The Israeli newspaper Haaretz has published transcripts of last year's negotiating session between Palestinian Prime Minister Abbas, faction leaders from Hamas and other militant groups and America's latest Action Hero - who stunned everyone present by saying, "God told me to strike at al-Qaeda and I struck them, and then He instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East." [Moscow Times June 27/03]

Would you call this speaker delusional?

How about a bad liar? Bush has denied knowing the now-discredited Chalabi - despite having invited him to sit with Laura Bush during last year's State of the Union address. Bush also denies knowing Enron's' Ken Lay, whom he has corresponded with, and who was a chief contributor to Bush's 2000 election bid. [Washington Post June16/04]

Or just plain sick? Having promised during his presidential campaign to avoid tapping Social Security - except in cases of war, recession or a national emergency - Bush gleefully told his budget director just after the horrific September 11 attacks: ”Lucky me. I hit the trifecta.” [Miami Herald Nov29/01]

According to psychiatrists willing to sign their names to their diagnosis, the best bet -besides “all-of-the-above” - is brain damage. Even discounting the effects of cocaine abuse, years of binge drinking is known to destroy neurons and slow the synapses that map reality.

Remember that ghastly April 13, 2004 televised press conference when God's chosen representative was unable to stutter an answer to a question about whether or not he thought he'd made mistakes in going after Iraq? Did you cringe when the President of the United States haltingly said he couldn't think and needed written questions in advance?

Those weren't “mistakes”. Shrinks say such lapses by the real, unmanufactured Bush are telltale symptoms of serious emotional defects affecting his ability to govern the most powerful nation on the planet.

THEY WERE HERE A MINUTE AGO
This isn't funny. Remember that annual Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner in March 2003, when Bush made a series of "jokes" about the failure to find the weapons of mass destruction? Showing slides of administration officials looking around the Oval Office, Bush laughingly said in a mock voice-over, "Those weapons of mass destruction must be somewhere."

It was hilarious! Except for the deaths of tens of thousands of kids and their parents and grandparents in Iraq, plus more than a thousand American GI's - all killed by the lies GW told about WMD; now just “material for yucks," David Corn wrote in The Nation. [Common Dreams Mar30/03]

BAD BUSINESS ON THE HILL
Talking about a person's mental infirmities is a major social taboo. Especially when that someone is you-know-who. But worried insiders are now describing an “erratic President” who is increasingly “indecisive, moody, paranoid and delusional”.

Capital Hill Blue is raising hackles on the Hill by revealing how “A growing number of White House aides are concerned about the President's mental stability. They told harrowing tales of violent mood swings, bouts with paranoia and obscene outbursts.”

Bush enablers dismiss the stories as “fantasies from anonymous sources.” Why not judge for yourself? Here is a sampling of stories filed by a reporter-on-the-run to TBRNewsorg:

“George Bush, the President, is one of the meanest, vindictive men I have ever met. Initially, when everything was going his way, the atmosphere of the White House was one of triumph and euphoria but now that Bush's past deeds are about to crush him, he has reverted to what he was before he stopped boozing: a mean and spiteful person, given to a foul mouth and expressing really vulgar contempt for anyone and everyone who dares to cross him.

“Bush is in a crazy rage about all the resistance he has been facing. He believes very firmly that he is acting on the orders of God Almighty and that anyone, be it the head of the CIA or some rogue reporter, must be punished for daring to thwart the Will of God!

“When Gore gave a strong and effective anti-Bush speech a few months ago, I heard Bush say, 'Who the fuck cares what that shithead thinks? They should have stuck him in the funny farm instead of his crazy dumb ass wife.' That is a direct quote.

“The President will never admit he is wrong. How could he be when God appointed him to be President? He has said, once in my presence, that God put him in the White House. He will never fire Rice or Rumsfeld because he would be totally lost without them…now we are stuck with a brain-damaged weirdo in the Oval Office, surrounded by a pack of vicious war criminals…

“Yes, Bush has medical problems. He can't answer questions; he has a very short-term memory; he is fixated on religious concepts to the complete detriment of our foreign policy. His vicious, short sighted and irrational hatreds are doing and will do terrible damage to America abroad.

