President workin' hard

Question: Why did Bush lose so big in the first debate?

Answer: Nobody believes he works as hard as he says he does!

After all, the president's primary response during the summer of 2001 --- prior to the airplane attacks of 9/11, but after the CIA director had his "hair on fire" with warnings while Bush was handed the famous top-secret Aug. 6, 2001 presidential intelligence briefing memo entitled "Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US" (referencing aircraft hijackings) --- was to take a long vacation.

In that September 30 debate, Bush referred to the "hard work" the Iraq project now requires at least 15 times.

Saturday Night Live noticed this, doing a small riff on it during its October 2 season premier. But do check out a fine send-up of the presidential work ethic by Harry Shearer in Le Show for October 3 (Real media link). An mp3 audio file (4 MB) of Shearer's "hard work" Bush satire is posted here. (Find the link, right click and "save target as" to save it on your own system.)

Cakewalk?
Of course the more serious duplicity in the president's "hard work" relates to the before-the-fact notions of his war architects, notably by an insufferable Pentagon mouthpiece called Kenneth Adelman, that Iraq would be an easy go for America. Long before the invasion or the aircraft carrier landing during which Bush declared "mission accomplished", Adelman scolded early skeptics of the invasion, "I believe demolishing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk".

The rest of the story is of course heartbreaking -- tens of thousands of Iraqis killed by Americans, thousands of Americans dead and injured, a permanent anti-US insurgency, and probably terror threats -- for us and for the people of Iraq, and the wider Middle East/South Asia region, for years to come. The foolish marketing by Bush and Company of liberation and democracy at gunpoint exacts steep costs from both the conquered people and the conquerors.