The town drunks lash out

BUSHIT & Cheney

The town drunks lash out

Written by: Hughes For America

Everyone has a town drunk where they live. Often intoxicated in public, he rants and raves to innocent bystanders, delivering invective. Sometimes intimidating, sometimes laughable, his condition leaves you feeling sorry for him, while at the same time shaking your head.

Right now, Washington's two favorite town drunks – President Bush and Vice President Cheney – are prowling the square on a weeklong bender. Drunk with power and intoxicated on a potent blend of lies and misdirection, Bush and Cheney are bothering anyone they find, accusing bystanders of being alcoholics just like them.

Only it's not true. And it's not funny anymore, either.

Bush and Cheney – since Bush's Veterans Day speech last Friday – are embarrassing themselves. Stinking of lies, the emperor and his colleague and prowling the streets, naked. They are lashing out at anyone accusing them – rightly so – of twisting the intelligence to get us into Iraq. Babbling to the point of being incoherent, they accuse those they accost of drinking from the same bottle of moonshine they passed around before the war began.

BOOK: Lying for Empire

Do they want us to think they're trying to get better? Of course not. No, in truly shameful fashion, they're accusing us of being just as bad as they are. Only we left the bar early. We didn't like the scene. They did. They stayed. And America has paid the price. They decided to get behind the wheel – no matter what we said – and take our armed forces for a spin. Taking the car through some rough neighborhoods, Bush and Cheney willfully broke the law. They, of course, told us they'd be just fine getting home. Only these drunk drivers wrecked the car, destroying lives in the process.

And now that they've wrapped the car around the tree and stumbled home, Bush and Cheney want us to keep acting like the abused spouses we've been for the past several years. Some of us have told our friends that they're wrong, that they don't know what Bush and Cheney have said to us in private. Others, still in love, continued to look the other way. But more than a few of us are tired of the abuse.

Look, these two aren't going to change. No amount of Febreze can rid their disheveled suits of the stink. No shave will remove the five o'clock shadow. No excuses or accusations will ever change the fact that, because of their behavior, Americans are dying every day in Iraq, dying in a war built on a pack of lies. Purposeful lies. And when given a chance to explain themselves, Bush and Cheney have done nothing but continue to lie, lashing out like the arrogant drunks they are. And the broken record doesn't sound good any longer.

The aura of invincibility has all but vanished from Bush and Cheney.

In the past, we may have listened politely to their unhinged rants and raves. You know, the nationalistic garbage their No. 1 wingman, Karl Rove, loves to spew. But with Rove off his game and Bush and Cheney falling out of favor, cleaning up the streets may be easier than ever.

Faced with a choice, we can either continue to enable their behavior or band together to rid the town of their nuisance.

One thing we cannot afford to do any longer is ignore their presence. As Bush's history has shown, a drunk will always be a drunk and a poor decision maker will always make poor decisions.

BOOK: Lying for Empire

Written by: Hughes For America...