“There is something really wrong with this man. I personally think that he is as crazy as a loon… an unscientific diagnosis but given what I have seen and heard of him, not inaccurate - and events will prove me right!”

ANOTHER INSIDER IDENTIFIES BUSH'S MENTAL “LAPSES”
Unfortunately for White House spin doctors, this scandalous scribe is corroborated by former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who says that a moody Bush has a short attention span, doesn't read key briefings, and wanders off on tangents in cabinet meetings - mostly about Saddam Hussein and Iraq - lashing out at anyone who disagrees with him.

“We saw the same thing in the Nixon years,” O'Neill says. “The White House has not been able to trot out even one staffer who is willing to go public and say positive things about the President's mental condition.”

FIRE THIS GUY QUICK
We are not talking about enjoying a few chuckles over some goof. As the corpses pile up, the ramifications of Bush's mental problems are huge and growing gigantic. Now, 26 ex-US diplomats and military leaders are saying that Bush's fuck-you foreign policy has harmed national security, and that for the good of just about everybody he should be retired in November.

Air Force Chief of Staff Merrill McPeak-Harrop served as ambassador to four African countries under Carter and Reagan, "A lot of people felt the work they had done over their lifetime in trying to build a situation in which the United States was respected and could lead the rest of the world was now undermined by this administration: by the arrogance, by the refusal to listen to others, the scorn for multilateral organizations," he said. [Los Angeles Times June13/04]

SPEAKING FRANKLY
Since my first story, “Is Bush Nuts” received worldwide web attention, a new book by Dr. Justin Frank, Director of Psychiatry at George Washington University, raises more troubling questions about Bush's tippy mental gyrations.

According to publisher Harper Collins, through a close analysis of Bush's public statements and behavior - including videotapes of the man in action, plus the written historical record provided by journalists, biographers, and those who have known Dubya well - the good doctor traces the development of Dubya's character from childhood to America's present day decline.

Dr. Frank's exploration into the mysteries of Bush's brain isn't for the squeamish. This respected psychiatrist probes in part:

* Bush's false sense of omnipotence, instilled within him during childhood and emboldened by his deep investment in fundamentalist religion.

* His denial, impairment, and the enabling streak in our culture.

* His rigid and simplistic thought patterns, paranoia, and megalomania have driven him to invent adversaries so that he can destroy them.

* His love-hate relationship with his father triggered a complex and dangerous mix of feelings including yearning, rivalry, anger, and sadism.

DADDY'S BOY
Ryan Reynolds, a Bush childhood friend, emphasizes the last point, saying, “George wanted to please his father but never felt he measured up, especially when compared to Jeb.” [Capital Hill Blue June17/04]

Bush's younger brother and election-fixer summed up the problem when he informed the British people, "A lot of people who have fathers like this feel a sense that they have failed." [Guardian Sept2/03]

Unfortunately for a son who needs to look good in his father's eyes, George Sr. has publicly criticized George Junior's attack on Iraq. "Former President Bush does not support the war against Iraq," insists former aide John Ruskin. "It is as simple at that." [Capital Hill Blue June17/04]

In A World Transformed, George Bush Sr. explains: "Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq… would have incurred incalculable human and political costs... We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land."

Bush's mother is also criticized for promoting traumatic family denial over his seven year-old sister's death when GW was young. If such an Oedipal overload is likely to transfer a murderous impulse to, say, people in Afghanistan, we'd better take a deeper look at a man whose carefully crafted public image is “virtually” bogus.

JUST PRACTICING
During a recent online interview, an email correspondent spoke for many critics when he complained to Dr. Frank, “You don't diagnose a patient you haven't examined. You don't discuss your diagnoses without the patient's permission.”

“I never met with George W. Bush personally,” Dr. Justin Frank admitted. But he didn't need to. As the psychiatrist-author said, “I am using the technique of applied psychoanalysis which was first introduced by Freud.”

Dr. Frank explained: “Applied psychoanalysis means the application of psychoanalytic principles to anybody outside one's own consulting room. Freud based some of his most important theories on his observations of individuals he could never get onto his couch, Moses and Leonardo de Vinci most notable among them.”

