And there was a large number of overprivileged idiots in Dublin who, nevertheless, fawned on this fool as he drove by in his limo !

from Rolling Stone
Feb 28, 2006 4:48 PM
Simpleton In Chief

Most Americans desperately (if secretly) wish to believe that George W. Bush possesses a deeper competence, one that doesn't evidence itself in his bungled speech or his Barney Fife demeanor.

But J. Paul Bremer's My Year in Iraq (recapped in the New York Review of Books) paints a picture of a president who truly is as callow as he seems:

In Bremer's account, the President was seriously interested in one issue: whether the leaders of the government that followed the CPA would publicly thank the United States. But there is no evidence that he cared about the specific questions that counted: Would the new prime minister have a broad base of support? Would he be able to bridge Iraq's ethnic divisions? What political values should he have? Instead, Bush had only one demand: "It's important to have someone who's willing to stand up and thank the American people for their sacrifice in liberating Iraq." According to Bremer, he came back to this single point three times in the same meeting. Similarly, Ghazi al-Yawar, an obscure Sunni Arab businessman, became Bush's candidate for president of Iraq's interim government because, as Bremer reports, Bush had "been favorably impressed with his open thanks to the Coalition."