JUST LIKE YOU AND MOST OTHERS, I SAT RIVETED TO THE TV during the immediate days after Hurricane Katrina decimated the southern Gulf Coast States of the United States. Just like you, my mouth seemed frozen into a permanent jaw dropping position. Just like you, I feel so very sorry for each and every person who was negatively impacted. Just like you, my heart raced with frustration as minutes, hours, and then days passed and still no action to help the victims from the richest government in the world. I’ll stop writing, ‘just like you’; because I think you’re getting the jist here.

And that is just my point. 

Everyone saw the obvious. Everyone inside and outside of the U.S. witnessed ineptness on the grandest scale possible. A superpower of monumental ineptness. As of this writing on 11 September, we are still watching the Mother of Ineptness situation unfolding, thanks mostly to the merciless glare of the television cameras that hide nothing and demonstrate the pure, raw power of pictures. Moving images of horror; faces reflecting primeval fear, agony, grief, despair. Pictures do not have the capability to ‘spin’ as do words and talking mouths of politicians. The Bush White House, besides invading oil-rich countries, does only one thing well, and that is spin. However, this time, even for them, spin is not working. It can’t.

I’ll ask the question I’ll bet most of you have been harbouring in your minds since this disaster struck. Are the major players involved – George Bush, Michael Brown (FEMA Director), Michael Chernoff, Dick Cheney, ad nauseum, all mentally challenged?

I don’t think race has anything to do with this. Again, that is merely a divergence tactic. I really and truly believe that the President of the U.S.A. is mentally deficient. Every time I see him talking on TV, I cringe with embarrassment and shame. Surely this emperor is not wearing any clothes. He’s not running the show and the people he put in place to run it for him are ineffective and clueless. Most are even scary. Their fanatical obsession with their phony ‘bring democracy to the world’ mission was put in place only to divert American’s attention and focus off the real issues of importance, and to have them believe they actually were fighting the enemy responsible for 9/11.

Whatever has happened to intellectual discourse and soul-searching debate? This man cannot string together one single sentence that is grammatically sound or comprised of proper English – never mind thoughtful wisdom or razor sharp, insightful words of leadership.

Everything Bush utters that’s not carefully scripted on paper in front of him is shockingly ignorant and stupid. He even looks puzzled and confused, as he is so often caricatured. Meanwhile, human beings are dying as a direct result of his bad judgement in selecting appointees and his overall lack of qualifications to be the president of anything, never mind a superpower. People who should be alive today are dead; not because of any natural disaster, but because of George Bush & Cronies, Inc. We watched them dying on TV. Where was the leadership? Where was the Rudi Guiliani, former New York City mayor, this time? Isn’t leadership a major, intrinsic role of the President of the U.S., or indeed any country’s Prime Minister, President, King, etc.?

By letting five entire days elapse before unleashing the forces already available, they essentially murdered these people. Well, what else do you want to call it? Bush & Cronies, Inc. continue to murder innocent people by not immediately removing Michael Brown from his position at FEMA, never mind having a very fast re-think on replacing the Director of Homeland Security, Chernoff. By placing priorities on politics rather than on people in a life or death situation and astoundingly dithering about, people died. When the military was not immediately called in, even before the hurricane hit, since it was projected with certainty Katrina would cause massive damage and breech the New Orleans levee system, even by staying on vacation for two days following the disaster when everyone knows it is the first 24 to 48 hours that are always the most critical in any disaster scenario, the Bush regime must now add more thousands to its long list of innocent civilians killed on their watch. (How many civilians are dead in Iraq?)

Those excruciatingly vital seven minutes, when Bush sat paralysed with indecision and continued to read a goat story to those Florida school children while his country was under attack, come to mind, don’t they? Seven minutes during a major terrorist attack and the Leader can’t lead.

The politicians impeached Bill Clinton, a Rhodes Scholar intellectual, for lying about a consensual, private sexual affair. Doesn’t common sense beg Americans to do at least that now? Take off the blinders and demand accountability, transparency, and all those other virtues the U.S. is constantly demanding of other countries. Please fellow Americans, wake up and look at your naked President.