The White House itself uses applied psych all the time to anticipate and manipulate world leaders. Citing just one example, Dr. Frank related how “CIA psychological profiles of Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin played an important role in Jimmy Carter's handling of the 1978 Camp David negotiations.”

“I think these techniques should be available to the American public as well,” Dr. Frank said, especially in an election year. “I find that much of applied psychoanalysis is 'accurate' in that it helps us see patterns of behavior and gives us tools to think about those patterns…“His smirk as an adult, his mimicry of patients on death row while he was Governor are all part of a similar pattern.” [Washington Post June16/04]

A “PARANOID SADISTIC MEGALOMANIAC” GRIPS HYPERPOWER HELM
Dr. Justin Frank is Director of Psychiatry at George Washington University. Examining GW's words and behavior, this psychiatrist with 35 years of clinical practice found himself “really very unsettled by him.”

In fact, Dr. Frank told the Washington Post, “I felt he was disturbed.”

It turns out this good ol' boy from Connecticut is really an imposter. “What was different about Bush was his patterns of behavior - of living outside the law,” Dr. Frank stated. “He is not unique as a person. He is unique as a president.” [Washington Post June16/04]

The head of the world's unchallenged hyperpower, Dr. Frank further diagnosed, "fits the profile of a former drinker whose alcoholism has been arrested but not treated." The result: a "paranoid megalomaniac", as well as “a sadist”.

Dr. Frank found Bush's "lifelong streak of sadism” has ranged from blowing up frogs with firecrackers “to insulting journalists, gloating over state executions, and pumping his fist gleefully before the bombing of Baghdad."

Not unlike the Americans who continue to cheer him on.

But at least GW has an excuse. The psychiatrist concluded that Bush's binges ""may have affected his brain function.” What is really important, Dr. Frank declared, is that because the issues around death and personal failure that led to Bush's years of heavy boozing were never treated, “he has no capacity to take responsibility for his behavior. Black and white thinking results most often from untreated alcoholism.” [Capitol Hill Blue June14/04; Capital Hill Blue June17/04; Washington Post June16/04]

However commendable, defeating the demons of drink without psychiatric counseling or the help of a 12-Step Recovery Program to process his problems puts Boy George “at far higher risk of relapse." [Capitol Hill Blue June14/04]

A risk compounded by severe stress.

Like right now, for instance.

EXCERPT: BUSH ON THE COUCH: INSIDE THE MIND OF THE PRESIDENT
by Justin A. Frank, MD

“If one of my patients frequently said one thing and did another, I would want to know why. If I found that he often used words that hid their true meaning and affected a persona that obscured the nature of his actions, I would grow more concerned. If he presented an inflexible worldview characterized by an oversimplified distinction between right and wrong, good and evil, allies and enemies, I would question his ability to grasp reality. And if his actions revealed an unacknowledged - even sadistic - indifference to human suffering, wrapped in pious claims of compassion, I would worry about the safety of the people whose lives he touched.

“For the past three years, I have observed with increasing alarm the inconsistencies and denials of such an individual. But he is not one of my patients. He is our president. George W. Bush is a case study in contradiction. The gulf between his personality and those policies - and the style with which they are executed - grows ever wider, raising serious questions about his behavior.”

The growing gulf between Bush's words and actions is now wider than the Persian Gulf.
Dr. Frank wonders how the jovial Bush can cut funds from government programs aiding the poor and hungry. How is it, he asks, “our deeply religious president feels free to bomb Iraq - and then celebrate the results with open expressions of joy?

How can someone promise to protect the environment on the one hand and allow increased arsenic in the public water supply on the other? Or call his plan to lift logging restrictions in national forests the 'Healthy Forest Initiative”?

“As a citizen, I worry about what these contradictions and inconsistencies say about the president's ability to govern; as a psychoanalyst, I'm troubled by their implications for the president's current and long-term mental health. When the most powerful man on the planet consistently exhibits an array of multiple, serious, and untreated symptoms - any one of which I've seen patients need years to work through-it's certainly cause for further investigation, if not for outright alarm.”

