Of course "hate" is too strong a word. You should not hate anyone. Especially not jittery
             world leaders who are striving to justify war and make it look all fierce and necessary.

             Look, there they are, trying so hard. Especially Bush. Look at that earnest, constipated,
             caught-in-the-headlights statement. Trying trying trying. Please do not hate him.

             GW Bush's image is extremely carefully managed, probably more intensely than any
             president in recent history. He gives almost zero unscripted talks, expresses minimal
             extemporaneous thoughts, still mispronounces "nukuler" even when reading from a teleprompter.

             He is protected from difficult questions, schooled in basic sentence structure, makes sudden
             political maneuvers to deflect increasingly troubling accusations that his administration had
             plenty of advance warning of 9/11 and did little to prevent it. And please do not mention his
             major ties to Enron at this time. Thank you.

             Bush has undoubtedly been told to try and look less scared and squinty on camera. He makes
             cute self-deprecating jokes about his horrible command of the English language.

             Rumor also has it that during a meeting with Brazil's President Cardoso, Bush allegedly
             interrupted to ask, "Do you have blacks, too?"  Condi Rice, ever the trouper, visibly cringed
             before quickly informing Dubya that Brazil is indeed home to more blacks than any country
             outside Africa. White House Press corps coverage? None. Just too embarrassing. This is
             the leader of the free world. Are you sure you want to know this sort of thing?

             Besides, Dubya has proven again and again and you read it just about everywhere and the man
             has it tattooed on his thigh and it veritably oozes from the pores of his happily myopic followers,
             he is indeed a Very Nice Man with a Very Swell Disposition and Good Christian Manners and
             gosh darn it, people like him so please quit being so mean.

             Ashcroft has scowled about it and Rumsfeld has squinted angrily about it and Cheney has shown
             twitching signs of life about it and it's been made
             very clear again and again: You are not allowed
             to openly abhor the president or his decisions
             because doing so clearly indicates traitorous
             inclinations and this is wartime which is a Very
             Difficult Time for Us All.

             If you insist on calling it wartime, that is. Which of
             course it's not, given how we've killed untold
             thousands of barely armed Taliban and untold
             numbers of innocent Afghan civilians and over a
             dozen of our own soldiers and even some
             Canadian troops (whoops) and we have suffered
             exactly two combat casualties. This is not a war.
             But you can't really say that either.

             So let's just go with it, the common wisdom: It is
             unpatriotic to criticize the president and we need
             to rally and be strong now, united we stand,
             especially in our collective misunderstanding of
             foreign policy and oil stratagems and the deeper
             root causes of 9/11.

             Or rather, you can criticize if you like, but Bush's
             image is now being so carefully controlled you
             feel a little ashamed and slightly guilty doing so,
             like that feeling you'd get if you teased, say, a
             quadriplegic. Or a child. And this is exactly how
             they want you to feel.

             It is a bizarre duality, a cleverly wrought irony:
             Bush is spun so he appears rather plain and
             simpleminded and not really mentally agile
             enough to be openly complicit in the
             coverup-related decisions he's being accused
             of, a feeling that, aww shucks, he's still just a
             good ol' daddy's boy from the oilier parts of
             Texas who don't know no better and how dare
             you accuse this Very Nice Man of leveraging the
             horror of 9/11 for political gain. Besides, that's
             Cheney's job.

             Yet you can't believe Bush is truly a man of
             nuanced intelligence because that implies that
             he probably did know something about the
             possibility of a terrorist attack and how it could
             fortify his political career, but you can't call him
             flagrantly stupid because that's unpatriotic and
             un-American and embarrassing, and hence
             you're just left with this feeling of unease and
             vague despondency about the nation's overall
             direction and whatever happened to your civil
             liberties.

             And then there are people like Lt. Col. Steve
             Butler of the Air Force who openly bashed the
             president in print, called him a fool who let 9/11
             happen to boost his stagnant presidency and
             that's very bad indeed, can't be slamming the
             commander-in-chief when you're in the military,
             understandably, but it certainly does get you
             thinking, maybe Bush really is dumb as a post --
             but in a rather sharp, deeply sinister way.

             Better take the Dan Rather approach. There he
             was, America's anchorman, with the odious Larry
             King, responding to a phone-in question asking
             how he, Rather, would advise the president
             about possibly invading Iraq and Rather
             replying, well caller, I'd probably say, Mr.
             President, whatever decision you make in this
             very difficult matter I will support it because
             you're the president and I'm a patriot and that's
             that, and he said it with a straight melodramatic
             face you immediately wanted to slap.

             And there it is. Ignorance is bliss. Ignorance is
             patriotism. We don't want to believe the Bush
             administration could've done something to
             prevent the horrors of 9/11, can't imagine Bush
             would use the tragedy to bolster his re-election
             hopes while simultaneously pummeling
             Afghanistan into docility in the name of oil
             pipelines and his friends in the military-industrial
             complex. Increasing piles of evidence be
             damned. It's just too painful.

             So then, please do not openly hate Mr. Bush or
             call him names or believe his decisions are all
             too often terribly detrimental to the progress of
             the human animal. He is too nice. He is too
             dumb. He is too nicely dumb, in a really smart
             way. Clever, isn't it? Aww, shucks.