Given everything that's going on, you may need a fantasy break, so consider the following, adapted from my new book on Iraq and the media.
In the days after Oprah Winfrey two years ago sliced and diced writer James Frey on her TV show for misleading the public with lies in his bestselling memoir, many liberal commentators expressed a single wish: to watch Oprah have the opportunity to do the same with President George W. Bush concerning the alleged lies that got the U.S. into Iraq (2,200 lost American lives ago). Eugene Robinson, The Washington Post columnist, observed, "If there were justice in the world, George W. Bush would have to give his State of the Union address from Oprah's couch. . . . Bush should have to face the wrathful, Old Testament Oprah who subjected author James Frey to that awful public smiting the other day."
Columnist Norman Solomon cited the Winfrey/Frey tussle, then charged, "Yet the journalists who interview Bush aren't willing to question him in similar terms." Jon Stewart contrasted Oprah's tough questioning of Frey with obsequious TV news treatment of Bush, Rumsfeld, and others. Maureen Dowd compared "disgraced author" Frey with "a commander in chief who keeps writing chapter after chapter of fictionalized propaganda."
So I have taken the liberty of pushing all this dreaming one step beyond, imagining an Oprah sitdown with the president---based almost word for word on the transcript of her session with Frey, with just a very few phrases obviously changed here and there. Here it is, without commercial interruption. It even has a happy ending.
OPRAH: President Bush is here, and I have to say it is difficult for me to talk to you because I feel really duped. But more importantly, I feel that you betrayed millions of citizens in your statements about WMD in Iraq and Saddam's connection to al-Qaeda. I think it's such a gift to have millions of people to believe in you and your office, and that bothers me greatly. So now, as I sit here today I don't know what is true and I don't know what isn't. Was your description of how Saddam Hussein was about to get nuclear weapons true?
B: He was about to get nuclear weapons, yes.
O: About to?
B: I mean, that was one of the details I altered about him.
O: Okay. And why?
B: Because all the way through the run-up to the war, I altered details about every single one of the WMD possibilities to render them unidentifiable.
O: But why did you lie? Why did you do that?
B: I think one of the coping mechanisms I developed was sort of this image of myself that was greater, probably, than what I actually was. In order to get through the experience, I thought of myself as being tougher than I was and badder than I was---and it helped me cope. When I was selling the war, instead of being as introspective as I should have been, I clung to that image.
O: And did you cling to that image because that's how you wanted to see yourself? Or did you cling to that image because that would make a better sell job?
B: Probably both.
O: How much of your statements on WMD and Saddam's connections to al-Qaeda were fabricated?
B: Not very much. I mean, all the people are real.
O: But I acted in defense of you and as I said, my judgment was clouded because so many people seemed to have gotten so much out of it. But now I feel that you conned us all. Do you?
B: I don't feel like I conned everyone.
O: You don't.
B: No.
O: Why?
B: Because I still think the war is about WMD and Al al-Qaeda, and nobody's disputing that I was addicted . . . to fighting Saddam. And it's a battle to overcome that.
O: Your charges about WMD, you said that that was true then. Would you say that today?
B: I had documents that supported it. About nine months after the war, I was speaking to somebody from State. They said that they doubted it happened that way, but that there was a chance that it did---that cases like that are reviewed on an individual basis.
O: This is what I don't get. Because when you were here before, you said that there were about 400 pages of documents. That there were documents and reports. Because I said, "How can you remember such detail?" And that's how you explained it to me.
B: Absolutely.
O: Do you wish you had added a disclaimer?
B: I don't know if I wish I had offered a disclaimer or if I had just talked about certain events in a different way. I think that would have been the more appropriate thing to do than putting in a disclaimer.
O: I appreciate you being here because I believe the truth can set you free. I realize this has been a difficult time for you, and maybe this is the beginning of another kind of truth for you.
B: I think you're absolutely right. I mean, I think this is obvious---this hasn't been a great day for me. It certainly hasn't been a great couple weeks for me. But I think I come out of it better. I feel like I came here and I have been honest with you. I have, you know, essentially admitted to . . . [sigh] . . . lying.
O: Which is not an easy thing to do.
B: No, it's not an easy thing to do in front of an audience full of people and a lot of others watching on TV. I mean, if I come out of this experience with anything, it's being a better person and learning from my mistakes and making sure that I don't repeat them.
O: Good.
