Jon Stewart of Comedy Central's Daily Show described the situation in BushWord as "We're on the bus to Crazytown!" A brief summary of the news indicates that we have now arrived in Crazytown and are seeing the sights.

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    The Washington Post (7/20/07) published a 700 word column focused on Senator Hillary Clinton’s cleavage: “There was cleavage on display Wednesday afternoon on C-SPAN2. It belonged to Sen. Hillary Clinton.” Senator Clinton’s cleavage was described as “startling”, “unnerving”, and was likened to “catching a man with his fly unzipped. Just look away!”

     You would think that 700 words was enough coverage of Senator Clinton’s cleavage, but the American “news” media was just getting started.

      On July 29, the subject of Senator Clinton’s cleavage came up on NBC’s Meet the Press. CNBC correspondent John Harwood suggested that Clinton’s cleavage was a calculated move and there must be an ulterior motive: “When you look at the calculation that goes into everything that Hillary Clinton does…” Hmmm?

      The next day, MSNBC devoted 23 minutes and 42 seconds discussing Senator Clinton’s cleavage with various reports during their 9 a.m., 10 a.m., 11 a.m., 1 p.m., 2 p.m., and 3 p.m. programs. Was Senator Clinton “trying to cash in on her cleavage”? Or was she just trying to show that she is “comfortable in her own skin”? Was it on purpose? What does it all mean???

     To its credit, CNN devoted only about four minutes to the Clinton cleavage that day, and Fox got it just right, by ignoring it completely--though I’m sure that if it had been Rudy Giuliani’s cleavage, they would have spent the whole day raving about it.

      I have carefully examined pictures of the alleged cleavage, and what I saw was a tired woman, who looked like she had been up all night listening to a Republican filibuster against bringing our troops home. As far as the cleavage goes, it seems to be a clear case of the media making a mountain out of a molehill.

 *****

      If you’ve been wondering why the Senate Judicial Committee keeps calling U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales back to clarify past statements, consider this exchange between Gonzales and Sen. Chuck Shumer (D-NY) during a hearing on July 25, 2007:

 GONZALES: I clarified my statement two days later with the reporter.

SCHUMER: What did you say to the reporter?

GONZALES: I did not speak directly to the reporter.

SCHUMER: Oh, wait a second -- you did not. (LAUGHTER) OK. What did your spokesperson say to the reporter?

GONZALES: I don’t know. But I told the spokesperson to go back and clarify my statement...

SCHUMER: …I’ll give you another chance: You’re hanging your hat on the fact that you clarified the statement two days later. You’re now telling us that is was a spokesperson who did it. What did that spokesperson say? Tell me now, how do you clarify this?

GONZALES: I don’t know, but I’ll find out and get back to you.

 *****

     It seems that no matter how badly a plan is going, the Bush Administration doesn’t change anything; they just change the way it is sold to the public. To that end, the Pentagon recently paid the Rand Corporation $400,000 for a study of why our occupation troops in Iraq are not winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. The answer came in a 211-page report called “Enlisting Madison Avenue: The Marketing Approach to Earning Popular Support in Theaters of Operation.”

      It turns out that the U.S. military has been selling the wrong “brand” in Iraq. According to the report: “[S]ince the U.S. military invaded Iraq in 2003, its ‘show of force’ brand has proved to have limited appeal to Iraqi consumers…” The report suggested “a more attractive brand for the Iraqi people might have been "We will help you.”

      The report explains:

 ·        “[C]ivilians are less likely to help, the study says, when they become ‘collateral damage’ in U.S. attacks, have their doors broken down or are shot at checkpoints because they do not speak English.”

      The report recommends “expanding military training to include shaping and branding concepts such as cultural awareness” and stresses the importance of understanding the “target customer” (an interesting choice of words). 

*****

        According to the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, the Iraqi government has refused to take possession of thousands of American-financed reconstruction projects (New York Times, 7/28/07). There are a couple of reasons for this: (1) The Iraqi government is afraid to come out of the Green Zone; and (2) The reconstruction projects are not worth taking over.

      Significant problems were found in ten of twelve projects inspected in the first two quarters of this year, and a number of projects have been found already “crumbling, abandoned or otherwise inoperative” just months after the Bush Administration had declared them to be successfully completed.

 ·        “The management of the reconstruction program for Iraq has been a near-total disaster from the beginning.”--William L. Nash, a retired general and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, The New York Times, 7/28/07

 *****

      A riddle for the troops:

      A majority of Americans believe that the Iraq War is a mistake and we should start bringing you home. …So Senate Democrats offered an amendment to the Defense Authorization bill which would establish a time-table to bring you home.

…But Senate Republicans filibustered the amendment and the Defense Authorization spending bill was held up.

…Then, President Bush said that, by holding up passage of the spending bill, the Democrats were denying you a 3.5 percent pay--even though he had previously threatened to veto the very same spending bill because his administration felt that 3.5 percent was too big of a pay raise for you.

 So, who is supporting the troops?

 *****

     “If that’s what you need, that’s what you got.”-- George W. Bush, describing his answer to General David Petraeus’ request for 20,000 more troops. The only problem--the General had asked for 100,000 more troops and knew he needed 200,000 to give a “surge” a fighting chance. “Which begs the question: Why didn’t Bush increase the force by the requested amount?” --UPI, 7/17/07

 *****

     So far, Mr. Bush’s unnecessary wars on Iraq and Afghanistan has cost the lives of 4,134 American military personnel (as of 8/21/07), and no one really knows how many hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed.

 ·        “Two thousand Iraqis are fleeing their homes every day. It is the greatest mass exodus of people ever in the Middle East and dwarfs anything seen in Europe since the Second World War. Four million people, one in seven Iraqis, have run away, because if they do not they will be killed.”-- Patrick Cockburn, The Independent, 7/30/07

 ...and that’s the way it is in BushWorld today.

Authors Bio:

Mick Youther is an American citizen, an independent voter, a veteran, a parent, a scientist, a writer, and all-around nice guy who has been roused from a comfortable apathy by the high crimes and misdemeanors of the Bush Administration.