‘U.S. solutions should not be imposed on African leaders,’
By on Feb 28th, 2008 at 7:11 pm
‘U.S. solutions should not be imposed on African leaders,’
Bush told Bob Geldof in a new Time interview. Geldof noted that if the President happened to apply this thought to Iraq, it “would have profound implications on the man’s understanding of how the world functions.” During the interview, Bush also insisted, “I think history will prove me right,” regarding his efforts to rid the world of “tyranny.”
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Is that Bob Geldolf from Pink Floyd’s “The Wall”?
February 28th, 2008 at 7:16 pmI think he meant certain parts of Africa… if there are diamonds, oil, etc. then plutocracy/dictatroship combo would work.
We needed a U.S. solution to Iraq because they were brutal like Saudi Arabia, but not generous with the oil.
February 28th, 2008 at 7:17 pmI used to really like Bob Geldoff when he was in the Boomtown Rats.
February 28th, 2008 at 7:22 pmUp all night…ooo…zaza!
If you want to rid the world of tyranny then pack your bags and leave the White House, Washington, D.C., Crawford, TX, the USA, set yourself afloat on a dingy with a slow leak in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
February 28th, 2008 at 7:22 pmBush met with Geldof? What is Bob thinking? I hope he can use it to help, but imagine having to meet with someone who has done all he can to destroy Geldof’s work and to create a permanent war?
February 28th, 2008 at 7:23 pmYou’re a better man than I, Gunga Din.
Uh huh, Bush knows history, but not what the price of gasoline is.
And Daddy didn’t know what a barcode scanner thingie was. Elitist jerks.
February 28th, 2008 at 7:23 pmDidja know I got my own presidential M&M’s?” Wow. “Yeah, cool, right? They’ll love ‘em.” They did. They’re in a presidential box with his autograph on them. The Queen doesn’t have that. Or the Pope.
He really is special isn’t he.
February 28th, 2008 at 7:24 pm#6. When Bush Sr. had his little scanner epiphany it INFURIATED me. How out of touch is this rich jerk who’s our president if he doesn’t even know what a bar scanner is? And he’s my president??
The world won’t begin to end tyranny until Mr. Codpiece leaves office. He’s got to go fill his coffers, dontchano. God how I hope that college kids and other places who intend to pay him RALLY RALLY RALLY against his filling his coffers with their money.
Disgusting.
February 28th, 2008 at 7:26 pmIt is all about the selfishness of one man and how he believes the world owes him something.
Pathetic little man.
-GSD
February 28th, 2008 at 7:28 pmDon’t worry, they can always use Halliburton cost-plus to fly people into Abu Dhabi and hear W unfiltered, and all have a good laugh. No protests allowed there!
February 28th, 2008 at 7:31 pmwhoa… bob geldoff interviewing duby bush… wow…
“Geldof in Africa — ” ‘The international best seller.’ You write that bit yourself?”
i wonder how he kept from popping the chimp…
that is a great read though… back to it…
February 28th, 2008 at 7:33 pmRid the world of “tyranny.â€
Well he could start by resigning, that would help.
“it would be easier if it were a dictatorship, as long as I’m the dictator.”
Buck Fush
February 28th, 2008 at 7:34 pmI read this and remember Nietzsche warning us that those who would fight monsters beware of becoming monsters themselves, but I look at Bush and only see Moe poking Curly in the eyes and pulling out Larry’s hair……
February 28th, 2008 at 7:39 pmBush has to know what he’s saying when he says crap like that. No one can be that unaware of the irony that comes out his mouth. It must taste like he’s licking a battery when he does that.
February 28th, 2008 at 7:42 pmI think he means US solutions should not be imposed on African leaders at this time.
February 28th, 2008 at 7:47 pmROTFL! Republican Code, for NOT ENOUGH OIL TO STEAL!!!
Comment by republicans hate facts — February 28, 2008 @ 7:44 pm
Not unless you count Nigeria, Angola, The Republic of Congo, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, or the Ivory Coast.
February 28th, 2008 at 7:53 pmBush has to know what he’s saying when he says crap like that. No one can be that unaware of the irony that comes out his mouth.
Comment by Bobwurst — February 28, 2008 @ 7:42 pm
I disagree. I think he is so lacking in empathy, that when he speaks, all he considers is how it sounds to himself. Maybe his “base”. But I think his entire political career has been an extension of the lessons he learned as a child, what to say in order to get the cookie from Babs. I don’t think he’s capable of any further reflection than that.