*
Greg Mitchell's new book is So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits -- and the President -- Failed on Iraq. It has been hailed by our own Arianna, Bill Moyers, Glenn Greenwald, Paul Rieckhoff and others. It features a foreword by Joe Galloway and a preface by Bruce Springsteen.
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This is a pointless fantasy. Congress had its chance to impeach Bush and they blew it. So, let's get on with it and elect a new president and put the nightmare of the last 7 years behind us...
Oprah helped make the case for the Bush Cheney war.
Oprah has that animal torturer Dr Oz on without apology.
Oprah and Bush are peas in a pod. They both owe their fame, fortune and power on luck and lies and the ignorance of some Americans.
Actually Oprah had th courage to do a massive 2 day anti-war show the day after Colin Powell's UN speech which was so controversial it was taken off the air in some markets:
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=7254048331572558471&q=Oprah+war&total=287&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0
Michael Moore was so impressed with her shows he begged her to run for president.
Few leaders are willing to admit to the crimes they are charged with, especially when they are war crimes. The saddest thing is that so many citizens are still in denial about the depth of the crimes committed by the Bush junta. It will be interesting to watch how many documentaries must be shown to convince the U.S. population, en masse, that this man and, virtually, his whole administration deserves to be tried for the many criminal acts committed. He is already a sad caricature of himself.
George Bush is responsible for so many deaths and so much destruction and is such an outright LIAR that something in me shuts down on a cellular level when I hear theh mention of his name....
There is nothing remotely funny to me when his name is being floated about. Sorry.
Bush would rather die than be asked questions like that.
Delusional narcissists never let themselves be cornered, and if they are they get even..
you miss the most important point. the american people and press were led into this war because of their ignorance and successful fear mongering of the industrial military complex that control american politics.$$$$$$$$$$
americans are imperiallists at heart and many are out and out war mongers.
until they come to grips with that nothing will change in america.
how many of the presidental candidates are taking on the industrial military war machine that ike called the industrial military complex? ie none
the end is near as the downfall will be in the american economy that cannot support the huge cost of america's imperialism.
mc same wants to increase this war machine and dumbed down americans will put him into office.
and here is the insane part. the evangels in america are the worst of the war mongers. so much for understanding the teachings of jesus.
Lame. Where's the "comedic break" you promised?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i87cZ3Og6ts
We have google, you know.
"Saddam"s existing biological and chemical weapons capabilities pose a very real threat to America, now. Saddam has used chemical weapons before, both against Iraq"s enemies and against his own people. He is working to develop delivery systems like missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles that could bring these deadly weapons against U.S. forces and U.S. facilities in the Middle East." -- John Rockefeller, 2002
"The community of nations may see more and more of the very kind of threat Iraq poses now: a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists. If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow." -- Bill Clinton, 1998
"Iraq does pose a serious threat to the stability of the Persian Gulf and we should organize an international coalition to eliminate his access to weapons of mass destruction. Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to completely deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power." -- Al Gore, 2002
"(W)e need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime. We all know the litany of his offenses. He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation." -- John Kerry, 2003
Lets make a list of people who recognized their error and made disclaimer statements, I don't think George Bush would be at the head of this list.
"As a member of the House Intelligence Committee, I am keenly aware that the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons is an issue of grave importance to all nations. Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process." -- Nancy Pelosi, 1998
"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retained some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capability. Intelligence reports also indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons, but has not yet achieved nuclear capability." -- Robert Byrd, 2002
"There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein's regime is a serious danger, that he is a tyrant, and that his pursuit of lethal weapons of mass destruction cannot be tolerated. He must be disarmed." -- Ted Kennedy, 2002
Lets see how many of these people realized that they had made mistakes and amended their statements. .George Bush sure as heck would not led this list.
O: Ok, so what about Africa?
B: Interesting question. David Corn, "The Nation," said that Clinton didn't act because Africa didn't poll well. That just doesn't set right with me. We have to do more that just run our mouths, we have to act.
And did you know, that unlike Clinton who came into an improving economy, while I was busy dealing with all of this other stuff, I had to deal with that economic collapse he left us. But I thought that it was best that we just moved forward.
Any you know what? The darndest thing... I was being interviewed a few weeks back, when I was in Africa, and they said that my initiatives, the ones I set up and funded and put in place, have already saved over a million lives - from HIV/Aids and Malaria. You know, I never read that before. That great humanitarian Bob Geldof asked me why nobody cares - and I just don't know.. guess they have more important things to worry about .. ya know like politics or something like that.
