[Peace-discuss] War on drugs...

[Susan Parenti]

Carl, is this satire?
On Jul 28, 2004, at 4:44 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

> 	Bush Leagues
> 	Bush Using Drugs to Control Depression, Erratic Behavior
> 	By TERESA HAMPTON
> 	Editor, Capitol Hill Blue
> 	Jul 28, 2004, 08:09
>
> President George W. Bush is taking powerful anti-depressant drugs to
> control his erratic behavior, depression and paranoia, Capitol Hill 
> Blue
> has learned.
>
> The prescription drugs, administered by Col. Richard J. Tubb, the White
> House physician, can impair the President's mental faculties and 
> decrease
> both his physical capabilities and his ability to respond to a crisis,
> administration aides admit privately.
>
> "It's a double-edged sword," says one aide. "We can't have him flying 
> off
> the handle at the slightest provocation but we also need a President 
> who
> is alert mentally."
>
> Tubb prescribed the anti-depressants after a clearly-upset Bush stormed
> off stage on July 8, refusing to answer reporters' questions about his
> relationship with indicted Enron executive Kenneth J. Lay.
>
> "Keep those motherfuckers away from me," he screamed at an aide 
> backstage.
> "If you can't, I'll find someone who can."
>
> Bush's mental stability has become the topic of Washington whispers in
> recent months. Capitol Hill Blue first reported on June 4 about 
> increasing
> concern among White House aides over the President's wide mood swings 
> and
> obscene outbursts.
>
> Although GOP loyalists dismissed the reports an anti-Bush propaganda, 
> the
> reports were later confirmed by prominent George Washington University
> psychiatrist Dr. Justin Frank in his book Bush on the Couch: Inside the
> Mind of the President. Dr. Frank diagnosed the President as a "paranoid
> meglomaniac" and "untreated alcoholic" whose "lifelong streak of 
> sadism,
> ranging from childhood pranks (using firecrackers to explode frogs) to
> insulting journalists, gloating over state executions and pumping his 
> hand
> gleefully before the bombing of Baghdad" showcase Bush's instabilities.
>
> "I was really very unsettled by him and I started watching everything 
> he
> did and reading what he wrote and watching him on videotape. I felt he 
> was
> disturbed," Dr. Frank said. "He fits the profile of a former drinker 
> whose
> alcoholism has been arrested but not treated."
>
> Dr. Frank's conclusions have been praised by other prominent
> psychiatrists, including Dr. James Grotstein, Professor at UCLA Medical
> Center, and Dr. Irvin Yalom, MD, Professor Emeritus at Stanford 
> University
> Medical School.
>
> The doctors also worry about the wisdom of giving powerful 
> anti-depressant
> drugs to a person with a history of chemical dependency. Bush is an
> admitted alcoholic, although he never sought treatment in a formal
> program, and stories about his cocaine use as a younger man haunted his
> campaigns for Texas governor and his first campaign for President.
>
> "President Bush is an untreated alcoholic with paranoid and 
> megalomaniac
> tendencies," Dr. Frank adds.
>
> The White House did not return phone calls seeking comment on this
> article.
>
> Although the exact drugs Bush takes to control his depression and 
> behavior
> are not known, White House sources say they are "powerful medications"
> designed to bring his erratic actions under control. While Col. Tubb
> regularly releases a synopsis of the President's annual physical, 
> details
> of the President's health and any drugs or treatment he may receive are
> not public record and are guarded zealously by the secretive cadre of
> aides that surround the President.
>
> Veteran White House watchers say the ability to control information 
> about
> Bush's health, either physical or mental, is similar to Ronald Reagan's
> second term when aides managed to conceal the President's increasing
> memory lapses that signaled the onslaught of Alzheimer's Disease.
>
> It also brings back memories of Richard Nixon's final days when the
> soon-to-resign President wondered the halls and talked to portraits of
> former Presidents. The stories didn't emerge until after Nixon left
> office.
>
> One long-time GOP political consultant who -- for obvious reasons -- 
> asked
> not to be identified said he is advising his Republican Congressional
> candidates to keep their distance from Bush.
>
> "We have to face the very real possibility that the President of the
> United States is loony tunes," he says sadly. "That's not good for my
> candidates, it's not good for the party and it's certainly not good for
> the country."
>
> © Copyright 2004 Capitol Hill Blue
>
>
>
>
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