A MAN OF NOTE, WHO NEEDS HIS NOTICE

Time Magazine has just announced its Man of the Year is to be Vladmir Putin; their choice, but they’re wrong. Ours (and this is our first such choice) is President Bush, for a myriad of reasons, and we’ll enumerate a few. First, as we’ve previously allowed in the age of list and top 100’s, he’s one of our 50 GREATEST PRESIDENTS, EVER. Next, he’s had virtually no mistakes in office other than the bad break of not getting sufficient notice for impending crisis. We’ll explain. First, go back to Hurricane Katrina; reliable weather maps indicated that oncoming storm, a mere 5 to 6 days before it hit, less than a week and, given Mr. Bush’s legendary exercise and nap schedules, he had even less than that to react to the crisis. Then there was the Summer of 2001, early August to be exact, when Condi Rice and others received an intelligence memo entitled “Osama Bin Laden Determined To Attack The United States”, and sure there was talk about aircraft and people who wanted to learn to steer them (aim them, actually) but not land them, but this type of stuff just takes a while to get through our president’s radar. True, an intelligence operative visited Mr. Bush at his ranch but isn’t it OK to brush off information if you’re clearing brush instead? Besides, in the Republican spirit of Lincoln, our president eloquently replied “OK, you’ve covered your ass, you can go now”, or is that what the brush is for? But this was barely five (5) weeks before 9/11, and again a man’s got to have time to react; which happens some time after one actually reads the reports.
Now we learn that this past summer our National Intelligence estimates were that Iran had stopped working on nuclear weapons since 2003, but Mr. Bush only got that report in the summer of 2007, and we’re not sure if his schedule allowed him to inquire or go over them when he spoke in October of being focused on Iran and “World War III”.
So here’s the word to would be terrorists, and storm systems as well; be considerate, plan ahead, considering Mr. Bush’s reaction cycle, especially when he’s working out on his stationary cycle, reports on any potential destruction planned against the U.S. before January 2009 when Mr. Bush leaves office is due no later than the 4th of July; make that July 3rd, the 4th is one of his off days.