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Inside Bush's Diary: "Things Are Spinning Out of Control!"
October 22, 2003
By Bernard Weiner, The Crisis Papers

Dear Diary:

It's been one goddamn thing after another. Karl and Dick seem to have everything under control and then, blammo, everything goes haywire:

The Senate, despite my warnings not to do so, votes to consider half of the money going to Iraq as loans; the press is circling the Wilson/Plame story, and they know where to look; the 9/11 commission, damn it, is starting to subpoenas witnesses to get somebody under oath; the Malaysian prime minister, at an Islamic summit, decides to condemn all Jews just before my Asia trip, and that born-again evangelist General Boykin, our new Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, gets caught insulting all the Islams; my grandpa's Nazi scandal is all over the papers; the situation in Iraq is getting even worse, with more Americans killed daily and more pipelines getting blown up; the Taliban are massing more troops in Afghanistan; Wesley Clark, that turncoat, jumps into the race and already my numbers are lower than his; one of my most important supporters, Rush Limbaugh, admits he's hooked on prescription drugs but has no prescription; the CIA and State are leaking more damaging information about us; the mainstream media (not just those internet wackos) are now smelling something rotten in the computer-voting system being set up for 2004; etc. etc.

In short, it's been a bad several weeks. I feel like I've gone a couple of rounds with Mike Tyson, I'm so battered and bruised. And it doesn't look good for the elections next year, even with all Karl's advance planning and with our tricky electoral moves in Texas, California, Colorado, and elswhere. (Bad news: Max Cleland's Georgia loss in 2002 is being re-examined after Diebold was discovered to have placed patches into the computer-voting software just before the election; those idiots! Just like the Diebold exec promising to "deliver" Ohio to us. What are these guys thinking?)

Things are spinning out of control. The internal fights are getting even more vicious; I may have to call in the U.N. peacekeepers to separate State and Defense, and the CIA and White House. I issue an order commanding everyone in the administration to stop leaking to the press - and the goddamn order is immediately leaked!

People used to be afraid of us and would do what we told them. Is this the handwriting on the wall? They know we're weaker now and could possibly be booted out, and so they can ignore our power? I don't want to think that way; they're just cowards and traitors, out for publicity and a book-contract. We thought that the warning to Joe Wilson would do the trick and he and the others would get the message: cross us and pay the price. But he and the CIA have gone off half-crazy after we outed his wife as a CIA operative! Didn't they know politics is a hardball sport? Well, OK, maybe we blew that one - similar to how we mishandled Jim Jeffords and caused him to defect from the GOP - but there's no going back. We have to keep attacking, keep everyone on the defensive, flood the zone, let 'em try to keep up.

Besides, on this Wilson thing, we won't get caught, can't get caught. It's downright delicious: We're being protected by the same press that would love to bring us down - because their rules won't let them reveal their sources. I love it! Anyway, even if they could prove Karl and Scooter or others did it, there's no evidence; this story broke last July, and all proof went bye-bye then. Just to make sure, though, we had everyone possibly connected to the events send their reports to us for "clearance" before we shipped them over to the FBI. Ain't no way we're going down on this one.

Or another bit of disobedience: I had Susan Collins in the Oval Office the other day and told her, point-blank, that I wanted the Senate to pass the bill authorizing the full $20 billion for Iraq, no thinking of any of that money as a loan. Three months ago, she'd have done what I told her to do. But she and the other traitorous "moderate" senators voted against me. We'll make her pay for that one.

(Besides, we can always forgive the Iraq "loan" later; similarly, if Kenny ever gets indicted for his Enron shennanigans, I can always pardon him, like my dad pardoned Weinberger in Iran-Contra before Cap ever went to trial. There's always that escape hatch if things get too hot; maybe I'd lose a few votes by doing something so obvious, but we can make up those votes in other ways.)

Damn my dad! He arranged an award to Teddy - the same week that Kennedy gasbag attacked my Iraq war policies so openly, pointing out all the "lies" I made to the American people. I know Poppy doesn't like my Iraq policy and my neo-con friends who push it - he made that clear before the war when he had his advisors urge me in public not to invade - but rubbing my nose in it, by giving an award to that unpatriotic liberal balloon, is way out of line.

I've been a screw-up all my life, diary, which my parents never cease to remind me of, and I don't want to give them any more reason to see me that way. But, God help me, I can't seem to stop myself from going there again. It's just that the screwups these days are on such an enormous scale, for everybody to see. But, for the sake of the country, I can't admit I've made any mistakes on Iraq and our "pre-emptive" attack strategy. This may be the last chance for us patriotic conservatives to carry out these policies and, if I have to, I'll burn the goddam village to save it and take us all down. That'll show 'em.

And what's all the yelling about anyway? Our P.R. campaign is starting to work, getting out all the positive developments in Iraq and why it was absolutely necessary for us to go in there and whoop some Iraqi ass. We were able to use David Kay's report - thank God he's one of us - to back up our suspicions about Iraq's WMD, even if he had to concede that there are no such weapons, only hints that maybe they could start up weapons programs at some uncertain date in the future. But Kay put enough weasel words in there to give us some political cover. Good puppy!

So far, Blair has weathered the storm in England, all those namby-pambies lacing into him for lying about the imminence of the threat. What did all those anti-war pinkos want us to say, the truth? Yeah, sure, I'd go on TV and say: "My fellow Americans, our long-range goals for global control require that we knock off a weak country like Iraq, to serve as a demonstration-model for the other Arab countries over there, that unless they play ball with us and our energy demands and alter their regimes to make them more U.S.-friendly, they'll get what Iraq got, and more?" Yeah, that would have gone over like a lead balloon.

As Karl and Dick keep telling me, all we have to do is to hunker down on the Iraq lies and 9/11 and Wilson coverups, go on the offensive attacking our opponents, and make our way through November 2004, and then all the wraps can come off. Ashcroft can fully unleash his police powers; all those New Deal/Great Society programs will be dead meat; Syria and Iran will be right on schedule - and this time we'll do the run-up to the wars right, so that the American people won't want to ask any questions later about the rationale for attacking. "Iran is going to nuke their neighbors, and Syria is supporting the terrorists" - that'll do it. Maybe we can get David Kay in there for some juicy reports.

But if Rummy and Wolfy and the PNAC crew blow another one, and if the 9/11 and Wilson/Plame coverups blow apart internally and Karl's strategy fails, then I'm in big trouble, diary.

Because the voters are starting to catch on; my re-elect numbers are falling like crazy, and the old tactics aren't working any more. Karl is preparing to use "national security" as our campaign touchstone - along with such hot-button issues as gay marriage, late-term abortions, and the ever-popular "liberal media" - but I worry that this may not be enough, and too much tweaking of the computer vote-tallies may be a bit obvious. I wonder if al-Qaida is preparing anything big for inside the U.S.?

Bernard Weiner, who was a writer/editor with the San Francisco Chronicle for nearly 20 years, currently co-edits The Crisis Papers. For his peeks inside the diaries of Rove, Powell, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden and others, see

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