O: But why Iraq?
B: All this time in Iraq, Clinton keeps bombing them around the clock and some 500,000 children died because of the sanctions, they said. Clinton pulls out the inspectors and bombs the living daylights out of them for 5 days in his 1998 "Shock and Awe" - he called that one "Desert Fox" (I liked the name of his earlier "Operation Bushwacker" (for my dad) a lot better, however - cause that time Saddam had actually done something.
So any way, you ask me.. during the 1990's the left kept marching and saying, "End the Sanctions." I thought it was time to put and end to the tyrant that had already cost the world some 2 million lives, and thought that if we helped put the people in charge of themselves, that we could actually end the sanctions, once and for all. Then all of the sudden, these same folks started marching and yelling, "The sanctions are working - keep the sanctions in place." I just couldn't stand the thought of another 1/'2 million children dying there. You know, actually fewer people have died in Iraq from all of this, then died during the Clinton years in Iraq. it's weird - kinda weird, when ya think of it.
Continuing on Ophah's question's to Bush:
O: But why did you really act?
B: Because, I was tired of a lack of leadership - people sitting in offices did nothing, as Samantha Powers said, while horrific genocides, civil wars, horrific HR violations occurred. The 90's- we looked the other way again as Bin Laden declared a holy Jihad against US and repeatedly attacked. Rwanda, 800,000 people slaughtered in 90 days, well read Power"s piece " if that had been me, all of you would have read it. 1996, it moved next door to the Congo and 4½ million died. Taliban take over Afghanistan, horrific atrocities committed - 60,000 died and safe haven was created for Al Qaeda (Oh, Clinton pulled support for his pipeline, but did nothing for the people). Kosovo crisis-so he felt bad and had to act to protect our energy interests in the Caspian region, but to lie about a genocide (that wasn"t) in order to get support from the UN (that we never got) - OK; no wonder J Carter, Mandela & Sarandon condemned what he did. Then a million did in N. Korea-starvation, and we hand them a bad deal and they start building nukes. Then Sierra Leone (Blood Diamond), then the Ivory Coast (50,000+ died in each) and still we look the other way. Then we have Chechnya - another 60,000 died (think I have problems with Putin?).
Oh, a different angle on the Ophah's question's to Bush:
O: Was your description of how Saddam Hussein was about to get nuclear weapons true?
B: Democratic Senator Carl Levin, Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Nov. 7th 2005: - look there was plenty of evidence that Saddam had nuclear weapons, by the way. That is not in dispute. There is plenty of evidence of that.
O: Your charges about WMD, you said that that was true then. Would you say that today?
B: I had documents that supported it. We had the same information the Clinton administration had, and they confirmed for all of us, Gore said in the fall of 2002 that they were "absolutely, absolutely" there, President Clinton said in July 2003, that they were absolutely there when he left town - and he said that the country should see this through and help us bring a democracy to the people of Iraq; Sec. Cohen said in 2003, that they were probably just moving them around from spot to spot as they did during the 90's for them. Sen. John Edwards was nice enough on several occasions to explain that unlike most in congress, he did actually read the documents provided, and further that he went back to the Clinton administration officials, and they assured him that it was on the up and up - so he voted for the war. What is it you don't understand here, Opry?
O; Yes but didn't National Security Advisor Condi Rice receive an intelligence briefing prior to 9/11 which stated that terrorists were about to hit targets inside the US?
GWB: (smirks) Well, um..the. well, um, well we ,I get alot of briefings."
Yup, a lot of those PDD's for a number of years had indicated that they wanted to do that. Of particular note, is when Yousef (the 1st effort to blow up the WTC) told the FBI in 1996, that next time they were going to bring the towers down. Of course Bin Laden's declaration of a holy Jihad against the US in the late 90's, was a pretty darn good clue.
Personally, I give both of those administrations a straight F on protecting us, prior to 9/11 - understanding of course, that new administrations are a much easier target. 9/11 was planned for much earlier in the year, as was the 1993 bombing. New administrations are too busy getting organized and in fulfilling their promises made during the campaign to contributors for the first many months - that's why I proposed to the 9/11 commission that we set up a long mandated transistion process.
This would be easy to unmask. Bush can't put together coherent sentences.
