Category — Dubya

I kinda realized it yesterday and wanted to make a post about this yesterday itself, but it simply slipped my mind. But now the man, himself, has spoken about it today…

‘‘For long, I have been silent, now I feel like talking,’’ the Chief Minister said, addressing a gathering of BJP MPs, MLAs and workers in Ahmedabad. ‘‘I see a lot of similarity between Bush’s election speeches and my election speeches during 2002. Bush took up the issue of terrorism, something that I too did during my Gaurav Yatra,’’ [Narendra] Modi said. ‘‘Bush warned of America’s enemies, while I warned Gujarat’s enemies. I challenge political pundits to analyse that,’’ he added.

Incidentally, both Modi and Bush were voted back into power with more votes/seats than they had previously. And this was after exit polls in both the cases predicted a close race or an opposition win. And even this was after bitterly fought campaigns in which the ‘intellectual‘ Left in the respective countries termed them as incarnations of Hitler!!

Well… considering the fact that Modi hasn’t gone berserk with the increased power the people vested in his government, one can surely predict that something similar would happen in Bush’s case!

John Kerry called George W. Bush to concede defeat. This is being reported by all major media websites, including FOXNew.com, CNN.com, MSNBC, CBSNews.com, ABC News, BBC News …

It’s also being reported on all the top blogs… Instapundit.com, The Command Post, Drudge Report, etc.

So I guess… George W. Bush has been re-elected to the office of the President of United States.

Or like Rodger Morrow has expressed it so well…

First President Bush was misunderestimated.

Now he has been unredefeated.

God bless America!!

Update:
Here is the text of John Kerry’s concession speech.

While George W. Bush continues to ridicule John Kerry’s flip flopping attitudes on national and international issues, here’s a brilliant photo-essay that takes a tongue-in-cheek look at Bush’s own flip flops over the years, in the form of a shoe catalog.

It’s funny and tastefuly done! And there’s even a download link if you want to send it out to friends as a pdf file.

However, the author of the photo-essay lets us down in the end by putting up a 1778 quote attributed to Alexander Tyler.

A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.

The average age of the worlds greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:

From Bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to selfishness;
From selfishness to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back to bondage.

First of all, the author must be referring to Alexander Fraser Tytler, a Scottish history professor who is supposed to have written the above passage in a book titled, ‘The Fall of the Athenian Republic‘. Now, there is no record of such a book even in the US Library of Congress, which houses over 128 million items. So this quote is, in all probability, an urban legend.

However… it is an interesting quote nonetheless! Can this cycle of democracy be applied to an Indian context? Have we ever gone from abundance to selfishness and ultimately from dependence to bondage? Oh but we have, haven’t we?! Loosely put, the regional kings let British and other traders gain political control of their states in exchange for trade and protection… and in the longer run, India ended up as a British colony.

And then from bondage we went on to spiritual faith (rise of people like Gandhi or Swami Vivekanand or countless others)… and from faith we went to great courage as seen in the freedom struggle… and then ultimately we gained liberty!

As for the transition from liberty to abundance… we haven’t seen that yet in India, have we?! Well… I can put it down to the the libertarian argument of not having enough liberty!

Convenient, eh?! ;-)

Root, over at atthe404, has come up with a ‘George Says’ competition.

This is my entry to that competition.

If you want to put your words in Bush’s mouth, you can head over to the George-Says website.

One of main justifications for the war against Iraq was supposed to be the links between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Time and time again, all the top officials in the Bush administration had claimed that there was ‘overwhelming’ proof that there were extensive ties between Saddam Hussein and Osama’s terror organization, Al Qaeda.
 
But the Sept. 11 commission (National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States) concluded that it found no ‘collaborative relationship’ between Iraq and Al Qaeda.
 
Now, rumblings are starting to increase, about the alleged links between Iran and Al Qaeda. Evidence of these purported links has been uncovered by the same Sept. 11 commission. The evidence suggests that

eight and ten of the 14 “muscle” hijackers?that is, those involved in gaining control of the four 9/11 aircraft and subduing the crew and passengers?passed through Iran in the period from October 2000 to February 2001.

At the same time, the commission has not found any evidence to suggest that Iran knew about the Al Qaeda plans to carry out the 9/11 attacks.
 
George W. Bush has meanwhile asserted that US is actively investigating ties between the Iranian government and Al Qaeda.

Mr. Bush noted in a brief Oval Office meeting with reporters that the Central Intelligence Agency had found “no direct connection between Iran and the attacks of Sept.11,” but he said “We will continue to look and see if the Iranians were involved.”

 
Iran, on the other hand, claims that it has dismantled the Al Qaeda network in the country - a claim that has not really been validated with any evidence from the Iranians.
 
While Iran may have passively assisted the Al Qaeda operatives in their endeavours, it remains to be seen if the US can prove its claims of the seemingly tenuous links between Iran and Osama’s terror network. After all, the shrill voices that bayed vociferously, claiming Iraq’s links with Al Qaeda have now had to eat a humble pie! It remains to be seen if there is any substance in the US claims or is it just another case of Bush crying ‘wolf!‘
 
And all the while, with Pakistani forces hunting Al Qaeda operatives all across the country, the US continues to turn a blind eye to the obvious links between Pakistan and Al Qaeda!