March 14: Headin' for the last (nuke) roundup

By Larry Berteau

To get a grip on George Bush, you have to understand his character. Down deep, our president is a cowboy.

Once you've got your clammy hands around that concept, everything that's going on in Washington suddenly makes better sense. It's kind of like a gunfight in Tombstone, circa 1881. Knowing Doc Holiday was dying of cancer, and that Wyatt Earp had the social upbringing of a jackal, and that the Clanton gang was packing around more lead in their bellies (and other parts) than a slow-footed 6-point buck in November, helps make sense of the blazing gun battle at that corral. OK?

Nuke-you-ler war

Taking quotes and acts from just this week, Buckaroo Bush is riding high in the saddle.

Wednesday, he claims that "all options are on the table" as the Pentagon reworks it nuclear weapons policy to deter any attack on America, including from non-nuclear states such as Iraq and Iran. He continues: "The reason one has a nuclear arsenal is to serve as a deterrence."

That's Prez speak. Now, let's try it in cowboy.

"Let's git this straight. I'm not packin' this iron on my hip to make some furraner itchy at a security whatchamacallit in no airport. Nope. This gun's fer shootin' an fer lettin' folks know they're in a passle o' trouble if they mess with sumbuddy like me."

Saturday noon special

Bush also addressed his administration's embarrassment over the Immigration and Naturalization Service's belated dispatch of student visa approvals for two of the terrorists who slammed hijacked jets into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. After reading about the visa notices, which amazingly turned up six months after the fateful event, Bush said he was "stunned and not happy ... I was plenty hot."

In cowboy: "I felt like I tried to kiss the southbound freight when I was lookin' north. I was as unhappy as a pimp on Sadie Hawkins Day. Believe me, I got so heated up I thought I was a hornet in a duststorm at high noon in El Paso."

The mark of Zinni

This week, Bush sent U.S. mediator Anthony Zinni (disguised as Kirk Douglas) to the Middle East to seek a settlement. Bush said: "The need for us to get involved in the Middle East is to save lives."

In cowboy: "An' if that don't work, we'll tear 'em all a new rear compartment in their coveralls."

Osama's bin hidin'

Then there's Osama bin Laden, who masquerades as ol' man Clanton. Of him, Bush said: "Deep in my heart I know the man's on the run - if he's alive at all. Who knows if he's hiding in some cave or not? We haven't heard from him in a long time. I just don't spend that much time on it. I can assure you I'm not going to blink."

Forgetting the fact that in real life ol' Buckaroo and ol' man Clanton aren't really going to have a showdown on the streets of Laredo - despite the Prez speak - let's get down to it in cowboy:

"Ah got an itch I just cain't scratch. It's tellin' me that Oh-sama has lit out like a bobcat with a burr under his tail, an' I ain't all that shure that furball's still on four feet. He might be holed up in some cave like the coward he is, the yeller stripe down the middle of his back plastered against the slimy back wall. But ah ain't gonna' think on it all that much cuz thinkin' only muddies my water. An' I'll guarantee you one more thing, if he shows his ugly face in the street, I'll air him out."

Surry with a hinge on top

Bush scolded the Democrat-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee, which is poised to reject one of his nominees for the federal appeals court. He said partisan delays on his judicial nominees have created a "vacancy crisis" in the judicial branch.

A "vacancy crisis?" Good grief.

He continued: "Too often judicial confirmations are being turned into ideological battles that delay justice and hurt our democracy."

Now, cowboy up:

"The next time some tinhorn in this town thinks that I have to check with them before callin' in my two brothers to uphold the law, well, then that's the day this town goes to hell in a one-horse buggy."

A bunched up pair o' chaps

While peace proves elusive in the Middle East, Bush pointed with pride Wednesday to the great strides made in Northern Ireland, where an American helped broker an historic truce in 1998.

The Prez said: "Peacemaking can be hard work, like planting in hard soil. And as the Irish proverb tells us, you'll never plow a field by turning it over in your mind."

Excellent.

As to his refusal to give Congress records of his vice president's energy task force's consultations with Enron execs who contributed to the Bush campaign, he said, simply: "We're not going to give them to 'em."

The ol' Buckaroo is at his best when he pulls up his chaps and tells it exactly like it is, cowboy style.

Larry Berteau is editor of The Tidings.