I finally found a video clip of that that news feed that I referred to yesterday, where the BBC showed video of Bush having his hair blow-dried immediately before making his unilateral declaration of war. More background at We begin combing in five minutes.
The Smoking Gun has a 10 second excerpt from the clip.
On one level, it is unfair to Bush. Every politician has gotten made up and coiffed before going on TV, ever since Richard Nixon became convinced he lost the 1960 presidential election to John F. Kennedy because of his 5 o'clock shadow during the presidential debates (this was before Don Johnson and grunge). On the other hand, the juxtaposition between looking good for TV and unilaterally declaring a war that will cost umpteen lives and dollars is startling at best, criminal at worst. Bush did say the equivalent of "the bombing begins in 5 minutes," but unlike Reagan, he wasn't joking.
Enjoy.
Posted by Geodog at March 22, 2003 02:44 AM | TrackBackMy apologies, but my web hoster has turned off commenting, due to a flood of obscene spam bringing the server to its knees. I hope to have this weblog transitioned over to Wordpress in the near future, so that I can have commenting up and working again. Until then, please feel free to send me your comments via my email contact form.. Please ignore everything below this comment.