the dubyafication of the pm
hi y'all
newsletter: june 2003
Tony Bliar, the Prime Minister formerly known as Tony Blair, visited the British troops in Iraq the other day. This was a good thing in itself, I suppose, a show of support that the troops need, because they have a rotten time of it out there….but it was especially useful to Bliar, since it got him out of the country just in time to avoid the growing anger against him in Britain over, whisper it, those damn weapons that just can’t be found, the very same that the Ugly Demonic One, the moronic windbag Rumsfeld, now claims might have been destroyed prior to the illegal ‘war’ of Iraq. (Let’s get the wording right: it was an invasion, not a war, a thoughtless avaricious invasion, whose real purpose was the establishment of more American bases in faraway countries – and the ones in Iraq, which have a copious oil-supply within fibbing distance, are very juicy seizures indeed.)
It has always been Bliar’s contention that yes, hold on a minute chaps, the weapons will be found. Since he is a man who believes he is always right – yes, he’s delusional - he dismisses any questions about the nature and whereabouts of these weapons. He can’t be specific, for some reason, about where or when they can be located, or even what they might be. So, to lull those of us who live in idiotland, we the electorate too dumb to be allowed to ask questions, we are shown TV pictures of what is allegedly a mobile chemical-weapons lab.
(I don’t know about anyone else, but this looks like a stripped-down Mac truck to me, with a couple of weird angular attachments. Or a Leggo contraption that got out of hand.) The ‘lab’ contained no evidence of chemical activity; ditto the canisters that, after analysis, were shown to contain pesticide instead of a dreaded nerve-gas. But Bliar has long maintained, yes indeed we will find the genuine article; how he knows this is something else not to be questioned. Nor can we question his statement, prior to the invasion, that Sadaam had the capability of making a womd strike within forty-five minutes, an impossibly short time in the eyes of those who’d really know, like generals or chiefs of staff, but clearly in Bliarworld an acceptable time frame. So he could tell us the time we had to live before the nukes/chemo/bio bad stuff came out of Iraq on nonexistent rockets, but he can’t tell us anything about the weapons themselves.
Anyway, my mind was rambling when I saw Bliar in Iraq addressing the troops. I was shocked out of my torpor – we can all doze off when politicians spout platitudes, which is all the time – when I took a closer look.
Admittedly sunlight was shimmering off the ground where Bliar moved – but was it Bush? I was momentarily confused. But why would Bush be addressing the British troops? I looked closer at the figure moving toward the camera; he was dressed in Levis, with a buckle and belt, and an open-neck white shirt, and he walked with a curious strut, arms held slightly away from the body, chest puffed up like a rooster, a slight John Wayneishness in the rhythm of movement – it was the Bush Walk, no doubt about it, the arms fixed in such a way that the knuckles wouldn’t scrape the ground, so no simian likeness could be remarked upon or mocked by cartoonists. But wait, wait, further scrutiny convinced me it wasn’t Bush at all, it was Bliar dressed up as Bush and strutting his stuff, in the Presidential manner, out there in Iraq -
And I had one of those sweet moments of insight when I understood the reason behind Bliar’s urgent need to ally himself with Bush in the invasion of the Iraq. It was because Bliar worshipped Bush. Bliar wanted to be near Bush as often as possible; but it went further than that, Bliar wanted to become The Bush, he wanted to morph into his hero. So he tagged along on the Invasion train, just to please his hero. (He wasn’t listening to the details of the consequences, of course – the arrogant disregard of the UN, the condemnation of Amnesty, the disgraceful arrogance shown to Islamic life and history and thought, the number of people who’d die in combat…no, he wasn’t paying attention to these trifles.)
He figured the more meetings he had with Bush the more he’d be like him, talk like him, walk like him, think like him, choke on pretzels like him…o the joy of it. So it came to pass, Bliar became Bush. The man voted into power by the electorate of Great Britain had altered; that man was gone, consumed by his idolatry of Bush.
At this time of writing, Bliar has not returned to Britain. He is out there in Leningrad or Warsaw, acting like his hero, sometimes slipping inadvertently into an Awgosh youal accent; and when he sleeps at night, after belching up some beefsteak fajitas gas and refried beans, he dreams of Texas, of the oil derricks spread across the country, the dusty highways, the Rio Grande. Meantime, while he struts and poses, the British National Health Service is falling to pieces, the post office doesn’t work, the railways are bankrupt, the schools are in disarray, unemployment is rising and the country is headed…where it has always been headed, into gloom and despair and rising crime.
None of this matters to Bliar. He’s the President of the United States, after all.
contents©2006 Campbell Armstrong
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