Did George Bush tell the world God asked him to invade Iraq?
In last night’s Q&A News Limited Foreign Editor and Journalist Greg Sheridan denied and denied over and over again that this was so.
(In June 2003)…the former Palestinian foreign minister Nabil Shaath says Mr Bush told him and Mahmoud Abbas, former prime minister and now Palestinian President: “I’m driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, ‘George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan.’ And I did, and then God would tell me, ‘George go and end the tyranny in Iraq,’ and I did.”
And “now again”, Mr Bush is quoted as telling the two, “I feel God’s words coming to me: ‘Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East.’ And by God, I’m gonna do it.”
Mr Abbas remembers how the US President told him he had a “moral and religious obligation” to act. The White House has refused to comment on what it terms a private conversation. But the BBC account is anything but implausible, given how throughout his presidency Mr Bush, a born-again Christian, has never hidden the importance of his faith.
Talk about fanatic fundamentalists!
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
http://www.endevil.com/Bushquotes.html
There’s some absolute crackers here. I particularly liked this one.
“I will never apologise for the United States of America – I don’t care what the facts are.”
George Walker Bush
Press conference introducing the Coalition of American Nationalities, 2nd August 1988
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I wonder what the turkey was trying do.
This one amused me
“I’ve coined new words, like, misunderstanding and Hispanically.” George W Bush, Radio-Television Correspondents Association dinner, Washington, D.C., March 29, 2001
and this one summed him up.
“Boy, they were big on crematoriums, weren’t they?” George W Bush, after touring the Auschwitz death camp, Chicago Sun-Times, 29th January 1992
Totlally clueless.
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He’s not that stupid algernon. He organised 911: a miraculous feat 😉
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Boom Boom
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George Walker Bush
The Last of The Desperados.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BwOXlGbW6Q
Desperado, why don’t you come to your senses
You’ve been out ridin’ fences,
for so long – now.
Ohh you’re a hard one.
I know that you’ve got your reasons.
These things that are pleasin’you
Can hurt you somehow.
Don’t you draw the queen of diamonds boy
She’ll beat you if she’s able.
You know the queen of hearts is always your best bet.
Now it seems to me, some fine things
Have been laid upon your table.
But you only want the ones
That you can’t get.
Desperado,
Ohhhh you aint getting no younger.
Your pain and your hunger,
They’re driving you home.
And freedom, ohh freedom.
Well that’s just some people talking.
Your prison is walking through this world all alone.
Don’t your feet get cold in the winter time?
The sky won’t snow and the sun will shine.
It’s hard to tell the night time from the day.
And you’re losing all your highs and lows
aint it funny how the feeling goes
away…
Desperado,
Why don’t you come to your senses?
come down from your fences, open the gate.
It may be rainin’, but there’s a rainbow above you.
You better let somebody love you.
(let somebody love you)
You better let somebody love you…ohhh..hooo
before it’s too..oooo.. late.
The desperado could also metaphorically be The United States.
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I love Karen Carpenters singing on The Carpenters version.
She had a fabulous voice, and it opens with that mouth organ/harmonica/John Wayneee sound.
She was able to put such angst and clarity in her version: at times seeming poetic in her delivery.
I just played it. Again what a voice. Must be up there with the greats.
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I saw Karen and brother Richard live in concert in London. Fantastic voice indeed. Pretty good on the drums too.
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Says it all really, and what a tragedy that beautiful voice didn’t get to mature.
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I think I may have killed her, with my lusty thoughts.
You were privileged Viv. I never saw them live.
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Just listened to that–after I commented above.
I can’t imagine her hitting a wrong note, singing off key, or flat. Amazing.
And both in good company.
PS Warrigal, I think you missed my Beckett come back. Never mind the moment’s gone.
Just trying to keep the score up on my side 😉
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Lord Ffunston,
Well done. I see you were actually able to get a thread going over at the Drumb. Very difficult indeed.
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Adored Karen Carpenter’s voice back in the day. Had an album of theirs, and I didn’t buy many. Totally shocked when she died, could not believe that someone with so may gifts would be so messed up.
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The trouble is Hung, that because of the impending truncation, hanging like the sword of Damocles, I end up rushing; making spelling mistakes and losing my way.
