Bush Scandals: A Handy Clip & Save Guide: Part Four

By Randy Hauser And Doug Ferrari

    With so many Bush Adminstration scandals happening every day, it can be hard to keep track.  So this is a handy Clip & Save Guide, which you can print out and make into flashcards.  We use this guide to play "Bush Scandal Bingo" when we watch the news.  When they mention one of your scandals, you have to do a shot.  We came up with a lot, and here's a few more.  (For "Part One" and "Part Two", see Randy Hauser's Page.)

11. (Not) Supporting the Troops

    Jim Webb proposed an amendment to the Iraq war budget to support the troops at home.  It was filibustered by the Republicans – after the Walter Reed scandal broke.

    We may need to rethink what Republicans means when they say "support the troops".  Bush Republicans support the troops like Michael Corleone supported Fredo.  

    Congress just cut funding for research into veteran’s traumatic head injuries in half, from 14 to 7 million dollars, at the same time, they approved $20 million for a party to celebrate victory in Iraq and Afghanistan.  "Here guys, in lieu of a cat scan have a nice gift basket."  Bush Republicans still think it’s an action movie called "Mission Accomplished". Now its "Mission Accomplished III", and they are planning a cast party before they actually pay the cast.

    Meanwhile, there are tragically high rates of returning vets - those that are actually allowed to ever return -- with PTSD, wounds, skyrocketing divorce rates, homicides and suicides,the highest rate in 26 years, according to an August report.  The National Guard is broken, many military people say the entire military is broken and Bush destroyed it.  There wouldn't be 25,000-plus wounded if they hadn't tried to save money on body armor.  You know, if you're going to try to save a buck anywhere, I think the last place should be...body armor. People were actually holding bake sales to send body armor to their kids fighting in Iraq.  There is a bumper sticker that says "It will be a better world when charities have all the money they want, and the Pentagon has to have a bake sale to buy a tank". Well, evidently not.  

    The military is now running out of bullets in Iraq. BULLETS.  Are bullets a high-priced item now?  Given how superstitious Bush Republicans are, they may be making soldiers use silver bullets with crosses on them previously only used against werewolves and vampires.  It’s hard to believe there is a worldwide bullet shortage when every disaffected school shooter can get all the bullets they want on E Bay.  Maybe the military can go on EBay or to Walmart or wherever else these loners are getting loaded up.  Do we need to have a bullet drive now?  Why isn’t the NRA providing bullets to the Army?  It seems like a good loss leader for them.
 
    At this rate the troops will probably have to pay for their own trip back home.  Does Jet Blue fly out of Baghdad?  
   
    The Army didn’t blow up any of the 1000s of weapons caches, so the insurgency is better armed than the U.S. Army and the Marines.  Think about it—we didn’t give our poor troops armor, armored vehicles, enough weapons, there was a shortage of bullets, a shortage of water, inadequate helmets, made them do two or three tours, (in Vietnam, you did ONE only), extended tours from 12 to 15 months, and the VA hasn’t taken care of the massive numbers of soldiers with massive brain injuries (IEDs), PTSD, depression—highest suicide rates in 26 years...Yeah, "An Army Of One", indeed.  How about this for a slogan: "You're On Your Own, Motherfucker".

12. Halliburton

    "The most recent addition to the empire is...the new US embassy in Baghdad, set inside a 104-acre compound, making it...as big as Vatican City, and costing $592 million to build".

--Johnathan Freedland, New York Review Of Books)  

    That's of course before Halliburton finishes it, with the $400 nails and the $1,000 toilet seats. That will show the Iraqis we are different from Saddam.  

    Halliburton has a deal to help develop Iran’s natural gas fields.  Read it again--that was an "n", not a "q", Iran not Iraq.  Dick Cheney has a close relationship with Halliburton.  Dick Cheney wants to bomb Iran.  What a sweet business plan.  Halliburton gets paid by Iran to develop gas fields, Cheney blows up the gas fields and then Halliburton gets paid to build the stuff for the U.S. after it's blown up. It’s a little like the plot of "A Fistful of Dollars".  Of course doing business with Iran is illegal unless you have your headquarters in some country that is friendly with Iran like, I don’t know, Dubai.  Hey, didn’t Halliburton just move their headquarters there? We're outsourcing victory!  

    Halliburton also got no-bid contracts from Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, but Cheney says he knew nothing about it.  Because Dick is an easygoing guy like that, just lettin’ things slide and having someone else handle it.  

    Halliburton is responsible for massive overcharging (sending soldier's laundry by plane from Iraq to Kuwait while Iraqis starve with no jobs) that also doesn’t get investigated by this tough-on-crime White House.  Dick Cheney probably doesn’t know anything about that either because he just a mellow, laid-back, hands-off-the-controls sort of dude.  

13. Abu Ghraib

    When the Abu Ghraib prison scandal broke, everyone called it "abuse". Abuse is when your wife calls you a "fat bastard".  If water boarding is "abuse", then Stalin’s Gulags were Rehab Centers and the electrodes on the genitals were like ankle bracelets with more personality.  

    The Army took the press on a prison tour to show everything was just fine now. They had a big sign on the wall, ‘’ABSOLUTELY NO TORTURE ALLOWED". Just kidding!  It said "ABSOLUTELY NO PHOTOGRAPHY ALLOWED".   To Donald Rumsfeld, Abu Ghraib was like Paris Hilton’s sex tape. He didn’t mind the act, he just didn’t want everyone seeing it.  To think that we wouldn’t even have found out about Abu Ghraib if it hadn’t been for that guy at the Baghdad Photomat.

    And every night on the news, the Bush Republican Pod People kept repeating, "It’s only six or seven people, just six or seven bad apples doing these acts." That’s because Lyndie England, the woman in the photos, came to Iraq with a deep knowledge of modern brainwashing techniques.  See, West Virginia public schools are better then we thought! Seven people can’t take 3,000 photographs. There are more than seven people in one picture alone. And they say it wasn’t approved by higher-ups. Those kids from Georgia didn’t pack their own hoods and electrodes when they went to Iraq. They got the dog leashes from somewhere. And those original six weren’t smart enough to make all that stuff up by themselves. They were so dumb they posed in their own pictures with their faces showing! If they’d had any brains, they would have been the ones wearing the hoods.

    Rumsfeld was finally indicted for war crimes at Abu Ghraib – in Germany. When Germany says you’ve been mean in a war, you really need to take a hard look at yourself.  But he did resign – two years later.

To Be Continued...

dougferrari.com