Some Saturday Dubya Fluffery

Ben Feller of the AP brings us the following from here, what he laughably calls “analysis” of the all-but-over foul, fetid Bushco reign (in particular the following)…

In sessions with policy experts, Bush tends to ask questions that get right to the nub of a sticky issue. His top aides speak regretfully about how the country never got to see that side of him, even after all this time. They describe a man who is deeply inquisitive, not blithely incurious as much of the world thinks.

In response, I have only to say this: on page 247 of “State of Denial” by Bob Woodward, President Highest Disapproval Rating In Gallup Poll History, in a meeting in August 2003, took the lead in asking questions about whether or not we “we have a communications strategy to be able to run with Al Jazeera,” so that we could supposedly encourage the Iraqis to “not allow foreign fighters” to come into their country (making a half-hearted attempt to fight what was then the growing insurgency; Woodward notes that no one alerted Bush to the irony of his request).

And that is the only time throughout the course of a nearly-500-page book, not counting preface material and citations, where George W. Milhous Bush is not being utterly led around by the nose like a puppy courtesy of the likes of “subordinates” Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, George Tenet, Paul Bremer and others.

Continuing…

You can tell the issues that really get Bush going, because he talks about them differently, more passionately: education, AIDS relief, freedom. They happen to be ones that can be viewed more clearly through a moral lens. That's how he sees the world.

In response, despite some acknowledged successes of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (or PEPFAR), the following must be noted (from here)…

Rules governing how PEPFAR funds can be used for HIV prevention have been the source of substantial international controversy and criticism. In 2005, the Brazilian government declined to accept $40 million in U.S. HIV assistance because of requirements in American law that U.S. grant recipients formally condemn prostitution. In addition, U.S. government funds may not lawfully be used for needle-exchange programs for injecting drug users.

But the most controversy has surrounded the requirement that 33 percent of PEPFAR prevention money be spent on abstinence-only programs. Because services including HIV testing and prevention of mother-to-child transmission are included in PEPFAR's prevention portfolio, the practical effect of PEPFAR's legislative mandate is that abstinence programs consume roughly two out of three PEPFAR dollars for the prevention of sexual transmission. In 2006, the U.S. General Accounting Office, an independent agency that audits U.S. government programs, reported that legislative earmarks for abstinence programming were impeding the ability of PEPFAR country teams to devise prevention programs that meet national needs.

In other words, how logical is it to tie an abstinence-only program to obtaining PEPFAR-funded medications in sub-Saharan Africa, for example, where many men have as little interest in practicing monogamy as they do in even using a condom?

And on the matter of “freedom,” how about if Feller contacts some of the approximately 2 million Iraqi refugees to see how “free” they believe themselves to be.

Continuing again...

The toughest moments for him come when he meets the grieving families of the troops he sent to war. Or when he meets severely wounded troops in recovery. Many of the hurting tell Bush they want to get back out in active duty. He is moved by the sacrifice.

"I do a lot of crying in this job," Bush once acknowledged.

So do the families and friends of the service people killed in Dubya’s war of choice in Iraq, though I can’t imagine how he would know that since he never attended one of their funerals (and banned photography or filming when the flag-draped caskets arrive home).

This steaming heap of refuse by the AP’s Feller is corporate media stenography at its worst. But instead of venting my own outrage over it, I’m just going to put up John Flynn one more time here, who states his own commendable sense of revulsion better than I can (I expect to be coming back to this “analysis” again).