Amusing but strikes a false note near the end. While Frey might have admitted he was wrong and displayed remorse, Bush never will do either.
"Sociopath." The word is "sociopath."
Ms Winfrey is supporting Obama successfully. To think that W would appear on her show is delusional. You may have noticed that W & his handlers take great care in selecting W's audiences. W appears only at military bases & gathering of reactionary conservitives. Karl Rove couldn't win the '06 election for W but he & his successors have kept W out of possibly unfriendly venues since the '06 election. How many news conferences has W had since Nov '06? W is in his bubble & won't go out of it till the bubble breaks.
Bush has been kept out of unfriendly venues since 2001.
My mother was the one who told me about the James Frey book. When she told me about it, and especially about the dentist incident, I told her it was all alcoholic BS. The grandiosity, the over-inflated stories, narcissism - all of that is wrapped into one word for alchies - "dry drunk". I wonder how many sober people were taken in by the book, I doubt many were.
Rather than praising Oprah for verbally chastising someone for publicly embarrassing her (a natural human emotion), it should call into question her overly-publicized supposed extra-human abilities to find out the human psyche. From my point of view, anyone reading that book should have known it was BS, but especially anyone who knows what people say or do to get celebrity.
She was duped by the woman running her school in South Africa, and if she wasn't so rich, I'm sure we'd find out about the many others who have duped her.
I rarely watch her show, but turned it on one day to watch her look like an idiot about how to fill up her car with gas, and just finding out about fluorescent bulbs, saying that she would send one of her people to buy some.
She is a very rich, privileged woman living in her own privileged world, making her money on dramas - real and made up - of people. She would be the last person I would trust to do a solid interview with Bush
But what I thought was so brilliant was that after Frey duped Oprah into praising his book, she duped him and his publisher into coming on her show for the most humiliating public flogging in the history of live TV (pretending to Larry King that she had forgiven him for his sins). I was blown away by the resourceful was she turned the tables. Oprah conned the con man; you don't get to become the richest African American of all time without knowing how to play your cards.
OK, she was not graced with discernment but is good at manipulation.
She is just as good at conning as a con man.
She can rip someone a new one when she made herself look bad on TV and got bad national press.
I'll give you all of that.
But people lie to the media all the time and get away with it because the media does not want to admit they were had. We live in a culture where no one is ever held accountbale for telling lies. Oprah changed all that by raising the bar for tuth in America. What made Oprah so brilliant was she was that she accussed Frey to his face on live TV of betraying her & millions of viewers. When he tried to dismiss it is a mistake or an exageration she scolded him like he was five: "That's not a mistake James, that's a LIE!" She just BEAT THE LIVING SHIT out of him, and then she dragged out publisher Nan Talese and scolded her for not catching the lies. It was the most legendary moment in the history of popculture. We had never seen that side of Oprah. It was the Oprah of the old testament, damning Frey to hell for his sins. This will go down as one of the great moral fables of all time. It should be added to the Bible.
I watched Oprah interview Bush in 2000, so it's on record somewhere in Oprah archives. The megalomania of Bush was so obvious it was disgusting. Even more disgusting is that it was never commented on by Oprah, for obvious reasons, or any MSM commentator. Bush's use of the "I, Me, myself, mine" words was so prolific it was truly astounding in it's revelation about Bush's psychological makeup. His messianic megalomania was glaringly obvious because of the character deflects they uncovered about him. He was born into wealth and takes credit for it and has lived his life accordingly taking, stealing actually, credit for his life's circumstances which just fell into his lap because of his name. He never had to do anything except say his name. His glaring psychological deficiencies were displayed on the Oprah show for the world to see and no one told him he didn't have any clothes on. The sad commentary being that Bush showed to the world he had no sense of healthy shame as he took, stole, credit for what others did full well knowing they would never object because he's a valuable contact, especially if he became president. Of course the reason Oprah wouldn't comment being she has a few raging ego issues of her own, just she's not dangerous to the world. Bush is a person with an unhealthy ego but just too valuable for those seeking personal gain to mention it at least publicly.
We need to explain the "emperor had no clothes" concept to W.
I heard his own mother say that she did not like fairy tales; therfore, it is possible that W has never heard the story.
He does seem to be quite a literal, concrete thinker. He could be clueless about the analogy.
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Posted March 29, 2008 | 11:14 AM (EST)