Wednesday, April 12, 2006

This George is No Washington

"George Washington was the Father of His Country. George W. Bush could be the Destroyer of His Country. To preserve our freedoms, America must return to the ideology upon which the United States was founded, and Americans must demand that our elected leaders adhere to those ideals."

"Each was elected president of the United States, but George the 43rd possesses none of the courage, intelligence, or wisdom of the first.

"George Washington was born into a respectable planting family in Virginia. His father died when he was 11, leaving a widow and seven children. The young Washington received a grade-school education; however, he was unable to attend college. He had to go to work at age 16 as a surveyor and ultimately conducted more than 190 surveys on the Virginia frontier. When Washington was 20 years old, he petitioned the governor for a military appointment, and began to lead a series of military expeditions into the Ohio Country, where he engaged in battles with the French and their Indian allies. He was ultimately appointed a colonel, and in 1755 he became an aide-de-camp to the British General Braddock, who was leading an invasion into the French-held Ohio region. Braddock was killed and his army defeated during an Indian ambush; however, Washington was able to rally the troops and saved the lives of many soldiers. Two horses were shot out from under him, and four bullets pierced his coat as he maneuvered in the thick of the battle.

"Only 23 years of age, Washington was appointed as Commander in Chief of the Virginia Regiment. He learned lessons from Braddock’s defeat and trained his troops in both the rigorous discipline of British troops and the “bushfighting” tactics of Indian warriors. For the next three and a half years, he led his thousand “Blues” in constant combat operations on the Virginia frontier in the war against France. He knew most of his soldiers personally and was viewed as a father figure, even though most of the soldiers were older than him. He resigned his commission in 1758 to get married and to attend to his family’s estate.

"George W. Bush was born to high privilege; his great-grandfathers helped establish and earned enormous profits from the military industrial complex and, his grandfather helped finance Hitler’s war machine. His parents were both raised in wealthy households attended by servants, and they spoiled George Jr., their first born. He was allowed to abuse his siblings, to torment and kill animals and to sustain mediocrity in his education. He required his father’s “legacy” to get into Yale, where he organized physical hazing described in newspaper reports as “degrading, sadistic and obscene.” He was arrested for theft, disorderly conduct, drunk driving and possession of cocaine.

"In 1968, 296,406 American boys were drafted into military service, and6,332 came home from Vietnam in body bags. Although he was 22 years old, a college graduate, and physically fit, Bush’s father pulled strings to jump him over 500 waiting applicants and into the Texas Air National Guard, even though he could only answer 25 of the 100 questions on the pilot aptitude test. Bush declined to volunteer for Vietnam service, choosing instead to patrol the skies over Houston, Texas on weekends, until he grew bored and went AWOL ...

"The war did not immediately go well for the Americans, and during the battle of Long Island, the siege of Fort Washington, and the Forage War, the British and Hessian troops often provided no 'quarter' in putting to death all rebels who fell into their hands. The wounded had their brains dashed out, were run through with bayonets and their bodies were mutilated. American prisoners were imprisoned under conditions of great misery, including the holds of prison ships in New York harbor, where large numbers died after great suffering. In spite of these war crimes, Washington never denied quarter to the enemy and ordered that all prisoners be treated as human beings with the same rights that the rebels were fighting for. He wrote, 'Treat them with humanity, and let them have no reason to Complain of our Copying the brutal example of the British army in their Treatment of our unfortunate brethren.' Washington particularly ordered that Hessian soldiers were 'innocent people in this war, and were not volunteers, but forced into this war.'

..."Bush presided over a failed presidency and his public approval ratings were barely above 50 percent when al Qaeda attacked on September 11,2001, much like lighting striking the well-insured building of a bankrupt company. As a 'war president,' Bush established an outdoor prison camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba where POW’s were confined in chain-link cages open to the elements and denied the rights guaranteed by the Geneva Convention; he illegally held hundreds of undocumented immigrants in prison without access to counsel; he denied all due process to American citizens imprisoned as an 'enemy combatants;' he established secret prisons in other countries; he ordered the kidnaping and 'extraordinary rendition' of individual into other countries where they were brutally tortured; and he authorized the illegal use of torture in the questioning of prisoners in places such as Abu Ghraib, as long as it didn’t produce organ failure or death, or was done in accordance with 'military necessity.' ...

"In January 2006, the Army Corps of Engineers awarded a $385 million contract to a Halliburton subsidiary to construct detention centers in the United States to cope with “an emergency influx of immigrants into the US, or to support the rapid development of new programs.” Each detention center is designed to hold up to 5,000 detainees, should Bush decide to declare martial law in the event of another terrorist attack or a natural disaster, such as another Katrina or an Asian Flu epidemic ...

"This George is no Washington. George Washington was the Father of His Country. George W. Bush could be the Destroyer of His Country. To preserve our freedoms, America must return to the ideology upon which the United States was founded, and Americans must demand that our elected leaders adhere to those ideals."


By William John Cox Media Monitors Network (MMN)
Tuesday April 11 2006

Full text at MediaMonitors; courtesy of South News