Bush Resignation Hailed
by World Leaders

Thursday, September 11, 2003

[Washington] The surprise resignation of the forty-third President of the United States, George W. Bush, on the second anniversary of the terrorist attack on America, was hailed by chiefs of state throughout the world. Mr. Bush announced that after, "two years of bloodshed, economic devastation, and spreading fear in America and abroad," he saw no choice but to accept that, "I have held a title which I did not win, and for which I have proven unqualified."

The text of the former President's September 11 address to the nation follows:

"My fellow Americans:

"I come to you tonight with a heavy heart. Two years ago today, thousands of innocent Americans were murdered by terrorist maniacs.

"In the script I've been handed, I'm now supposed to tell you that America is safer today, and that the world is kinder and nicer and happier, because of I'm such a brilliant general in the War on Terror.

"But who are we kidding? Yesterday, Osama released his new hit video. The terrorists are having a picnic ever since I turned over our foreign policy to Saudi Arabia and Exxon-Mobil.

"And here's the point in my speech where my handlers would have me tell you about how I've been praying hard, making it sound like I just got off the phone with the Lord. I don't know about you, but I find it pretty darn offensive, downright blasphemous, to drag the Lord's name into every cheap campaign speech and chest-pounding war threat. Osama says he talks to God too. Let's leave Him out of the politics from now on, OK?

"Look, in my speech this past Sunday, I used the word "democracy" about 11 times when talking about Iraq. It's democracy Florida-style, I suppose. Except we're not fixing the vote this time … we aren't letting these people vote at all. "Iraqis aren't prepared for democracy." That's what Dick Cheney and Saddam Hussein told me.

"So we're blowing 100 billion bucks we don't have to colonize a country we don't want. Rummy tries to explain it to me each morning -- oil this and oil that -- but I just don't see it. And one of our kids dying there every day - where are their parents, anyway? My dad didn't let that happen - he got me out of the service. Didn't I look neat in that fly-boy suit?

"And, let me tell you, I just looked at our nation's piggy bank. Uh-oh.

"When I arrived, the last guy left me $4 trillion and said, "Be careful with all that cash in this neighborhood." Well, I have to level with you, America: it's all gone. The cupboard's bare and this year alone we blew half a trillion more dollars than we have in our bank account. Man, I can't believe I went through all that dough stone sober.

"And what did we get for it? A Fatherland Security Department that's trying to read the labels on everyone's underpants. Think about it, all this Total Information Awareness KGB stuff: two years ago Americans were the victims - but my government has made Americans the suspects. I don't know about you, but this guy Ashcroft scares the bejeezus out of me.

"And today I'm told that over nine million Americans are out of work. That's not so bad: I haven't done much work in my lifetime either. But my mama explained to me that not everyone's daddy can lend them an oil well to tide them over.

"It's like I can't get anything right. The lights are going out in Ohio and the North Pole is melting. I don't get it. I appointed all those regulators that Ken Lay told me to, and I got rid of all the rules that got in the way of patriotic Polluter-Americans …. and what's the upshot? America the Beautiful is looking like she's had a pretty rough night. Won't be long before the whole country smells like Houston.

"And now the stock market's floating face down in the swimming pool - despite everything I've done for those guys on Wall Street. Even my plan to give every millionaire an extra million seems to have backfired. Greenspam says I've created "business risk." Says I spook investors. But when I asked Greenspam for a solution, all he did was hand me a bag of pretzels.

"Hey, I can take a hint. OK, I'm over my head on this one. I look back over these last years, and what have I got to show you for it: two years of bloodshed, economic devastation, and spreading fear in America and abroad.

"When I ran for this office, I said the issue was, "character." And just look at the characters around me. I've gotten all their resignations today. And while I've got some character left, here's my own good-bye note too. Let's face it: I have held a title which I did not win, and for which I have proven unqualified. You know it. And I know it.

"It's at this point in the speech where I'm supposed to say, "And may God bless America." God better, because Dick Cheney won't. Don't panic: I'm not turning over this sacred office to Mr. Contracts-R-Us.

"Instead, I've petitioned the United States Supreme Court to pick a President for us. Those guys picked the last one, why not the next one?

