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ScottHypocrisy as the Race Winds Down

I have said a lot of things about President Bush in the last few years. Then I went silent for the last couple of months, but you can blame that on AP Lit more than any loss of conviction on my part. I'm back now, as we are less than a week away from the Presidential General Election, to call out one of the most egregious examples of hypocrisy I have seen throughout this election.

If you have been watching the news you have probably seen the story in the last couple of days about 380 tons of "high-test" explosives which may have been stolen by Iraqi insurgents or other terrorists. Democrats are, somehow, claiming that it's all Bush's fault while Republicans and the Bush Administration are making a point of how ignorant they really are to the situation in Iraq by saying that they're not even sure the explosives were ever there in the first place. At this point in the election, stupid arguments and excuses are expected.

However, I would like for you to guess which of the two candidates made this remark during a campaign speech earlier today:

"A political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your commander in chief."

I agree with that so much that I would have assumed John Kerry had said it, but it wasn't. It was George Bush. George Bush: the guy who said Saddam had vast stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction; the guy who claimed we would be welcomed by the Iraqi people as liberators; the very same guy who said Saddam and Al Qaeda were connected.

Jumping to conclusions without knowing the facts? That sounds like the Bush Doctrine verbatim.

The President's charge against John Kerry is indefensible. There is no possible way that Bush can claim he didn't jump to conclusions without knowing the facts on Iraq. He didn't know the facts! No one did! Not even the CIA, who didn't have any good sources within the nation.

It doesn't even matter that Bush thought Saddam had weapons. It wouldn't matter if the whole world had. Saddam had nothing, and we never had solid evidence that he did - we jumped to conclusions without knowing the facts. Bush knows this, and that is why I am labeling him as a hypocrite.

What amazes me is that Bush's supporters didn't do a double-take when he uttered that attack line. From everything I could tell before, the type of people who get to sit behind the President during his campaign speeches so that they are in the background of the camera frame were exactly the sort of people who wanted someone to jump to conclusions without knowing the facts. Now I realize that those background extras are chosen simply for their ability to nod and cheer as Bush rattles off his scripted attacks and take part in the "Two Minutes Hate" of John Kerry on command.

On a side note, I'm not saying that John Kerry doesn't have his own scripted speeches and nasty, unsubstantiated attacks. He definitely does. But I can honestly say that I never hear him prompt his audiences to boo Bush. Instead, he makes an attack and gets the people to cheer when he says how he'll do it better. Bush prefers to mock Kerry and get people to laugh at him sometimes and boo him others.

At this point in the election, probably nothing I can say will sway anyone if they have decided to support Bush. Then I say, "Ha ha. You live in Maryland where the Republican vote doesn't matter anyway thanks to the Electoral College system," but that's not the point. What is the point? Maybe it's that I'm just ranting now because I can't believe this race is as close as it is when the incumbent is this utterly ridiculous.

Read other articles written by Scott Zuke