Americans Are Being Duped By A Burning Bush
By James Donahue
Early 2002
If there is proof to support brainwashing conspiracy theorists, it might be found in a recent CNN,
USA Today and Gallup poll that named President George W. Bush as the most admired man in America.
How anybody can admire a man who failed to gain office by popular vote and in two short years used
up a multi-trillion dollar national surplus on an endless "war on terror" is hard for me to understand.
Since stealing office, George W. Bush and the cronies who followed him to Washington have stripped
the people of their constitutional freedoms, dismantled government controls on industrial pollution and brought the nation's
economy to the brink of collapse.
They are not finished. Now they threatened to toss the Social Security system to the mercy of an unstable stock market, and with the fervor of a batch of religious zealots, lead us
to Armageddon.
During the Christmas holidays a CNN news report showed Mr. Bush burning a large amount of brush
on his Texas ranch. The smoke from the fire was billowing into the already polluted Texas air to join the brume of industrial,
automobile and military dumped contaminants floating around our dying planet. That children in nearby cities are frequently
forced to stay indoors because the polluted air is too dangerous, or that thousands of people are suffering from lung diseases brought on by air contaminants
apparently doesn't matter to Mr. Bush.
Yet he is reportedly admired by the masses.
While the people are tightly gripping the arms of their easy chairs their eyes and minds fixed
on the building war dramas over Iraq and Korea, the Bush Administration is keeping busy behind the scenes in other areas
that might astound you.
For example, on the Friday before Thanksgiving, at a briefing where news cameras were barred, the
administration quietly announced changes to the Clean Air Act's New Source Review program. On the same day the administration
proposed broad changes to the regulation of 10 toxic chemicals.
"The sweep of the Bush administration's assault on our clean air protections is breathtaking," said John Walke, of the Natural Resources Defense Council 's Clean Air Program.
"And I mean literally breathtaking. More than 175 million Americans live in areas of the country that are so smoggy that they
violate federal health standards."
"In the absence of any clear, aggressive Congressional oversight we will see a more vigorous, escalated
attack that includes new efforts to promote more air pollution, more water pollution, more clear cutting in the forests and
more drilling, mining and logging on public lands," said NRDC spokesman Greg Wetstone.
Yet the polls say Mr. Bush is highly respected.
The controversial Patriot Act, which strips Americans of their constitutional protection against
government snooping of their private telephone conversations, fax and e-mail messages and even bugs of private household conversations
in the name of national security, has been coming under fire.
Fearing that the Patriot Act will curtail Americans' civil rights, municipalities across the country
are now passing resolutions to repudiate the legislation and protect their residents from what they are calling a perceived
abuse of authority by the federal government.
But the polls say Bush is admired.
The Bush foreign policy is scary to say the least. While this administration insists on "negotiating"
with North Korea, a nation of starving people who obviously have nuclear weapons and are threatening to use them, Bush insists
on attacking Iraq because Saddam Hussein, that little country's dictator, might possess "weapons of mass destruction." We
aren't told just what those weapons are. UN weapons inspectors combing that country can't prove such weapons exist. And yet
Bush is blatantly building for a military assault on Iraq.
Then there was a scary story about a verbal assault against China's visiting General Xiong Guankai,
deputy chief of staff for intelligence, by White House National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. It seems that Ms Rice reprimanded
the general for comments he made in 1995 suggesting that China would use nuclear weapons against Los Angeles.
This was extremely bad diplomacy at a critical moment in history. It is clear that our National
Security Advisor has no understanding of the way the Chinese people think. To verbally embarrass a high ranking and visiting
military official was, for them, an unthinkable act. We can expect trouble because of it. And it could be severe.
Condoleeza should know that such actions do not win friends with China.
And yet her boss, President George W. Bush, is highly admired. Or so the polls say.
Can we believe the polls? If so, the American people are truly brainwashed and sound asleep.
