http://news.yahoo.com/s/ucru/20060418/cm_ucru/dontimpeachbushcommithim

DON'T IMPEACH BUSH. COMMIT HIM.

By Ted Rall

A Maniacal Messianic Prepares to Fulfill His Destiny

"I have fulfilled my destiny," the president says manically.

He has just entered the nuclear launch codes that will trigger World
War III.

Seconds later, he emerges from a bunker.

The Secretary of State squeezes between two soldiers.

"Mr. President!" he shouts.

"We have a diplomatic solution!"

He smiles.

"It's too late," he replies.

"The missiles are flying. Alleluia. Alleluia."

The above scene, from David Cronenberg's 1983 adaptation of the horror
novel "The Dead Zone," is a classic if slightly preposterous nightmare
of a world destroyed by a demented demagogue.

Now, incredibly, a lunatic out of a Stephen King movie has brought the
United States to the brink of Armageddon.

Until I read Seymour Hersh's expose in The New Yorker and subsequent
follow-up coverage by other journalists about the Bush Administration's
plans to start a war against Iran, I had dismissed talk of George W.
Bush's messianism as so much Beltway chatter.

True, he hears voices, even claiming that God and Jesus Christ talk to
him.

"I believe God wants me to run for president," he told a friend in
Texas.

Eschewing mainstream religion, he routinely parrots the apocalyptic
ravings of fringe Christianist cults:

"And the light [America] has shone in the darkness [the enemies of
America], and the darkness will not overcome it [America shall conquer
its enemies]," he said during his fevered campaign for war against
Iraq.

He mimics Old Testament cadences:

"God told me to strike at Al Qaeda and I struck them," Bush told the
Palestinian prime minister in 2003, "and then he instructed me to
strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the
problem in the Middle East."

Nooor-mal.

Despite the man's wacky religiosity, I have been giving Bush the
benefit of a small amount of remaining doubt after five years of the
most disastrous rule this nation has ever suffered.

I believed that he was breathtakingly bigoted, stupid and ignorant.

But I didn't think he was out of his mind.

Until now.

"Current and former American military and intelligence officials" tell
Hersh "that President Bush is determined to deny the Iranian regime the
opportunity to begin a pilot program, planned for this spring, to
enrich uranium."

Of course, uranium enrichment for peaceful atomic energy is permitted
by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which Iran is a signatory.

Which is what the Iranians say they're doing.

But the Bush Administration, which knows a little about lying, doesn't
believe them.

Fair enough:

One only has to consider the risk of nuclear conflagration between
India and Pakistan to see why the fewer countries have nukes, the
better.

Not every country can be trusted with such terrifying weapons.

So how does the trustworthy United States plan to make its stand
against nuclear proliferation?

By nuking Iran.

"One of the military's initial option plans," reports Hersh, "...calls
for the use of a bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon, such as the
B61-11, against underground nuclear sites."

An intelligence insider says that "Every other option, in the view of
the nuclear weaponeers, would leave a gap. 'Decisive' is the key word
of the Air Force's planning. It's a tough decision. But we made it in
Japan."

"We're talking about mushroom clouds, radiation, mass casualties, and
contamination over years," he went on.

Crazy stuff.

But whenever someone inside the Administration opposes the nuclear
option, "They're shouted down."

The pro-nuke faction, led by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, is
responding to internal critics with a "B61 [nuclear bomb] with more
blast and less radiation."

You may have heard that Bush dismissed Hersh's article as "wild
speculation."

At first I, like you, responded with a sigh of relief.

But I've come to learn that Bush doesn't talk like a human being.

His policy pronouncements are carefully lawyered to give him the kind
of technical out that Bill Clinton could only have dreamed of.

Bushspeak is crafted to ensure that what Mr. Straightshooter says is
rarely what he means.

Filtering "wild speculation" statement through Bushspeak analysis shows
that it's no denial at all.

"The doctrine of prevention is to work together to prevent the Iranians
from having a nuclear weapon," Bush said.

Notice that, despite the disaster in Iraq, he still reserves the right
to wage preemptive war.

He continued:

"I know here in Washington prevention means force. It doesn't mean
force necessarily. In this case it means diplomacy."

It doesn't mean force necessarily.

If and when a reporter reminds Bush of this statement after he attacks
Iran, he will say that he never took the military option--including
nukes--off the table.

Moreover, he'll say, that he told the truth at the time.

Thus the present tense: means.

Bush has not denied Hersh's article.

Therefore, we should accept it as accurate.

We already know that Bush is capable of lying about his willingness to
use diplomacy instead of war.

"We're still in the final stages of diplomacy," he told reporters on
March 6, 2003.

"I'm spending a lot of time on the phone, talking to fellow leaders
about the need for the United Nations Security Council to state the
facts, which is Saddam Hussein hasn't disarmed...Iraq is a part of the
war on terror. Iraq is a country that has got terrorist ties."

Actually, Bush had decided to invade Iraq months--probably
years--before.

He had moved hundreds of thousands of American troops into the Persian
Gulf.

Two weeks later, he ordered an assassination attempt on Saddam Hussein
and began the saturation bombing of Baghdad.

But Bush was still talking as if there were something Saddam could do
to avoid war.

"Our demands are that Saddam Hussein disarm," he went on.

"We hope he does."

Sure.

_______________________________________________________________

"I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed, Mister President,
but
I do say not more than ten to twenty million dead depending on the
breaks."

General "Buck" Turgidson in Dr. Strangelove

Harry
(see all of Harry Hope's excellent posts as they break, put this link
in your browser, use it, this is a search on google groups, on the
author Harry Hope sorted by date... nothing fancy):
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=&start=0&scoring=d&enc_author=-nIhFBQAAACtBOUGAhN9cSve8yYdFJBuOPANdqfI6prRsqjc7uCt1A&