FLAIT

Nobody's perfect. Everyone fails at some point. We fail at big tasks, and we fail at small tasks. And when we do fail, it's normal to feel bad about ourselves. It's called remorse.

We also feel bad when we do something bad or wrong. That's called guilt.

Understanding good from bad, right from wrong, and accepting responsibility are things we begin to learn in nursery school and kindergarten. And as we mature and gain the ability to experience these feelings, we have it figured out by the time we get our drivers license.

Therefore, adults that don't show remorse when they fail, and don't show guilt when they do something bad, are mentally ill because they don't have a conscience that would allow them to experience such feelings.

Take George Bush.

He's been such a failure, that in over five years in office he's defied the odds because he hasn't been right once. If he was just "incompetent" he wouldn't have been as wrong as often as he has. So describing him as "incompetent" doesn't go far enough because there's other reasons why people fail miserably.

Besides being unqualified for the job, it could be because of too much arrogance or not enough intellect. It could be because he has ulterior motives and other priorities in mind. It could be because he's got a petulant or pugnacious disposition. It could be because he doesn't care. Or it could be because he doesn't have a conscience.

With Bush, it's all of the above.

"Incompetence" is when you make a legitimate effort to try and succeed but fail over and over again. A waiter for instance, that keeps dropping the food. What separates the waiter from George Bush is that the waiter feels bad about himself every time he's on his knees picking up what he dropped. Bush wouldn't; and he'd act as if someone else did it.

When Bush fails, he becomes obstinate and belligerent - another words, he acts like a child - and shrugs it off as if it wasn't his fault - like a child. He never expresses guilt or remorse, and doesn't show that he cares or even has a conscience. Like a child.

And keep in mind, Bush has had much to feel guilty and remorseful about: failing to prevent the 9/11 attacks, failing to even try and prevent the 9/11 attacks, misleading the country into an unnecessary war in Iraq, having it become a colossal disaster, allowing prisoner abuse and torture (as difficult as it is, try and remember that Bush is "pro-life"), the debacle in Afghanistan*, failing to protect our ports, chemical facilities, nuclear power plants and oil reserves, alienating our allies, enraging our enemies and creating more terrorists, failing to respond to Hurricane Katrina, exploding the budget deficit and national debt, wiretapping Americans without a warrant, the Jack Abramoff scandal, covering up the deliberate leaking of CIA agent Valerie Plame's name, and on and on and on.

Yes, Bush is definitely incompetent. But since he's never shown an ounce contrition, offered the smallest of apologies or admitted a single mistake about any of that - and has spun himself into knots trying to get himself out of whatever mess his arrogant incompetence has gotten the country into - proves that he doesn't care, has other priorities in mind and has no conscience whatsoever (this is where Republicans will bring up Bill Clinton. But he apologized so much for Monica Lewinsky and his impeachment that Republicans said it wasn't sincere. And besides, if you look at Clinton's scandals, all he left behind are staffers with a pile of legal bills. Look behind Bush's incompetence and you'll see piles of dead bodies, which he couldn't care less about.).

Bush has only one priority: to wield as much power as possible. And he's accomplished that by 1) pandering to multi-billion dollar industry's (oil, coal, gas, timber, insurance, banking, pharmaceutical etc.) in exchange for political contributions to the GOP, 2) pandering to specific corporations (Halliburton, Bechtel and the Carlyle Group) for selfish reasons, 3) pandering to the gun nuts, religious nuts and "pro-life" nuts to solidify his base, and 4) absolving himself of all responsibility for his impeachable offenses, crimes, failures and incompetence by keeping the Republican base riled up and angry at "liberals" to ensure that attention and accountability is diverted from him.

So he simply doesn't care about the welfare of the country or its citizens. But he never did; making "compassionate conservatism" nothing but a con.

What's also troubling is that Bush is extremely secretive (which is another telltale sign of mental illness): reclassifying and removing public records from the National Archives, violating the Freedom of Information Act, (Jan. 2008 insert: implementing and increasing obstacles for FOIA requests), secretly allowing prisoners to be transferred to countries that allow torture and wiretapping Americans without a warrant.

