Stammering Bush

Stammering Bush

Television Interview of the US President on Problems with the CIA and the Truth

By Rainer Rupp

[This article originally published in: junge Welt, February 10, 2004 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, http://www.jungewelt.de/2004/02-10/004.php.]

Judging by the first reactions of convinced Bush followers, the US president should keep his mouth shut and not give interviews any more. Thus commentator John Derbyshire in the neoconservative National Review described the presentation of George W. Bush on Monday as a “rather pathetic show”. The interview was seen Sunday evening on NBC at the best-broadcast time. The question pressed in the living rooms of the nation whether the stammering man on the screen was actually the president of the United States of America. Bush mumbled and stumbled along from sentence to sentence in justifying the Iraq war. He gave monosyllable answers or no answer to difficult questions. At the same time he stood out by stubbornly ignoring facts that were long well known. Bush stated that his chief weapons inspector David Kay found a large quantity of evidence that “Iraq was more dangerous in many regards than we thought.” In truth, Kay testified before the US Congress shortly after the end of his mission that there were no prohibited weapons in Iraq and that these weapons with “very high probability” were already destroyed in the middle of the 1990s.

The star-NBC moderator Tim Russert sent to the White House for the interview wanted to know about the prohibited weapons. Oh, there could be a “lot of theories”, Bush replied. “Saddam and his accomplices could have destroyed them when we marched into Iraq. They could have hidden them. They could have brought them into another country. We will find out.” Bush gave no answer to the question whether the Bush strategy of the so-called preventive strike was tenable in view of the false intelligence service information. Instead he hid behind his secret service. He, the president, was “forced” to decide on the basis “of existing intelligence service information”. But the poor intelligence service situation was not the result of mistakes. The agency has “a capable leader” with CIA-head George Tenet. The allies also came to the same conclusions as the US services. Is Tenet’s job “in danger”? “No, not at all.” According to a congressional investigation, the CIA already failed miserably before September 11. The CIA also drove the president “into the Iraq war” with false information. Nevertheless Bush now expressed again his most complete trust in the CIA chief so that the question pressed: Could Tenet’s knowledge have been possibly dangerous for Bush?

With the question of the NBC interviewer whether the Iraq war was worth the deaths of officially 530 US soldiers and 3000 wounded army soldiers – the thousands upon thousands of victims on the Iraqi side weren’t worth mentioning – Bush squirmed uncomfortably in his chair. Finally he resolved to present his version of weapons of mass destruction and “the alleged danger for America” to “the parents of the fallen soldiers who now look on”. “A free Iraq will change the world. These are historic times”, Bush emphasized.