"And so, my fellow Americans, you can take this job and …."

Here, Mr. Bush's words became unintelligible. As usual.

by Gene Lyons

Shortly before 9/11, a worldly-wise philospher on the seacoast of Maine made me a prediction.

"Remember where you heard it," he said. "George W. Bush will never run for a second term. He'll resign the presidency. It's his life story: his father's friends get him a job he doesn't deserve, he screws it up, somebody else takes the blame, he quits, then father's friends buy him a bigger job he doesn't deserve and he does it all over again."

It's true the man has always failed upward. Bush even messed up his cushiest job ever, as Texas Rangers' "owner." In reality, he was like a glorified Wal-Mart greeter, a minority shareholder playing tycoon in the box seats. Even so, he had a role in the worst trade of the 1990s, sending Sammy Sosa to Chicago for the equivalent of $49.95 and a litter of kittens. As a happy Cubs fan, perhaps I should show more gratitude.

The obvious problem with predicting his resignation, however, is that there are no bigger jobs for sale than President of the United States. Bush couldn't quit without admitting abject failure. Unlike Lyndon Baines Johnson, the last Texan in the White House, there's no indication he's got the intestinal fortitude. So I rang up my Down East friend to see if he'd revised the forecast. Returning my call after a hard day of tending his lobster pots, he was even more emphatic.

"Read any newspapers lately?" he asked. "He'll cut and run."

I remain dubious. Still, it's good Bush doesn't read newspapers or watch TV news, as he told FoxNews recently, instead relying upon briefings by his trusty aides. The evidence of his failures is all over the front page. Even as the jobless economic recovery continued, consumer confidence dropped and the stock market declined. Poverty levels have risen sharply on Bush's watch; Americans are losing health insurance in record numbers. Polls show near majorities agreeing that Bush is "in over his head."

But it's fallout from Bush's excellent adventure in Iraq that's causing him the most trouble. Months after he swaggered across an aircraft carrier under a banner reading "Mission Accomplished," Americans continue to kill and die there. Meanwhile, the adminstration can't keep its story straight. For months, the White House insisted that a forthcoming report by U.S. arms inspector David Kay would unearth Saddam Hussein's vaunted weapons of mass destruction. Now they say it may never be released.

Australian journalist John Pilger found a videotape of Secretary of State Colin Powell telling diplomats in Cairo in early 2001 that the U.S. had Saddam in a box: "He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction," Powell said. "He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors."

Without explaining how a country powerless to menace Jordan posed a threat to the U.S., Bush and Powell alibied that 9/11 had changed the equation. Except that Bush had recently admitted that "we've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with Sept. 11." Made after a blustering performance on "Meet the Press" by Vice President Cheney, the belated confession must have come as news to the reported 69 percent of Americans who'd been encouraged to think Saddam bore personal responsibility. Indeed, Bush's March 18, 2003 letter to Congress justifying war stipulated that Iraq was among "those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001."

With Americans still reeling from the $87 billion price tag to pay Bush and Cheney's pals at Halliburton and Bechtel to rebuild Iraq, the president's speech at the United Nations was received coldly. Calling people ingrates and cowards, then asking them to risk lives and treasure cleaning up the mess you've made is generally a poor marketing strategy.

Meanwhile, bureaucratic warfare has broken out all over Washington. The House Intelligence Committee rebuked CIA director George Tenet for his agency's role in touting Iraq's non-existent WMDs. The Defense Intelligence Agency faulted the Pentagon's--i.e. Rumsfeld and Cheney's --credulous reliance upon imaginary "intelligence" from defectors affiliated with Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress.

But the story that has Washington journalists all worked up is what some see as Tenet's revenge: the CIA's insistence upon a criminal investigation to determine which White House operatives fingered Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife Valerie Plame as a spy to columnist Robert Novak. The proverbial "senior administration official" told the Washington Post it was done "purely and simply for revenge" over Wilson's role in exposing the administration's phony claim that Iraq sought to buy African uranium. At least six other journalists were also told.

Which means two things: first, the leak was calculated and deliberate; second, scores of media insiders already know the leaker's identity, and suspect that the scandal may reach very close to the top.