"Lunacy? This. Is. SPARTA!"

Now that is funny.

There's crazy and there's crazy. I think that people who are psychopaths make the best fascist leaders because the corporatists behind the fascist leader want someone who can lie without remorse, who can steal on their behalf without remorse, etc.

I think that Bush is disturbed. If we were related and his wasn't the President I'd try to get him to a psychiatrist. Someone over at Huffington caught up with Bush's disturbing history of killing animals and torturing Yale pledges. But if you are disturbed and kill, say, your neighbor's dog or child or wife, then you go to jail. But if you publicly lie about the reason to invade a country and kill (or create the situation which kills) hundreds of thousands of people so that oil companies can control the oil in the ground and so the the oil companies can charge five times what they used to charge for the stuff, well then you are a STATESMAN.

Are Bush and Cheney crazy? Not as to place and time.

Can you guys please stop making fun of one of my favorite movies? It's getting old already.

On a heavier note, crazy is a relative concept. There's only two types of rulers: those who realize that they'd be able to reap handsomely by making their people happy (just NOT TOO HAPPY), and those who believe they'd reap more by making their people fearful. By rulers' standards, the latter are the crazy.

But Bush may have a point here. Iran is not a threat to the US, but $100 a barrel of oil is.

right, nothing would threaten Dear Leader and Shooter's primary backers in the oil bidness more than $100 oil.

some little people may suffer, but that's not their base, and they couldn't give a good goddamn.

How exactly is Iran a threat to Bush/Cheney running the Middle East for their own benefit? What is the goal that Bush/Cheney have in the Middle East that is being threatened by Iran?

If it is oil, then what exactly about the oil and what exactly about Iran's behavior is threatening that goal? If it is something about oil, why didn't Iran, in its secret 2003 diplomatic offer, mention oil? Iran was trying to avoid the same fate as Iraq, but even they didn't seem to believe U.S. enmity was being caused by oil. What gives?

ran: The little people may not be the financial base, but they're the ones that own the guns and do the fighting and the dying and the driving and the consuming and all of that is propping up the US economy and hegemony. The rich guys in oil do none of that.

Like BobInPacifica, I tend to think GWB is, literally speaking, mentally ill. If anyone remembers the anecdote of Melinda Hennenberger's (where upon being corrected by Karen Hughes after addressing her by the wrong name, insisted with "apparent conviction" that "I wasn't calling her Alison, I was calling YOU Alison."), it's eerily reminiscent of the kind of logical disconnect shown by people with physical brain damage (e.g. severed hemisphere patients) -- the conscious mind trying to justify after the fact the results of its own malfunctioning parts.

But, in the context Jon writes in, I have to agree: "they", as a group, are not crazy -- just lying. The real question isn't why they say these things, but why do they WORK even when the lie is so plain. I wonder sometimes if there isn't a kind of Second Law of Verbaldynamics which requires the intellectual entropy ("badness") of circulating beliefs to always increase, hence ensuring it takes more work to get even a small number of people to accept a proposition beneficial to the whole than to get a vast number of people to accept something that will ultimately ruin them.

Great post. Even funnier is how so many people call Bush stupid -- as if (if true) it were relevant -- they'd never call Cheney stupid and know full well that he's (to say the least) on the same page...

The deeper question is if people engaging in such falsehoods are themselves are being stupid ... or crazy ... or enablers... or some twisted combination ...

Re: prostitution: "Amnesty International also reported during the summer that its representatives were told on a visit to Syria that young Iraqi girls were being pressured by families to engage in prostitution. The group said it was worried that Iraqi child trafficking could grow." http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071024/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_refugees_prostitution

Torturing Yale pledges isn't all bad.

en ming: so what? the more desperate the economy is due to rising fuel costs the less option grunts or potential grunts will have so recruiting and retention will be that much easier. hell, they may even offer gas subsidies or extra gas rations to the troops as another enticement to keep these people in the fold. it's win win for the war criminals running this country.

Being criminals, they are "crazy" but not in the current psychiatric scheme of things. If we were Buddhists we would isolate them and expel them from the community because they are harming it. THey are not redeemable, since they have traveled down this road too long...

Benajmin's post raises an excellent point: before anyone can claim that Iran is a threat to US/Israeli control of the Mideast, they should have to define what they mean by "control". Do they mean control of oil? If so, how does the US "control" Mideast oil now, and how would Iran threaten that?

As for the crazy vs. not-crazy debate, I'd say "irrational" is a better term than "crazy". Specifically, leaders like Bush have an irrational reaction to other leaders who refuse to behave submissively.

Dogs often react this way. Dogs, as social animals, have rituals of submission that pack members use to show the alpha male that he's not being challenged, and if one dog in the pack refuses to engage in the submission ritual, the alpha male sees the non-submissive dog as a "threat" and attacks.

Honestly, it's the only way I can find to explain the U.S. (and not just Bush) government's irrational response to Castro, or Allende, or Chavez.

I agree!! bush/cheney should definitly be treated as criminals who deserved to be punished!!!

SteveB - that seems a perfectly adequate theory of behavior. I don't think that Bush or Cheney's behavior need be rational in order to be sane.

ran: I am an optimist unless the many are really that complacent as opposed to the lunacy of the few. But remember, most people aren't saints, but most people LIKE LIVING. That's why you can't fool all the people all the time. Sooner or later even the worst of us are going to realize that they need someone to leech off. And you can't leech off people if they keep dying. Recently revealed history reports that even Nixon's Generals figured out a way to refuse to launch the missiles if he ordered them. You think there aren't any rats preparing to desert or even detonate Bush's sinking ship right now?

You mean some high-ranking officers would refuse to carry out orders for firing missiles or dropping bombs on Iran? What evidence prompts you to assume that?

Nothing crazy about IMPEACHMENT. 1-202-225-0100

I am about a third of the way through THE SHOCK DOCTRINE by Naomi Klein. She cleverly lays out why they are doing what they are doing - and how it has been going on for decades.

I HIGHLY recommend this book.

Yeah, there is a favorite sensible liberal line on Iraq that goes something like, "this is an insane war fought for no good reason."

Most world leaders most certainly ARE crazy. The misunderstanding is the incorrect belief that madness has no method. The BTK killer was most certainly insane. He also knew exactly what he was doing.

Obviously Iran isn't a threat to Israel,

Obvious to whom.