[Peace-discuss] He's come undone

[C. G. Estabrook]

[The generally mainstream Capitol Hill Blue has published a
number of items on Bush's mental health.  Of course the
vicious policies of the USG are not owing to one man -- if
Bush were to encounter the terminal pretzel, the policies
would continue without much change -- but he can undoubtedly
do a lot of damage in the short run, so we should perhaps be
concerned: as Claudius observes acutely, "Madness in great
ones must not unwatch’d go." --CGE] 

   From Capitol Hill Blue
   Bush Leagues
   Bush's Obscene Tirades Rattle White House Aides
   By DOUG THOMPSON
   Aug 25, 2005, 06:19

While President George W. Bush travels around the country in a
last-ditch effort to sell his Iraq war, White House aides
scramble frantically behind the scenes to hide the dark mood
of an increasingly angry leader who unleashes obscenity-filled
outbursts at anyone who dares disagree with him.

“I’m not meeting again with that goddamned bitch,” Bush
screamed at aides who suggested he meet again with Cindy
Sheehan, the war-protesting mother whose son died in Iraq.
“She can go to hell as far as I’m concerned!”

Bush flashes the bird, something aides say he does often and
has been doing since his days as governor of Texas.
Bush, administration aides confide, frequently explodes into
tirades over those who protest the war, calling them
“motherfucking traitors.” He reportedly was so upset over
Veterans of Foreign Wars members who wore “bullshit
protectors” over their ears during his speech to their annual
convention that he told aides to “tell those VFW assholes that
I’ll never speak to them again is they can’t keep their
members under control.”

White House insiders say Bush is growing increasingly bitter
over mounting opposition to his war in Iraq. Polls show a vast
majority of Americans now believe the war was a mistake and
most doubt the President’s honesty.

“Who gives a flying fuck what the polls say,” he screamed at a
recent strategy meeting. “I’m the President and I’ll do
whatever I goddamned please. They don’t know shit.”

Bush, whiles setting up for a photo op for signing the recent
CAFTA bill, flipped an extended middle finger to reporters.
Aides say the President often “flips the bird” to show his
displeasure and tells aides who disagree with him to “go to
hell” or to “go fuck yourself.” His habit of giving people the
finger goes back to his days as Texas governor, aides admit,
and videos of him doing so before press conferences were
widely circulated among TV stations during those days. A
recent video showing him shooting the finger to reporters
while walking also recently surfaced.

Bush’s behavior, according to prominent Washington
psychiatrist, Dr. Justin Frank, author of “Bush on the Couch:
Inside the Mind of the President,” is all too typical of an
alcohol-abusing bully who is ruled by fear.

To see that fear emerges, Dr. Frank says, all one has to do is
confront the President. “To actually directly confront him in
a clear way, to bring him out, so you would really see the
bully, and you would also see the fear,” he says.

Dr. Frank, in his book, speculates that Bush, an alcoholic who
brags that he gave up booze without help from groups like
Alcoholics Anonymous, may be drinking again.

“Two questions that the press seems particularly determined to
ignore have hung silently in the air since before Bush took
office,” Dr. Frank says.  “Is he still drinking? And if not,
is he impaired by all the years he did spend drinking? Both
questions need to be addressed in any serious assessment of
his psychological state.”

Last year, Capitol Hill Blue learned the White House physician
prescribed anti-depressant drugs for the President to control
what aides called “violent mood swings.” As Dr. Frank also
notes: “In writing about Bush's halting appearance in a press
conference just before the start of the Iraq War, Washington
Post media critic Tom Shales speculated that ‘the president
may have been ever so slightly medicated.’”

Dr. Frank explains Bush’s behavior as all-to-typical of an
alcoholic who is still in denial:

“The pattern of blame and denial, which recovering alcoholics
work so hard to break, seems to be ingrained in the alcoholic
personality; it's rarely limited to his or her drinking,” he
says. “The habit of placing blame and denying responsibility
is so prevalent in George W. Bush's personal history that it
is apparently triggered by even the mildest threat.”

© Copyright 2005 Capitol Hill Blue