Stoning Bush

If ye have tears for George W. Bush, prepare to shed them now. Oliver Stone is going to make a movie about him.

On the other hand, that may be the Decider's best chance for an upgrade in history. In some quarters, such as this one, there is great sympathy for the subjects of Stone's blow-torch reinventions of the truth, as in his lie-filled "JFK" about the assassination.

"It's a behind-the-scenes approach, similar to 'Nixon,' to give a sense of what it's like to be in his skin," Stone tells Variety. "But if 'Nixon' was a symphony, this is more like a chamber piece, and not as dark in tone. People have turned my political ideas into a cliche, but that is superficial. I'm a dramatist who is interested in people, and I have empathy for Bush as a human being..."

Stone's empathy is illustrated by his description of the theme of his projected "fair, true portrait of the man: How did Bush go from an alcoholic bum to the most powerful figure in the world?"

This new project will replace Stone's attempt to immortalize Iran's Ahmadinejad, who turned him down last year because he is "part of the great Satan."

Stone began his career as a moviemaker in the 1970s after returning from Vietnam, in his words, "very mixed up, very alienated, very paranoid." If his goal has been to make us all that way, he has been doing very well. Whatever he does to George W. Bush won't change that.

Casting Call for GOP "Christmas Carol"

Looking for redemption in Bush's final year, the White House Art Players might plan a new production of the Dickens classic starring the President as a kinder, gentler Scrooge.

A Nixon impersonator would be perfect for Jacob Marley, dragging the chains of Watergate, to open W's eyes with visits from the ghost of Christmas past (a Reagan lookalike as Fezziwig) Christmas present (Mitch McConnell or any endangered Senate colleague) and Mike Huckabee as Christmas future in the Republican graveyard.

On Christmas morning, a new Bush would awaken with SCHIP insurance for Tiny Tim, a veto-proof new signing pen to show Nancy Pelosi and a symbolic fruitcake to send to his new best friend, Ahmadinejad.

They could ask Dick Cheney to understudy the lead, if he promises not to shoot any of the other actors.

Nuclear Hiccup

Oops. "A new assessment by American intelligence agencies concludes that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains on hold," the New York Times reports today.

Not that there is anything wrong with that. Bush's national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, issued a statement spinning the new National Intelligence Estimate as good news rather than a sign that the same intelligence mistakes that got us into Iraq are still being made today.

“It confirms that we were right to be worried about Iran seeking to develop nuclear weapons,” Hadley said. “It tells us that we have made progress in trying to ensure that this does not happen. But the intelligence also tells us that the risk of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon remains a very serious problem.”

Shameless but par for the Bush-Cheney course to toss off their months-long drumbeat for invading or bombing Iran as a slight glitch that proves we scared Ahmadinejad in stopping a nuclear weapons buildup that never was.

It was only five weeks ago that a Zogby poll showed that more than half of voters would support a military strike to prevent Iran from producing a nuclear weapon and believed it was likely the US would do so before next year's election.

But all that is old news. Looking to the future, Hadley now says, “The estimate offers grounds for hope that the problem can be solved diplomatically--without the use of force--as the administration has been trying to do.” Did Barack Obama sneak into the White House and take over without anybody noticing?

Someone please get the smelling salts for Joe Lieberman and Norman Podhoretz, and wipe the foam off the snouts of Cheney's Neo-Con attack dogs.

Ahmadinejad's Snow Job

The little man in the over-sized leisure suit has Presidential candidates all atwitter with his planned visit to Ground Zero while he’s in New York to attend UN meetings.

Not since Saddam Hussein conned us with his coyness about WMD and fired off rifles for the TV cameras on a balcony in Baghdad has a loony Mideast head of state provoked so much Sturm and Drang over so little.

By eliciting outrage, the Iranian President succeeds in getting the international attention he so clearly craves. when disdain and disregard would be so much more appropriate and effective in dealing with a punk whose aim is to be taken seriously on the international stage.

If Iran is abetting the murder of our troops in Iraq, by all means the State Department and military should deal with it, but pumping up this pathetic tinpot who has serious problems in his own country is a bad idea.

Look at what it cost to get rid of Saddam Hussein.

Ahmadinejad, Oliver Stone Trade Barbs

The movie-maker who never met an anti-American he didn’t want to film has met his match. The president of Iran has refused to cooperate with Oliver Stone, his flack saying that Stone may be “considered part of the opposition in the U.S., but he is still part of the Great Satan."

A friend of Fidel Castro who is unaccustomed to being turned down by tinpot dictators, Stone responded with the unkindest cut of all, comparing Ahmadinejad to George Bush.

"I wish the Iranian people well,” Stone said, “and only hope their experience with an inept, rigid ideologue president goes better than ours."

Then again, Ahmadinejad may be a film buff who has seen JFK, Nixon and other paranoid biopics of Stone’s. On his blog a while back, the President praised “Iranian filmmakers who refused to participate in a Denmark film festival in protest at the blasphemous caricature published by a Danish newspaper against Prophet Mohammad (Peace Be Upon Him) last year.”

The man is a tough critic.

Cheney's Busted Flush on Iran

If the Vice President were a publicly traded stock, the Exchange would have start thinking about de-listing him. Even the truest-believing Neo-Cons will soon have to stop buying.

The latest bad news to hit the ticker is that the Iran card is getting harder to play. With rioting, stone-throwing and mass protests over the rise in gasoline prices, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is looking less and less like Saddam Hussein every day.

Cheney won’t be in a position to make any more rousing speeches on the decks of aircraft carriers any time soon, even if he can get out from under all rioting against him in Washington about the price of secrecy.

Political Punks

A useful word that has fallen into disfavor, “punk” should be revived for the current political discourse over Iran.

The loose-lipped Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad certainly fits the primary definition of an inexperienced, combative young thug.

Over here, we have his aging American counterpart Sen. Joe Lieberman, who has never seen a Middle East confrontation he didn’t like, today spouting off on CBS’ Face the Nation that “we've got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq."

Although prudently ruling out a “massive ground invasion” now, Jolting Joe insists, "We cannot let them get away with it. If we do, they'll take that as a sign of weakness on our part and we will pay for it in Iraq and throughout the region and ultimately right here at home."

Secondary definitions of punk include “dry, decayed wood” and “poor, of worthless quality.” It’s a very useful word.