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Deliberate Prevarification, Or Plain Dithering?

By no stretch of the imagination can polar bears and Iraqis be considered symbiotic, yet in a world controlled by George W Bush it seems nothing is impossible. Certainly, neither can have cause to feel gratitude towards the American president, whose prevarication has undoubtedly helped place the futures of both in serious jeopardy.

The media has made much of two stories today. The first concerns George W Bush’s heart-warming decision to place polar bears on the list of endangered species, due to the obviously swift retreat of the ice floes that are their home and hunting grounds; a retreat caused entirely by the global warming that George W Bush has determinedly refused to recognize from the first day he walked into the White House.

As the president of the World Resources Institute in Washington DC, Jonathan Lash said today:

“Truth to tell, climate science has not been controversial anywhere, except Washington DC, for years.”

Or, to put it another way, for the last five years of George W Bush’s tenure climate change has been a known scientific fact, not a theory.

Sadly, for the polar bears, their endangered species status won’t be ratified for another twelve months, which means George W Bush won’t take any action to stem global warming during a second term that ends in 2008. That’s bad news for the polar bears, heading for extinction within forty years.

The other story transfixing the media is the startling revelation out of Crawford, Texas, that “THE PLAN” for Iraq is “making good progress”, though today’s meeting of the president and top aides was described as “non decision-making”.

“Non decision-making”?

How long does President George W Bush need to prevaricate over this issue? The ten members of the Iraq Study Group began sitting in March 2006. They published their report on December 6th. Today is December 28th. Every day hundreds of Iraqis are being killed, maimed, kidnapped, tortured. Every day American soldiers are dying. Yet, today’s meeting – three weeks after the report was published – was a “non decision-making” meeting.

How long can Americans go on believing that George W Bush cares a fig about the dead and dying in Iraq? He would, of course, retaliate by saying it was because he cared that he was taking so long to make a decision. He would want it to be the “right” decision.

That explanation might hold water were it not that ten eminent citizens had already spent eight long months making the decision for him. All George W Bush has to do is implement it.

Perhaps he feels that continuous dithering will result in the Iraqis eventually all killing each other and solving the problem for him.

Which is somewhat similar to the polar bears, passing forever into extinction while waiting for him to admit global warming is a major issue.

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3 Replies to “Deliberate Prevarification, Or Plain Dithering?”

  1. Interesting take on this, RJ. The person who is part of the problem, admits there is a problem, but he is not the problem. His attitude and those who share the same is indeed the glue that holds the problem together. If the endangered species law has any teeth to it, we could use it to force change.

  2. PM – George Bush and Co are hard at it, attempting to save face. History will condemn them utterly unless they can squirm themselves into a position where troops can be withdrawn “honorably”, and American influence can hold sway in Iraq. The ISG report won’t allow them to do that, hence the dithering and prevarication. They don’t give a damn for dead and wounded, so long as they themselves are not the casualties. As for the polar bears, European environmental scientists insisted they were endangered six months ago. Bush had no choice but to acquiesce, given the evidence, but he did so reluctantly and would have preferred to wait, handing that – as well as all the other messes he’s made – onto his successor in 2008.

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