He was drinking again.<\/p>\n
What did it matter?\u00a0 Nothing mattered any more.<\/p>\n
God had clearly deserted him.\u00a0\u00a0 God who had told him what to do all along.\u00a0\u00a0 God who had virtually begged him to become Leader; who had let the infidels maul his armies, blow up his cities and permitted hurricanes to make him look like an incompetent fool.\u00a0 Bloody God!<\/em><\/p>\n He hurled an empty vodka bottle at the White House dog.\u00a0 He\u2019d have to remember to find some gasoline from somewhere to burn it and Laura\u2019s bodies when they were done.\u00a0\u00a0 Perhaps Halliburton would come through with a gallon or two after all he\u2019d done for them.\u00a0 He\u2019d shoot Laura and then take the pills.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t that he was a coward, he had just never cared for pain. \u00a0Always preferred inflicting it.<\/p>\n Where was Rumsfeld anyway with those regiments?\u00a0\u00a0 Phantom regiments, \u00a0he had called them last night, when Bush moved them neatly into position on the big map.\u00a0\u00a0 Phantom?<\/em>\u00a0 What was he talking about.\u00a0\u00a0 They were the finest National Guardsmen ever sent abroad to attack others in defense of their country.\u00a0 Far better than hanging around inAlabama getting drunk.\u00a0 Or sitting waiting for some local disaster in case they might be useful.\u00a0\u00a0 How often did hurricanes hit anyway?\u00a0 Better to be out there searching the streets of some Arab town for improvised explosives.\u00a0 \u00a0So what a lot of them hadn\u2019t come back?\u00a0 What had they got to lose?\u00a0 OK , a few neurotic parents had complained about the senseless waste of youth.\u00a0 But who hadn\u2019t senselessly wasted their youth?\u00a0 Why some nights in Houston he had been so drunk he could hardly hold the cocaine bottle.\u00a0 Now Rumsfeld was claiming he had no regiments left.\u00a0\u00a0 Well, duh, Herr Rumsfeld, get some new boys.\u00a0 Stick some twelve year olds in uniform. They like uniforms.\u00a0 Get them some new automatic weapons and a Hummer and put \u2018em out there on the streets of oldBaghdad.\u00a0 Can\u2019t be more dangerous than dealing with gang wars in Philadelphia.\u00a0 They wouldn\u2019t mind dying in defense of their country.\u00a0 He hadn\u2019t particularly cared to do that himself, but then he had much more to lose.\u00a0 Easy to squander your life when you\u2019re not rich, but his Pappy had always tried to keep him out of the firing line.\u00a0 His dear Pappy, who had tried to warn him.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cYou can\u2019t just ignore everyone.\u00a0 Even the French can be useful\u201d he had said as he uncorked a Chateau-bottled Saudi, another nice gift from Bandar.<\/p>\n Where was that Rove?<\/em>\u00a0 Sniveling coward.\u00a0 Keeping a low profile as usual, avoiding the paparazzi and trying to figure a way to sneak out of the White House Bunker without being caught.\u00a0\u00a0 It was all his fault.\u00a0\u00a0 I can make you a great Leader.<\/em>\u00a0 Blame it on the left.\u00a0\u00a0 Blame it on the media.\u00a0 Blame it on the Jews.\u00a0\u00a0 Just blame somebody and then they\u2019ll all cheer.\u00a0 Then go to war, and label your enemies traitors.\u00a0 Been done before a million times.<\/p>\n So what went wrong?\u00a0\u00a0 They\u2019d had it made.\u00a0 Corporate sponsors kissed his ass, billions of tax payers dollars to spend.\u00a0 The Democrats dull, dim and defeated, and now this.\u00a0 This ingratitude.\u00a0 \u00a0They all deserved to die.\u00a0 Americans.\u00a0 They weren\u2019t worthy of him.\u00a0 Not man enough to stand and let the country die for him?\u00a0 The fact was they didn\u2019t deserve him.<\/p>\n That god damn rat Cheney had had the gall to ask him if he could slip off toSouth America last night.\u00a0 Muttered something about a new heart attack medication that he\u2019d heard of in the jungle, but that was bullshit.\u00a0 He was just running.\u00a0 As usual. Whenever there was trouble.\u00a0\u00a0 It was always me who had to go and stand in front of the troops and say how well we\u2019d done after each disaster.\u00a0 Not Dick.\u00a0\u00a0 Oh no, Dick would be bunkered down in some safe base running the country.\u00a0 Well fuck Dick.\u00a0\u00a0 He was a prick.\u00a0 A greedy bastard.\u00a0 Sure, if you\u2019re gonna run a Country like a Company better to have a Company you know run it, but how many billions had he made?\u00a0\u00a0 And how much had he really passed along to the poor geek that they had got to speak for them.\u00a0 Not nearly enough.<\/p>\n A call from Powell. To say goodbye.\u00a0 Well that was nice of the chap.\u00a0 He\u2019d never thought much of him.\u00a0 Too much of a soldier, but still.\u00a0 Where was<\/em> Rumsfeld and his regiments?\u00a0 They\u2019re going to lose me this war, he said, forgetting for a moment.\u00a0 The war on terror.\u00a0 His legacy.\u00a0 Finally a war against a decent noun.\u00a0 A war that need never stop. Terror?\u00a0\u00a0 He\u2019d shown them.\u00a0 Remember Shock and Awe<\/em>?\u00a0\u00a0 Well that showed thoseBaghdad bastards who was who?\u00a0\u00a0 Stupid bleeding heart civilians holding up bloody babies and whimpering to CNN.\u00a0 Surgical strikes, that\u2019s what his Air Force said.\u00a0 And only afterwards had the pictures seemed a little less certain.\u00a0 Perhaps a bit more like surgery, with missing limbs.\u00a0 He chuckled at his joke.\u00a0\u00a0 But those fabulous distant days of good explosions on TV, now they were ratings.\u00a0\u00a0 In those days he could do no wrong, looking stern, watching the planes lift off from carrier decks in the dull dawn.\u00a0 Blair on the phone saying \u201cYes, yes, we can do it. Go Baby.\u00a0 Go Baby Bush!\u201d At last the rush he\u2019d not felt since the cocaine days.\u00a0 Now even the voting machines were turning against him.<\/p>\n He could hear the secretaries crying in the bunker corridor.\u00a0 What was so bad for them?\u00a0 He was the one leaving.\u00a0 He was the one they\u2019d be watching turn to toast in the Rose Garden.<\/p>\n Condi came in to ask him what she should wear for his funeral. \u00a0\u00a0The black or the red?\u00a0\u00a0 There\u2019s not going to be a damn funeral.\u00a0 We\u2019re having a simple family cremation.\u00a0 The previous night there had been some loose talk about Cheney poisoning his wife and children.\u00a0 Now wouldn\u2019t that have been nice?\u00a0 But he had been lying of course.\u00a0 His jungle retreat apparently was ready.\u00a0 They had a pool.\u00a0 Jacuzzi.\u00a0 Life support machine.\u00a0\u00a0 The finest stuff KBR could provide.\u00a0 Corporate jet standing by.\u00a0\u00a0 Bastards!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n From Bush:\u00a0 The Last Ten Days.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" He was drinking again. What did it matter?\u00a0 Nothing mattered any more. God had clearly deserted him.\u00a0\u00a0 God who had told him what to do all along.\u00a0\u00a0 God who had virtually begged him to become Leader; who had let the infidels maul his armies, blow up his cities and permitted hurricanes to make him look […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":282,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279\/revisions\/282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}