Paul Burgess, former Bush speechwriter, has been getting some attention for this recent friendly op-ed:
Friends, neighbors, and countrymen of the Left: I hate your lying guts
I never used to feel hatred for people such as Cindy Sheehan, Harry Belafonte, Danny Glover, or other pop-culture notables who, for example, sing the praises of Central American dictators while calling President Bush the greatest terrorist on earth. I do now…
I have also grown to hate certain people of genuine accomplishment like Ted Turner, who, by his own contention, cannot make up his mind which side of the terror war he is on…
I now hate Howard Dean, the elected leader of the Democrats, who, by repeatedly stating his conviction that we won’t win in Iraq, bets his party’s future on our nation’s defeat.
I hate the Democrats who, in support of this strategy, spout lie after lie.
This is obviously notable for the view it gives us into the, uh, emotional state of the Bush administration.
But there’s something else worth pointing out too. Let’s take a look at one paragraph again:
I never used to feel hatred for people such as Cindy Sheehan, Harry Belafonte, Danny Glover, or other pop-culture notables who, for example, sing the praises of Central American dictators while calling President Bush the greatest terrorist on earth.
The “dictator” Burgess has in mind is obviously Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. (An article about Sheehan’s January visit to Venezuela is here.)
And what’s funny about this, and makes me think we have the worst-run empire in history, is that:
1. According to this op-ed, Paul Burgess was “director of foreign-policy speechwriting at the White House.”
2. VENEZUELA IS IN SOUTH AMERICA