just a rhetorical device, not a lie, coverup, or hypocrisy.
  • Keith, I heard this comment on NPR and didn't make the connection between it and Bush's activities after 9/11. I'm pretty anti-Bush and although I thought he just sounded like an uneducated man trying to put together a decent sound bite and tripping over himself, it didn't come across to me as hypocritical.
  • (beating dead horse over and over...) See? It almost looks good on paper, but to HEAR it you can tell he's not that sharp...
  • Dizzy, "almost" being the key word there....
  • Touche'.
  • I think Keith has made an interesting observation. Am I to speculate then, that Georgie's writers have something against him? Seems a little blatant, because the analogy is really close. OTOH, do we read into it what we want to believe? It's still too early to tell what they knew that day, because to continue meeting with the kindergarden class, while all hell is breaking loose seems rather odd behaviour of #1 man in office. I do agree with Keith regarding the short memory span of some citizens.
  • Monkey People: Linking to the MetaTalk thread wasn't to be snarky! I was trying to be ironic, but my attempt was clearly too subtle.
  • Yeah, well that's enough fucking subtlety out of you for one day! Joking. Joking. (or am I?)
  • (let's go stand outside of MeTa and make fun of their magnet school transcripts as they go inside!)
  • I think 'hypocrisy' involves an awareness of one's own lying. In this case I agree with Sooooz, he got the go-ahead to swing at a sound bite and came up with a typical spoiled-bastard born-again Texan asshead Ballmer-dance. hmmm . . . /nick Ballmer_dance
  • Monkey People: Linking to the MetaTalk thread wasn't to be snarky! I was trying to be ironic, but my attempt was clearly too subtle. Sorry, for misunderstanding, naxosaxur
  • I wonder how Jim Loy feels about naxosaxur...
  • It isn't Bush's comments here that make me roll my eyes and shake my head. It was Bremer's "We got 'im" that seemed to echo Bush's "Let's roll" that made me wince. The reporting of momentous news with such swagger and cockiness makes me nauseous. I expected him to turn and spit next to the podium, then wipe his mouth with his arm.
  • It was George Bush's "Bring 'em on" which got me. I've rarely heard someone of such importance say something so stupid - except for anytime Silvio Berlusconi opens his mouth, obviously.
  • Quite frankly, there are so many more serious things that Bush has said and done that go against everything I believe in that this "hole" comment didn't really register with me. He's just gloating. Not only did he get the guy who tried to hurt his daddy, but he managed to slow down the momentum of the Dean campaign right when it was really starting to have impact. Who thinks he's gonna "find" Osama next September? Show of hands?
  • Personally, I think Osama bin Laden is dead, although obviously I have no proof of this, except for the fact that no one seems to have seen or heard from him for so long. (This old Guardian Opinion piece says a similar thing).
  • * crosses fingers *
  • I have no reason or link to back it up but I "feel it in me bones" that bin Laden is alive and well and being hidden by alQaeda sympathizers. [silly aside] In a comedic coup the other day I said to someone on the phone who hadn't heard: "They caught Saddam!" and she said "Really? Oh my god. Where was he?" and I said "Cleveland, if you can believe it. At the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame. At the Huey Lewis and the News exhibition. Turns out he was a big fan." There was a pause and she said "You're such an ass. I actually believed that for a split second." [/silly aside]
  • A good friend of mine who has his finger on the political pulse said that we've known all along where Saddam was and Bush was waiting until the "right" time to "capture" him. I guess the "right" time was when Dean was gaining support. Same friend predicts we'll "capture" Bin Laden in October. There are no coincidences in politics.
  • At the Huey Lewis and the News exhibition. This, I am assuming, is an American Psycho joke.
  • Actually never read American Psycho, so... nope. What's the connection?
  • Homunculus, yes, I've disabled it for now to spare the bandwidth, but it'll be enabled in the future.
  • *skips back one comment* Patrick Bates, the eponymous psycho, periodically launches into demented raves about 80's music
  • Sea-monkeys are just fucking great (although why the hell they are called monkeys, I really do not know) Just because I know the answer, not because it's terribly important, but "Sea Monkeys" sound better than what they actually are, "brine shrimp." Now whether the Sea Monkey name came before the drawings or the drawings inspired the name Sea Monkeys, I don't know.