The red button gets pressed under pressure. The result often garbled.
It’s too bloody rushed. And If’n it doesn’t get up, I can’t be bothered to write again, leaving one’s opponent, or colleague hanging.
HANGING, did you like that ha hah.
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Perhaps those most ‘gifted’ (not a word I really like using as it implies a ‘giver’ and that such things as musical or other talents come without work or effort…) are also the most challenged…? Perhaps the one is a function of the other?
Jimi Hendrix had nothing at all but his guitar, even had to steal food to eat and was homeless for a large part of his adolescence… didn’t get really famous ’til he went to England ’cause they didn’t appreciate him at home in the US of A, where he was just another guitar player in someone else’s band… And then, when he was famous, he had little or no time for anything but his guitar, he toured constantly for seven years before it killed him… (but Jimi never did know how to slow down and take a break! I don’t suppose the thought even occurred to him!)
Perhaps there is a similar relationship between Karen Carpenter and her voice? Certainly music seemed to be at one and the same time, the only thing that was holding these people’s lives together (ie. Jimi and Karen) and yet ultimately what used to be referred to as the ‘star system’ (ie. the mangerial methodologies used in the creation of ‘pop’ or ‘rock’ stars…) was at least a large causative factor in both of their deaths… The real challenge would appear not ‘can you get famous’ so much as, ‘can you handle it IF you get famous’?
And on that note (he punned badly!) I’m off to practice my guitar…
Back later!
🙂
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Hung, you must be too busy with your French lessons to have conversations anywhere, on The Drum or at Pigs.
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Always find the time somewhere H
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Talent comes without work or effort. By definition. Of course it requires work and effort to develop it. I could work 12 hours a day for twenty years; I’d never have a voice any where as good as hers.
The trendy idea that being gifted goes together with being challenged, and vice versa, is psycho babble crap.
Now I understand that she had a mental illness; anorexia. Perhaps it was related to fame, that couldn’t have helped and might even have triggered it, but I know two young women from pretty ordinary backgrounds that got it in high school and after several years it’s still touch and go. One from my daughter’s school and one from my son’s.
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I too was impressed by Hungs French skills, A je ne sais quoi you might say.
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Translators are good fun
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Didn’t know it was ‘trendy psycho-babble crap’ Voice… it was just a thought that occurred to me… and the ‘wear and tear’ of performers’ lifestyles on their health is well-known; and the death-rate in the rock’n’roll industry (indeed, in the entertainment industry as a whole; but particularly in rock’n’roll…) is statistically high.
I agree with what you say about talent only up to a point; possibly a good definition of talent might be: ‘a felicitious combination, in the same individual, of the ability to learn and the motivation to keep on learning’.
Someone once said that if you do ANYTHING for 10,000 hours, you’ll get to be pretty good at it… but I’d agree that it takes a lot of motivation to make someone do something for that many hours; however, I’d argue that ‘motivation’ plays at least as big a part as ‘talent’ in the development of any form of virtuosity.
And then, of course, a third factor is the good fortune to be born into a family and social environment which is both intellectually and financially capable of nurturing one’s innate ‘talent’… so luck has something to do with it too: With the right level of motivation, plus the proper lessons and training, you might well be able to sing as well as Karen Carpenter after 10,000 hours of singing practise! Of course, without the motivation, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll ever do it, so any mere ‘experiment’ along these lines is doomed to failure.
Someone else said something about ‘genius’ (surely a close relative of ‘talent’) being “One percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration!”… mighta been Mark Twain…
😉
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Or it mighta been Thomas Edison…
🙂
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You know I’d never disagree with you asty, particularly not pedantically. 🙂
But I’m sorry to say that I wouldn’t consider that a good definition, simply because the word already has a meaning, and that isn’t it, and redefining words makes conversations rather bizarre. Lewis Carroll put this rather better in Through the Looking Glass, when Alice discusses semantics with Humpty Dumpty.
Anyway, goodnight and pleasant dreams.
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LOL!
I think you’d never disagree with me EXCEPT pedantically, Voice… and my definition (which admittedly was probably more aimed at being a ‘description’ than a ‘definition’) does at least come very close to number 2 of the following definitions taken from dictionary.com (since it speaks in terms of ‘capacities’ and with an implicit recognition that neither achievenment nor success at anything comes without work and this, of course, requires the motivation to do it!):
tal·ent [tal-uhnt] Show IPA
noun
1. a special natural ability or aptitude: a talent for drawing.