GOING NUKULAR
Every creature with enough reptilian reflexes to recognize grave and imminent danger ought to be freaked by Bush's obsession with nuclear weapons. In a newly leaked memo, the Bush administration urged all three federal H-bomb labs to explore a “full range” of thermonuclear weapons. The December 5, 2003 directive suggested a “kill-em-all and let Yahweh sort 'em out” approach to designing and deploying new nukes reminiscent of a Cold War arms race - without a counterbalancing competitor.

"This is really very distressing," said physicist and public policy professor Frank von Hippel, co-director of Princeton's Program on Science and Global Security. "They're saying, 'Go after it, guys. We're back in the 'Fifties.'"

But the bomb-shelter 'Fifties did not include al-Qaeda, weaponized Ebola, or a President-select said to be often be in “a crazy rage”.

Senator Edward Kennedy has also warned how last November Bush blew $700 million on “advanced concepts” nuclear weapons design at Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos and Sandia labs. “A nuclear bomb is not just another item in the arsenal,” Kennedy reminded us all. [Oakland Tribune Dec11/ 03]

Meanwhile, with environmental disaster as imminent as the day after tomorrow, American tax dollars are being spent to prepare for the resumption of international treaty-violating atomic tests in Utah.

Does this sound sane to you?

RADIOACTIVE BANKRUPTCY
Does GW have a death wish? Are we are all included in Bush's desire to give God a hand by fast-tracking Armageddon?

Go figure. The USA is insolvent. School kids don't have pencils, and for too many Americans, even a short hospital stay can result in a lifetime of acute financial pain. Yet, as Dubya continues churning out IOU's that will cripple the ability of future generations to deal with the End of Oil,Climate Shift, and a ruined nation - the USA is sinking even deeper into debt held by nations like China. Having dealt with them first-hand, I suggest that letting Chinese communists hold the whip hand in Washington is a Really Bad Idea.

Yet, the man who wrecked every business he was ever handed by the bin Ladens is putting another $6.5 billion on America's credit card for nuclear weapons this year. Make that an additional $6.8 billion for nukes next year. Plus another $30 billion over the following four years to maintain, modernization, design, produce, deploy and presumably use nuclear bombs.

Can you think of anything else that might be a better buy for $43 billion?

Never mind, says a man whose “ability to grasp reality” is questioned by professionals. The Energy Department is also busy building a $6 billion proton accelerator to boost the bang of Bush's new nukes. His Pentagon officials are demanding another $2 billion to rejigger the Navy's Trident I “city busting” missiles. And Don Rumsfeld advocates calling up the "reserves” of stockpiled nukes, and modernizing them, too. [Slate Apr23/04]

PARDON MY MUTAGENIC CANCER DUST
Virtually certain to be used if developed, this new generation of nuclear weapons includes "mini-nukes", "bunker-busters" and that old favorite - people-erasing neutron bombs that leave corporate-controlled structures intact.

Think of the “Robust Earth Penetrator” as a kind of radioactive rape device. Republicans love the REP for its mythical ability to burrow deep underground and atomize selected demons in their dastardly lairs.

At least in theory.

In reality, scientists say no nuke can be made to burrow more than 100-feet underground before exploding. But if you liked Depleted Uranium, you'll love these new dirty nukes. As nuclear control campaigner and former Stanford University physics professor, Sidney Drell points out, a nuclear warhead that does manage to burrow 16 meters down will throw a million cubic feet of radioactive dust high into the “atmos-fear”. [Guardian April30/03]

As the polar ice caps continue melting, persistent drought destroys crops and precious topsoil, and more of our space colony's human inhabitants sink deeper into poverty and desperation, “building a new generation of battlefield nuclear weapons sets the stage for another round of the most dangerous arms race imaginable,” warns the LA Times.

Remember, say the editors, “it is our country that pioneered the creation of weapons of mass destruction over the last half-century. And it was our dropping of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, that sparked the arms race of the Cold War.” [LA Times May13/03]

Do you detect a pattern here? Or are Americans as delusional as their leader?

TESTING, TESTING
Keep those flags waving! With kids going hungry and the country's infrastructure falling to bits, an “erratic” Bush is also fast-tracking a trillion-dollar "Star Wars" program whose only certainty is its ability to enrich his corporate cronies, while frightening other nations to keep up. Or strike the United States first.

