Bushwhacked: Supporters Continue to Ignore Facts

Cody Flores, staff writer

Never mind the increased national debt, the 43 million Americans without health insurance, and the invasion of a country that had absolutely nothing to do with Sept. 11, our president is still one heck of a guy right?

George W. Bush supporters all say the same thing, “He is a good successful leader and isn’t afraid to make decisions.” Well, that’s true. He does make decisions, but the problem is that sometimes he makes decisions without thinking them through. And if he is so successful, how would you define failure? It seems like everything he does creates a problem, and people are finally starting to realize it.

Four years ago, President Bush’s approval rating was about 80 percent; now it has dropped below 40 percent. But why should Bush care what the majority of America thinks? They didn’t vote for him anyway. Still, there are some supporters of his out there. But Bush supporters aren’t being loyal to good values, ethics, morals, intelligence and all the things a president should be. They are being loyal to a person; to a man that they will be behind no matter what. But no one, no thing, and no $521 billion budget deficit is going to change their minds.

The presidential race shouldn’t be a high-school student council election where you are voted on by who you are, or in this case, who your daddy is. It’s an election that should be based on how well you can run the country. After all, Bush didn’t run for class president, he ran for president of the United States, and he was not qualified. We should have figured that out when he entered office with a criminal record.

The president showed just how unqualified he was during the most tragic event to happen on American soil. On the morning of Sept. 11 2001, the president was in a classroom reading to a group of school kids, when all of a sudden, he received the message, “Mr. President, America is under attack.” One of the main presidential duties is the ability to act and respond in an emergency. President Bush chose to freeze and remain seated for seven whole minutes “collecting his thoughts,” and “trying to get a better understanding of the situation.”

Getting a better understanding of a terrorist attack involves getting up and asking questions, “Who attacked us? Where did it happen?” It doesn’t involve sitting in a chair reading “My Pet Goat.” But after seven minutes, he took action right? Wrong. He did a 20-minute photo op knowing full well that terrorists were attacking the country. How can a person defend a president who wastes 27 minutes to respond when America is under attack?

After the smoke had cleared and it was known that Osama Bin Laden was behind the attacks, our president did just what his father tried to do but failed, he went after Saddam Hussein. Let’s invade a country that has absolutely nothing to do with the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. Let’s tell the people of America that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction. Let’s say that he is in cahoots with Bin Laden. Well, I’m not buying it Mr. President. There is no proof of this. There has never been any proof. Bin Laden doesn’t want to help Hussein, and Hussein doesn’t want to help Bin Laden. Why would

they? The bottom line is, it wasn’t Saddam Hussein who killed more than 3,000 people on Sept. 11, it was Bin Laden.

According to President Bush, “Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, they never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.” The war in Iraq has left America to face the largest budget crisis in decades. More than $100 billion has been wasted on Iraq, and nearly 1,300 American troops have been killed. Death seems to follow Bush wherever he goes considering he holds the record for the most executions by any governor in American history. Being a former soldier himself, the president should know how hard it is on the battlefield right? Considering Bush deserted his unit during Vietnam and went AWOL for more than a year, probably not. But he still cares about our troops doesn’t he? Well, not attending a single funeral of any fallen soldier in Iraq and cutting healthcare benefits for War Veterans leads me to believe that he doesn’t.

The other huge catastrophe that occurred during the Bush administration was Hurricane Katrina that recently took place in New Orleans. I know President Bush didn’t cause the hurricane, but the funding that should have gone to the levee system that failed probably went to something more important, like more tax cuts for rich folk.

With all that aside, at least the relief effort was there after the hurricane hit, wasn’t it? Yeah it was there, and it only took five days to get there too. I miss the days when the president just sat around and did nothing for 27 minutes.

So many lives could have been saved if only they would have gotten there sooner. And it’s not like the hurricane just all of a sudden came out of the water and fell on New Orleans. The hurricane was being talked about for weeks before it hit. Government officials knew what it was capable of, and they knew they had to get people out of there. I guess the president was on another one of his well-deserved vacations on the ranch and just didn’t know.

Some other decisions that the president has made are quite interesting, including the repeated attempts to legalize oil drilling in the national wildlife refuge, the declining of the AIDS Initiative fund that he said he would pay, the funding cut to the Violence Against Women Act, and the elimination of youth opportunity grants and funding for low income college students. These are things that we the Americans wouldn’t typically expect from a president, but after all, as Bush has said before, “I’m the master of low expectations.” Presidents say the darndest things.

With all I’ve mentioned, an unemployment rate of 6 percent, and Osama Bin Laden still at large, President Bush is caught between Iraq and a hard place. Something must be done to improve our country, and we can’t afford to wait until 2008.