That’s why he’s so puzzled by people hating him.
February 28th, 2008 at 7:54 pmThat’s why he’s so puzzled by people hating him.
Comment by ralph the wonder llama — February 28, 2008 @ 7:54 pm
We just don’t have enough perspective. In 50 years there will be 500 ft statues of the Dubya all across the country. Just wait.
February 28th, 2008 at 7:57 pmThe world has not been rid of tyrannies for five thousand years.
February 28th, 2008 at 8:01 pmComment by gummitch — February 28, 2008 @ 7:57 pm
We just don’t have enough perspective. In 50 years there will be 500 ft statues of the Dubya all across the country. Just wait.
Just like all those statues of Nixon cluttering up the national parks.
February 28th, 2008 at 8:06 pm“I think history will prove me rightâ€
I agree with this. No need to wait for history’s judgment. He is about as far right as you can get.
February 28th, 2008 at 8:08 pmBush — like all good Christians — believes in the Rule of Men, not in the Rule of Law. It is entirely within that reasoning that “solutions” are meted out in any which way he thinks appropriate regardless of what any law says.
This should not suprise anyone.
February 28th, 2008 at 8:13 pm“I think history will prove me rightâ€
I agree with this. No need to wait for history’s judgment. He is about as far right as you can get.
Comment by Merlin — February 28, 2008 @ 8:08 pm
Oh, no no no no no no.
Bush is a liberal. Didn’t you hear?
But I guess you’re correct. In 50 years, when everybody loves him, then the conservatives will claim him again. He’ll be “Right” again.
February 28th, 2008 at 8:16 pmHah?!? US solutions should not be imposed on African nations, but they should be on Middle Eastern nations? That’s a hypocritical and self-rationalizing excuse if I’ve ever heard one. Whether he wants to admit it or not (and we all know that he doesn’t), essentially what he’s saying is that the US shouldn’t be expected to care whether people in Africa are able to live in freedom or not — and many of them are not. Why do people in the Middle East apparently matter more than people in Africa? Well, one thing is certain — if your country has a high concentration of a natural resource upon which the United States is heavily dependent, that does have a way of making the American government more interested in you…
I’ve said it before and will say it again — the United States is not the noble, stalwart defender of democracy that we claim to be. The truth is that we defend democracy when it suits us to do so, but we’re also quite capable of turning a blind eye to tyranny (such as our alliance with Islam Karimov, the brutal and corrupt leader of Uzbekistan) or even subverting democracy outright (such as in the case of Operation Ajax) when it suits us to do so. In short, we really only believe in freedom for other people when it’s convenient for us to do so. Does that not makes us at best somewhat fair-weather friends?
I absolutely loved the first paragraph of the article:
I gave the President my book. He raised an eyebrow. “Who wrote this for ya, Geldof?” he said without looking up from the cover. Very dry. “Who will you get to read it for you, Mr. President?” I replied. No response.
Perfect comeback from Geldof to what was a remarkably rude and hostile remark.
February 28th, 2008 at 8:23 pmComment by ralph the wonder llama — February 28, 2008 @ 8:16 pm
Bush is a liberal. Didn’t you hear?
A conservatively liberal conservative, eh? With liberally conservative views. (Sounds like something Rumsfoot would say now that I think about it.)
February 28th, 2008 at 8:38 pmregarding his efforts to rid the world of “tyranny.” – ok genius,you got rid of one – what about the rest of them? – he “thinks” history will prove him right? – such an arrogant statement coming from a moron who has gotten just about everything wrong.
February 28th, 2008 at 8:42 pmi agree, bluestocking… and the next line – DID HE REALLY SAY THAT?!
the whole article was great… geldof tells a good story…
i think this last sentence is pretty cool:
America was flying through the warm African night and I was hitching a ride on her.
February 28th, 2008 at 9:04 pmHere is what Geldof also wrote about Bush in the article if you read it in its entirety:
“his administration has saved millions of lives….And I have always wondered why it was never told properly to the American people, who were paying for it.
It was, for example, Bush who initiated the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) with cross-party support led by Senators John Kerry and Bill Frist.
In 2003, only 50,000 Africans were on HIV antiretroviral drugs — and they had to pay for their own medicine. Today, 1.3 million are receiving medicines free of charge.