Meanwhile, back at a certain Texas ranch, a reportedly mean, vindictive man has redrawn America's Nuclear Posture Review, promising to turn other rogue nations into radioactive glass. Trouble is, Earth's atmosphere is a closed recirculating system. And when weapons-grade radioactivity gets loose at home, its poison is forever. Just ask the residents of Hanford, or Denver's plutonium-laced suburbs. [ Scorched Earth by William Thomas]

Nevertheless, GW Bush will soon begin testing nuclear weapons 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, upwind of the state of Utah. [Deseret Morning News May20/04]

U.S. GOVERNMENT STUDY LINKS BUSH, HITLER, MUSSOLINI
Now we learn that the nasty neocons are clinically not nice. A U.S. government study concludes that America's political conservatism can be explained psychologically as a set of neuroses rooted in "fear and aggression, dogmatism and the intolerance of ambiguity".

Linking Hitler, Mussolini and Ronnie Reagan with the same affliction, the report's four authors cite Bush's moral certainty and frequently expressed dislike of nuance as a “textbook case” of irrationality. "This intolerance of ambiguity can lead people to cling to the familiar, to arrive at premature conclusions, and to impose simplistic clichés and stereotypes," the authors argue in the Psychological Bulletin. [Guardian Aug13/03]

Exhibit A: The invasion of Iraq.

GOING PP
Satirist Kurt Vonnegut is not exactly a Bush fan. On turning 80 in November 2004, the renowned author said he felt his country and Constitution have been taken over by “the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d'etat imaginable.”

Now in charge of the federal government, are “psychopathic personalities, or “PPs”. Vonnegut calls those “who have enriched themselves while ruining their employees and investors and country, and who still feel as pure as the driven snow, no matter what anybody may say to or about them - heartless PPs.”

PPs dress nice, make a big deal of going to church, and say what people want to hear. Then, using foul and degrading language around women, they order torture, murder and cover-ups like extra orders of fries.

And we know this isn't good for the heart.

“They are presentable,” Vonnegut ventured. “They know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose!” [In These Times Jan27/03]

DO IT YOURSELF DIAGNOSIS
Having fought the Nazis, Vonnegut knows serious craziness when he sees it. What about you?

See if this checklist of psychopathic traits fit any pseudo-president you know:

* Attempts to satisfy personal goals that put everybody else is put at risk.

* Tries to manipulate everyone and everything, including public opinion.

* Grandiose declarations, always insisting "we're number one, we're the best."

* Refuses to accept responsibility for personal actions and cannot feel remorse.
[http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/corp-focus/2004/000174.html]

OTHER SHRINKS AGREE THAT BUSH IS DANGEROUSLY WHACKO
Dr. Franks' frank appraisal of America's most prominent psychopath has gotten a few folks riled. But knee-jerk defense of the indefensible does not mean that this experienced clinical psychiatrist is nuts and Bush isn't.

Au contraire, the qualified author who dared psychoanalyze the speech and behavior of a man described by a White House insider as “crazy as a loon” is praised by other prominent psychiatrists - including Dr. James Grotstein, Professor at UCLA Medical Center, and Dr. Irvin Yalom, MD, Professor Emeritus at Stanford University Medical School.

Dr. Carolyn Williams, a psychoanalyst who specializes in paranoid personalities, is a registered Republican. She unhappily agrees with most of Dr. Frank's conclusions. Speaking of one patient who should be on a couch, Dr. Williams clinically observes, “His behavior suggests a classic paranoid personality. Additionally, his stated belief that certain actions are 'God's Will' are symptomatic of delusional behavior.” [Capital Hill Blue June17/04]

WHY SAY SUCH THINGS?
So what is Dr. Frank trying to do? “I hope to enrich the discussion about our choices for president in 2004,” says this alarmed psychiatrist. “I hope that the book will help us think about patterns of behavior that we see, that it will help us watch our leaders more closely. I am not just pulling out all the psychiatric stops to "get" Bush. His behavior calls for examination.”

His expert recommendation?

"Our sole treatment option - for his benefit and for ours - is to remove President Bush from office . . . before it is too late." [Capitol Hill Blue June14/04]

Dr. Carol Williams says she must, “reluctantly agree.”
[Capital Hill Blue June17/04]