Frogs. Firecrackers. Remember who we are dealing with.

[deminks]

A little reminder of the past might shed light on the present.

http://www.serendipity.li/wot/conover01.htm

If we believe the psychiatrists, a sign of a future serial killer is a child who delights in torturing and killing animals. George W., as a child, did exactly that. In a May 21, 2000, New York Times' puff piece about the values Bush gained growing up in Midland, Texas, Nicholas D. Kristof quoted Bush's childhood friend Terry Throckmorton: "'We were terrible to animals,' recalled Mr. Throckmorton, laughing. A dip behind the Bush home turned into a small lake after a good rain, and thousands of frogs would come out. 'Everybody would get BB guns and shoot them,' Mr. Throckmorton said. 'Or we'd put firecrackers in the frogs and throw them and blow them up.'"

On Sept. 12, 2000, Baltimore Sun reporter Miriam Miedzian wrote, "So when he was a kid, George W. enjoyed putting firecrackers into frogs, throwing them in the air, and then watching them blow up. Should this be cause for alarm? How relevant is a man's childhood behavior to what he is like as an adult? And in this case, to what he would be like as president of the United States."

(end snip)

Secret memos condoning extreme and combination torture methods, preemptive nuclear strikes, wars of choice, blatant disregard for the poor and minorities. This is what W and his rethuglicans have done to my country. I want my country back. I want the troops back. Now.

Here is a link to the original NYT article:

http://partners.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/052100wh-gop-bush-bio.html

[Lisa]

1. and don't forget the time he defended the abuse of students ...

When he was at Yale, the NY Times interviewed him, justifying the ordeal his fraternity subjected the new pledges to (branding them on their backs with a red-hot coat hanger). In theory this organization was supposed to be looking after new students and helping them get their bearings at college. It was cruelty like this that led many universities to ban fraternities. Interesting that the same types of justifications would show up, decades later, as he attempted to gloss over atrocities in Iraq.