The U.S. also contributes one-third of the money for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria — which treats another 1.5 million. It contributes 50% of all food aid (though some critics find the mechanism of contribution controversial). On a seven-day trip through Africa, Bush announced a fantastic new $350 million fund for other neglected tropical diseases that can be easily eradicated; a program to distribute 5.2 million mosquito nets to Tanzanian kids; and contracts worth around $1.2 billion in Tanzania and Ghana from the Millennium Challenge Account, another initiative of the Bush Administration.”
February 28th, 2008 at 10:03 pmI agree, bluestocking… and the next line – DID HE REALLY SAY THAT?!
The whole article was great… geldof tells a good story… — Katy
*************************************************
It’s about time that Bush finally came face-to-face with someone who has both the wit and the cojones to sling some of his typically snide, condescending, and mean-spirited “humor” right back at him — and it certainly seems to have nonplussed Bush to at least some degree, especially after having spent most of the last seven-odd years restricting interviews and public appearances to audiences who are unlikely to be confrontational. Perhaps Geldof’s experience in the rock music world (which like politics has its share of arrogant people with overblown egos) prepared him well for this, because he seems to know that this is often the only really effective approach for dealing with someone who resorts to juvenile power games like these in their attempts to throw their weight around — you give them a taste of their own medicine.
Interesting, isn’t it, how so many people like this can’t take themselves what they find so easy to dish out to other people? It’s rather sad, really…since it suggests that somewhere underneath all the bluster is a deeply insecure person with a very fragile ego and more issues than Readers Digest…
February 28th, 2008 at 10:24 pmI see. The brand of tyranny Bush selectively delivers is different from other kinds of tyranny. His is OK when it suits his purposes.
February 28th, 2008 at 10:25 pmAnd then this:
“…Bush adds, “One thing I will say: Human suffering should preempt commercial interest.”
It’s a wonderful sentence, and it comes in the wake of a visit to Rwanda’s Genocide Memorial Center. The museum is built on the site of a still-being-filled open grave. There are 250,000 individuals in that hole, tumbled together in an undifferentiated tangle of humanity. The President and First Lady were visibly shocked by the museum. “Evil does exist,” Bush says in reaction to the 1994 massacres. “And in such a brutal form.” He is not speechifying; he is horror-struck by the reality of ethnic madness. “Babies had their skulls smashed,” he says, his mind violently regurgitating an image he has just witnessed. The sentence peters out, emptied of words to describe the ultimately incomprehensible.”
I wonder how many Iraqi children that he killed did Bush the belligerent vizualize in that memorial? He has neither the capacity, nor spectrum of emotions to fathom the true toll he has waged in Iraq.
He will be remembered as a war criminal.
February 29th, 2008 at 12:03 amDoes he visualize the white phosphorous burnt babies he ordered?
Does he visualize the long term effect of the depleted uranium rounds now littered throughout the nuclear warzone known a Iraq?
Does he visualize the indescriminate use of force blowing up women and chiildren in their mindless tirade to eradicate extremism?
What does get visualized in that empty container of hate and evil? I can only imagine “The Horror” that is Bush’s conscience.
He is SOOOO desperate to believe that history will treat him well.
Yeah good luck with that.
Laura is fu(king useless as a human, is she not?
February 29th, 2008 at 12:09 am> Today, 1.3 million are receiving medicines free of charge.
Ah Exlexlia…I do think you mean well but are more than a bit naive. I hardly think using american taxpayer money to buy expired or potentially dangerous drugs from big pharma at inflated proces qualifies as “charity”….oh excuse me, some may not expired, some may be experimental and the poor africans may make great guinea pigs…dont suppose you happened to see the movie “constant gardener”, did you?
i recommend that one, its pretty good, casts western “charity” in a very different light..
Even in the off chance it there is some aspect of actual, true charity, that doesnt involve us giving taxpayer money away to business allies or using people as guine pigs, since when did we stop holding people accountable for thier bad acts simply because they engaged in a little charity on the side? most mobsters gave to charity, would you use this to defend them?
February 29th, 2008 at 1:13 ama plot summary of The Constant Gardner, for anyone who might be interested…..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constant_Gardener
John le Carre writes in the book’s afterword, “By comparison with the reality, my story [is] as tame as a holiday postcard.”
wake up Exley, there are no good guys in this world, and if they exist, they certainly arent running governments
February 29th, 2008 at 1:29 amIsn’t this “history will prove” line of bull just a nice way of saying “I really don’t care what any other living person thinks, or if every other person on Earth disagrees with me”.
little pr*ck thinks he’s a goddamned Pharoah or some sh*t
February 29th, 2008 at 2:00 amHow about we use the Iraqi “solution” on US leaders?
