It's 'Doctor Bush' to You

Get ready to prepare your own punch line: the Louisiana State University awarded President George W. Bush with an honorary doctorate in science this week. If that doesn't have you collapsing in paroxysms of laughter, then you must ' well, you're probably a Republican and you probably get all warm and gushy inside whenever you hear wonderful words like 'freedom' and 'democracy' and 'peace-loving' spill from GW's thin lips.

During an address at LSU to accept his doctorate--how many strings do you suppose puppeteer supreme Karl Rove had to pull to make that happen? ' our newly christened Rocket-Scientist-In-Chief pronounced the following:

'One of the ways to honor freedom is to serve freedom.'

Now, there are multiple definitions of the verb serve but I think the one that Dr. Bush's (oh, yes, we have to start calling him that now) speech writers were reaching up on the shelf for was 'to promote.'

Have we promoted freedom in the last two wars? Have we impressed upon the shell-shocked citizens of Afghanistan and Iraq that freedom is preferable to a fiefdom or a theocracy or even a dictatorship?

Well, sure they are free to speak out against their leaders now and . . . wait a minute; they don't exactly have leadership anymore, except that achieved at the barrel of an American-made firearm.

The torture rooms and rape rooms, Dr. Bush tells us, have been closed. Only to reopen under new management. We are told that the prison abuses in Iraq are the barbaric acts of an anomalous few, yet all the evidence indicates that the harsh interrogation practices are part of a scorched earth intelligence gathering policy that would put General Sherman to shame.

The United States invaded Iraq for two painfully simple reasons: to satisfy George W. Bush's blood lust for Saddam Hussein and, once the dictator was toppled, to install American contractors and corporations to rebuild what we destroyed.

If LSU searches carefully, they may just find a gentle, silver-maned, elderly member of Germany 's Nazi Party still hiding out in Brazil . I'll bet he would like an honorary doctorate too.