And he's secretive when he fails because every time documents are requested by Congress (Hurricane Katrina), an investigating committee (9/11), or U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald (the Plame case), the White House spins, stonewalls and uses the "dog ate my homework" excuse.

Next thing you know, Bush will pick up his ball and go home.

A good insight into Bush's immaturity, belligerence, defiance and total lack of guilt is the Iraq war. Whenever he's had to respond to the WMDs that don't exist - which was the reason he gave as to why we had to invade Iraq - he shrugs his shoulders as if to say "what's the big deal?", and says "hey, the intelligence was wrong," with the same smirk we see on children after they swipe their classmates crayons.

How dare he!

Bush is Commander in Chief. Iraq is his war, it was his life and death decision, and therefore, his responsibility, which has caused tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of senseless casualties, not to mention the future costs of this war in blood, money and future terrorism.

And yet, he treats it as if he's a soccer dad who forgot to pick up his kid at practice (if only starting an unnecessary war was as trivial), who then blames his wife for giving him "wrong information."

When waiters are fired because they're "incompetent," they apologize to the manager and leave quietly. But George Bush would not only curse out the manger and give him the finger as he was leaving, he'd get Karl Rove to slash his tires as well.

If Bush was just an extremely incompetent President, the country - and the world - would be in better shape. But compounding his incompetence is that he's got the temperament of a school yard bully, the emotion of bellicose child, the compassion of Dick Cheney, and void of any self-conscious feelings...with an intellect to match (and to think these guys ran on "morals").

While it's certainly not in Bush's interest to go down as the worst President in history, or even to be known as "a bad President," we could ask ourselves a legitimate question: why would he want to do a bad job and destroy the country?

I have no idea. But irrational, unexplainable and self-destructive behavior is exactly what mental illness is.

In fact, the 9/11 terrorists could be described as "mentally ill" because deliberately flying planes into buildings is an irrational, unexplainable and self-destructive act. So why should George Bush be thought of any differently for deliberately running the country into the ground?

(To make things more eerie, not only does George Bush and terrorists believe in their own sick minds that their actions are "right," "moral" and "justified," but both believe they're doing "Gods work.")

Being able to feel guilt and remorse is what separates normal law-abiding behavior from abnormal criminal/psychotic behavior. Imagine how far you'd go if you were unable to feel guilt and remorse.

Most psychotics end up in jail. This one wound up in the White House.


* While Afghanistan is thought of as this big victory, nothing could be further from the truth: the Taliban have returned, al-Quaeda - remember them? - have reformed globally, the Karzai government is a sham, the opium (heroin) crop is flourishing (with the money financing the terrorists), and not only do the war lords control the country outside of Kabul, but they're winning the elections Bush is always bragging about.

And after losing 160 soldiers in Afghanistan during the first three plus years of the war, we've lost over 120 during the last 15 months while two-thirds of our wounded, almost 500, have occurred in the last two years. And according to The Guardian, 1,400 Afghans were killed in 2005, making it the "bloodiest year since 2001."

At a Senate hearing three weeks ago, Lt. Gen. Michael Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said his agency estimates that violence from the Taliban and other anti-coalition groups increased 20 percent last year and that "insurgents now represent a greater threat to the expansion of Afghan government authority than at any point since late 2001, and will be active this spring."

So Afghanistan was never "won," will never be "won" - at least not by this President - and is getting worse (you didn't know that, did you? So much for the "liberal" media!).

Aug. 2009 insert:

R. Jeffrey Smith in the Washington Post:

When an internal CIA report concluded in May 2004 that "unauthorized, improvised, inhumane, and undocumented" interrogation methods had been used on suspected al-Qaeda members, the predominant reaction within the Bush administration was not revulsion but frustration that the agency's efforts inside a network of secret prisons had not been more effective, former senior intelligence and White House officials recall. (Bold mine)

Whether torture is legal or not, or whether it's moral or not isn't the point here. The fact that there was no hesitation, no remorse, no guilt and worst of all, no feeling of revulsion whatsoever is more proof. Because an emotionally normal ("pro-life") human being would. He has to; or else he is mentally ill.

As an American, the fact that the President of the United States, the Vice President of the United States and their administration did not have those normal, human feelings is an embarrassment.