I think it would be interesting to see if Pres. Bush’s head popped off when he was being hung.
February 29th, 2008 at 6:55 amAnd in related news:
Defense Secretary Gates chastised the Turkish government for its military attacks on the PKK in Northern Iraq, informing them that:
“Military action alone will not end this terrorist threat. Simultaneous efforts should be made with nonmilitary initiatives,” Mr Gates said.
I believe when the Turks stop laughing their asses off, they will be available for comment.
February 29th, 2008 at 8:56 amThe U.S. also contributes one-third of the money for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria — which treats another 1.5 million. It contributes 50% of all food aid (though some critics find the mechanism of contribution controversial). On a seven-day trip through Africa, Bush announced a fantastic new $350 million fund for other neglected tropical diseases that can be easily eradicated; a program to distribute 5.2 million mosquito nets to Tanzanian kids; and contracts worth around $1.2 billion in Tanzania and Ghana from the Millennium Challenge Account, another initiative of the Bush Administration.â€
Comment by Exley — February 28, 2008 @ 10:03 pm
Whioop-de-friggin-do!
Dollar amounts contributed to foreign assistance programs don’t impress me. Sorry. All that matters is what they translate to on the ground. The MCA is a bullshit throw-money-at-the-problem attempt to further privatize foreign assistance and reinventing the Breton Woods model, only with less oversight.
February 29th, 2008 at 9:36 amComment by toasterhead — February 29, 2008 @ 9:36 am
That having been sad, I do appreciate that this administration has increased funding for HIV and tropical diseases, and its futile attempts to overhaul the moronically outdated food aid system. But I also wory about the “free’ donations of antiretrovirals in an environment where WTO patent regimes prevent companies African nations from manufacturing these drugs on their own for far less expense. What looks like generosity smacks strongly of dependency-theory colonialism.
February 29th, 2008 at 9:39 amOn a seven-day trip through Africa, Bush announced a fantastic new $350 million fund for other neglected tropical diseases that can be easily eradicated; a program to distribute 5.2 million mosquito nets to Tanzanian kids; and contracts worth around $1.2 billion in Tanzania and Ghana from the Millennium Challenge Account, another initiative of the Bush Administration.â€
Comment by Exley — February 28, 2008 @ 10:03 pm
Too little, too late, from a loser who is obviously trying his best to redeem his horrible, murderous reign of state terror for the past 8 years.
February 29th, 2008 at 9:53 amI read Geldof’s article on Bush last night. Good read…Geldof paints a very sympathetic pucture of the President.
He says that Bush has done more to help Africa than any previous American President…In fact, Geldof goes so far as to say that the Bush Admistration has done more to help Africa than any country or charitable organization ever.
Very good article.
February 29th, 2008 at 11:14 amJust read the other comments in this thread.
You people are freaking nutz….a buch of blathering, hateful loooons.
I’m amazed that most of you haven’t thrown youselves under a bus after 7 1/2 long years of unhinged BDS.
What a truly deranged lot you folks are.
Very sad.
February 29th, 2008 at 11:42 amWHITE HOUSE DENIES PLAN TO DOMINATE WORLD–’JUST THE GOOD PARTS,’ BUSH INSISTS
WASHINGTON, DC
Senior White House officials echoed the president today in denying that the United States is pursuing a master plan to dominate the entire world.
“That is patently false, enormously impractical, and totally absurd,” said a top staffer on one of the president’s foreign policy advisory boards. “We are absolutely, 100% not guilty on that one.”
President Bush responded more thoroughly to the charge: “Who wants to control the whole world?” he asked with characteristic emphasis on his last word. “What would be the point? You must think we’re as dumb as we think you think we look.
“For example, you don’t see us crossing the equation and running around the Southern Atmosphere trying to take over everything down there, now do you? South America, South Africa, Antacid, Ann Arbor, Austria–we couldn’t care less about all that stuff.”
http://newsprism.wordpress.com/news-satire/
February 29th, 2008 at 12:10 pm#44 – “I’m amazed that most of you haven’t thrown youselves under a bus after 7 1/2 long years of unhinged BDS.” Comment by Charles James Napier — February 29, 2008 @ 11:42 am
We’ll leave those kind of actions to the right-whiners, as they did in 2006.
February 29th, 2008 at 12:18 pmnetlog
almanya chat
January 21st, 2009 at 4:37 pm