2. a capacity for achievement or success; ability: young men of talent.
3. a talented person: The cast includes many of the theater’s major talents.
4. a group of persons with special ability: an exhibition of watercolors by the local talent.
5. Movies and Television . professional actors collectively, especially star performers.
BTW, there’s really no law, not even among grammatical laws, that say people must necessarily accept any given dictionary’s definition of a given word; or that they can’t invent their own definitions; as long as these (definitions of terms) are given clearly at the start of the discussion there is no need to fear misunderstanding; it’s something anthropologists and sociologists do all the time because they often find ‘common sense’ meanings and definitions to be semantically corrupted, or for other reasons, less than adequate… An example of what I mean by ‘semantically corrupted’ can be found in Chapter 1 of Aesthetics of Violence, where, following Mikel Dufrenne, I point out that the word ‘aesthetic’ as applied in modern times to the various arts, is in fact based on ‘aiskesis’, rather than ‘aisthesis’ and is thus not being used in its original form… This is what made a 6,000 word opening chapter, which is essentially a definition of what I intend when I use the word, necessary.
The fact that I have used the term differently from its common-sense or ‘everyday’ meaning does not detract from either the utility of the revised concept, nor from the argument itself.
🙂
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Hey, redefine away asty. As you say, there’s no law against it. Then you can trivially prove that black is white, as is your wont. 🙂
—————————————————————
‘I don’t know what you mean by “glory”,’ Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. ‘Of course you don’t — till I tell you. I meant “there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!”‘
‘But “glory” doesn’t mean “a nice knock-down argument”,’ Alice objected.
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.’
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Goodness gracious, have you been rifling through Funston’s library, Voice?
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Unlike you, Voice, to use such a blatant straw-man as your Humpty Dumpty analogy: what HD did was to use words and then decide what they mean, quite arbitrarily; what I have done is the reverse: I defined a word (eg. ‘aesthetic’) before I used it… Also HD’s meanings were random and arbitraily dedided; what I’ve done with ‘aesthetic’ is simply to return to it something approximating its original meaning… But perhaps HD had a point in that there is a question of who’s to be master…
😉
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And in any case, it’s not even my argument really, but Mikel Dufrenne’s…
😉
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Ah .. no, Hudson … using words and then deciding what they mean is precisely what you did. I’m talking about your definition of talent here, to stick with the original topic.
BTW, I think that you must have redefined ‘decide’ to mean ‘tell someone else’. Either that, or you’re just off beam. Because you can surely have no idea of whether HD decided (using the dictionary definition) the meaning of ‘glory’ before or after he used it. Not that it’s of any relevance to point Lewis Carroll was making anyway.
BTW, I notice that in an earlier comment you redefined ‘very close’ to mean ‘nowhere near’. Goodness only knows what definition you’ve used for ‘straw-man’.
Have a good day.
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And good day to you too, VL. Alice is always good for a quote about cogent argument. Winnie-the-Pooh is another source of wisdom. I realised the other day that Peter Pan has some good moments of insight too. 🙂
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I always remember Nobby Turner, telling me that his mate was fishing off the beach at Coulomb and nearly landed a 25kilo flattie.
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As they tell us all the time, many Americans speak with God. Bush would be appalled that Sheridan did not believe he too was in regular contact with God. Who is this God?
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Viv, but that lovely lady next to him did not let him off the hook lightly.
I like this kind of Q&A, I’m sick of those bullying Liberals, always shouting the loudest trying to drown the voices of reason. At least Sheridan did not get like that, I’m happy with small mercies when it comes to the Libs
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Yes, it was different! When Q & Q began it was promoted as you ask the questions i.e. ask the pollies the questions. I like the variety – all kinds of fascinating people. But for me they can ‘can’ the opinion writers (I already know what they are going to say).
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It’s very convenient having a hotline to God.
Actually, Hung’s close friends with Gordon O’Donnell, and he’s never felt compelled to invade another country!
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Well spotted Big M. Gordon gets a much higher strike rate then Hung, so Hung has been retired from “over there”
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