Bird Flu:
Terrorism, Act III

Nov 7, 2005

Bird flu might as well have fallen from the heavens as far as George Bush is concerned.

It comes just when he is facing the most serious problems of his presidency. His approval rating has dropped to an all-time low. A CBS poll showed only 35% of those polled approve of the job he is doing. People are disgusted with his administration’s handling of Hurricane Katrina, upset by the war in Iraq, and outraged by his attempt to dismantle Social Security.

He’s running into problems with the people who really run the State Department, the leaders of the military, the CIA, FEMA, and the two political parties. Two of his closest advisors have been implicated in the leak of a CIA operative’s identity, with one of them already indicted. The leader of the Republican Party in the House, Tom DeLay, has already been indicted, and the party’s leader in the Senate, Bill Frist, could be indicted.

Bush is even in trouble with his own political base, because he can’t get an evangelical anti-abortion nominee for the Supreme Court approved.

Under the circumstances, Bush reached into his same old grab bag of tricks: terrorize the population, this time with the threat of a deadly bird flu pandemic. Such scare tactics worked twice before, with the threat of terrorism after 9/11 and then Saddam Hussein’s supposed “Weapons of Mass Destruction.”

Bush pretends he is the great defender against another threat, while telling us we can’t be fully prepared until 2010–when he’ll be gone.

Could it be sheer coincidence that Disney’s latest movie is “Chicken Little?”