by James Glaser
February 23, 2005

All I am asking for, is that our President and his administration treat us with respect and that they start being honest with us. George Bush continues to play with the truth and that bothers me. The man is no longer running for office, so I thought he would start telling us what is really going on with our government and his plans for our country.

Today is a prime example of what I am writing about. George Bush is in Europe trying to get help with his mess in Iraq and his is praising the help offered today by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Yes it is true that all 26 countries have offered to help with the training of Iraqi forces, training needed if we ever want to bring our troops home, but when you find out what they have really offered, you know that Bush's trip was a failure. He could tell us that things are not going our way right now, but he doesn't. Bush pretends that NATO came through for him.

In this day and age, France's offer of 660 thousand dollars to a NATO fund to train Iraqi troops and their assignment of one French mid-level officer to the training mission at NATO headquarters in Brussels is not very much to crow about.

Bush said, "Twenty-six nations sat around the table saying, you know, let's get the past behind us and now let's focus on helping the world's newest democracy succeed." That sounds great and you would expect that all 26 countries would now be sending trainers to Iraq to help train Iraq's new army.

But when you hear the truth, it doesn't sound very positive. France, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, Greece, and Spain have refused to help train military forces and police inside Iraq. They say they would rather train Iraqis outside their country or maybe just chip in some cash.

Last year, NATO's top commander, General James Jones, a United States Marine, said that 3,000 trainers would be needed as well as a security force to protect the trainers. NATO is now trying to put together 159 trainers. As of today they have 111 trainers on the ground in Iraq.

In a report from the New York Times it is written, "As a result of the intense American lobbying campaign, 17 other member states have committed more than $5 million in the last two weeks for trust funds that will cover such expenses as transporting Iraqi officers to NATO training posts outside Iraq and for equipment purchases. Right now, America is spending about 133 million dollars in Iraq every day of the year, so 5 million plus is really nothing.

Really we spend that much ever hour of every day in Bush's war in Iraq, but he is now saying that NATO really came through for us and all our past differences are behind us. Since last summer, George Bush and his administration and you and I have pitched $50 million into this same fund. I guess Colin Powell was right about if "you break it, you own it."

Here is an example of how bygones are bygones in Europe when it comes to George Bush. The Weekly Standard reports today that, "When John Vande Lanotte, Belgium's Vice Prime Minister, goes to the toilets today, he finds the urinals in the offices of his ministry decorated with stickers. They show an American flag and the head of George W. Bush. "Go ahead, Piss on me." the caption says. Vande Lanotte is one of Bush's hosts in Brussels.

Robert "Steve" Stevaert, the Belgian Socialist Party leader said, "Bush may be our government's guest, the ministers will greet him, smile and tell him that he is most welcome, but we all know what they think of the bastard."

As President Bush's plane was landing in Brussels, Laurette Onkelinx, The Belgian minister of Justice was saying on television, "I would rather have had John Kerry visiting us." When she was asked if that was undiplomatic, she said, "No, that is how I feel about it." That is being honest!

Now if President Bush would get on national TV or Radio and tell us that he didn't get everything he wanted and that people there are still upset about our war in Iraq, but he is trying the best he can to get help from Europe to get things done so our troops can come home, I would respect him for that. George Bush is not doing that, he is telling us that things are going good and everybody is pitching in to help. In reality all that he is getting is a token effort and things are not going good and he should be honest enough to say so.

I will tell you what worries me, George Bush is not running for office anymore, he has nothing to lose, so now is the time I would expect him to turn from politician to statesman and he isn't doing that and it makes me wonder why.

I think it stems from the fact that when repeatedly asked during this fall's campaign about any mistakes he had made, George Bush could not think of even one. That scares me. George Bush might be lying to himself and believing that things went just great with NATO, because he will not, even to himself, believe that something didn't go just they way he planed.

People the world over hold no respect for our President and when foreign governments have urinal stickers in their restrooms so that their people can piss on our President's head, you know America has hit a new low.

I truly believe that most of the world and all of Europe respected our nation and our leaders before George Bush became President. George Bush lied to them and he lied to us about Iraq and its threat to the United States and the world. That has cost us the respect our nation once had.

So today, those members of NATO know that George Bush is still lying. They know that the help they offered today was just enough to keep NATO intact and that what they did was a real slap to George Bush. They must stand there and smile and hold in a laugh as Bush praises their work.

America should be a shamed of our President. Because of him, it is going to take longer to train an Iraqi army and more young American men and women will be killed and maimed. Yesterday three young Soldiers from Minnesota were killed in Iraq. All three were married last fall before they left for their tour of duty.

Post Script:

I read this today by Thom Hartmann

"The American Heritage Dictionary (Houghton Mifflin Company. 1983) left us this definition of the form of government the German democracy had become through Hitler's close alliance with the largest German corporations and his policy of using religion and war as tools to keep power: fascism (fash'iz'em) n. A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."

Tell me, does that sound like what George Bush is trying to do or what?