Bush: Pathological liar or idiot-in-chief?

The Bushian etymology was tracked by Dan Froomkin at the Washington Post’s Web site.

It is staggering.

• March 31: “Iran is trying to develop a nuclear weapon...”
• June 5: Iran’s “pursuit of nuclear weapons...”
• June 19: “consequences to the Iranian government if they continue to pursue a nuclear weapon...”
• July 12: “the same regime in Iran that is pursuing nuclear weapons...”
• Aug. 6: “this is a government that has proclaimed its desire to build a nuclear weapon...”

Notice a pattern?

Trying to develop, build or pursue a nuclear weapon.

Then, sometime between Aug. 6 and Aug. 9, those terms are suddenly swapped out, so subtly that only in retrospect can we see that somebody has warned the president, not only that he has gone out too far on the limb of terror but there may not even be a tree there....

McConnell, or someone, must have briefed him then.

• Aug. 9: “They have expressed their desire to be able to enrich uranium, which we believe is a step toward having a nuclear weapons program...”
• Aug. 28: “Iran’s active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons...”
• Oct. 4: “you should not have the know-how on how to make a (nuclear) weapon...”
• Oct. 17: “until they suspend and/or make it clear that they, that their statements aren’t real, yeah, I believe they want to have the **capacity**, the **knowledge**, in order to make a nuclear weapon.”

Before Aug. 9, it’s: Trying to develop, build or pursue a nuclear weapon.

After Aug. 9, it’s: Desire, pursuit, want ... knowledge technology know-how to enrich uranium.

And we are to believe, Mr.. Bush, that the National Intelligence Estimate this week talks of the Iranians suspending their nuclear weapons program in 2003....

And you talked of the Iranians suspending their nuclear weapons program on Oct. 17.

And that’s just a coincidence?

And we are to believe, Mr. Bush, that nobody told you any of this until last week?

Your insistence that you were not briefed on the NIE until last week might be legally true, something like “what the definition of ‘is’ is,” but with the subject matter being not interns but the threat of nuclear war.

Legally, it might save you from some war crimes trial, but ethically it is a lie.

It is indefensible.

You have been yelling threats into a phone for nearly four months, after the guy on the other end had already hung up.

You, Mr. Bush, are a bald-faced liar.

And moreover, you have just revealed that John Bolton and Norman Podhoretz and the Wall Street Journal editorial board are also bald-faced liars.

We are to believe that the intel community, or maybe the State Department, cooked the raw intelligence about Iran, falsely diminished the Iranian nuclear threat, to make you look bad?

And you proceeded to let them make you look bad?

You not only knew all of this about Iran in early August, but you also knew it was accurate.

And instead of sharing this good news with the people you have obviously forgotten you represent, you merely fine-tuned your terrorizing of those people, to legally cover your own backside.

While you filled the factual gap with sadistic visions of, as you phrased it Aug. 28, “nuclear holocaust,” and, as you phrased it Oct. 17, “World War III.”

My comments, Mr. Bush, are often dismissed as simple repetitions of the phrase “George Bush has no business being president.”

Well, guess what?

Tonight: hanged by your own words, convicted by your own deliberate lies....

You, sir, have no business being president.

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