Bush to USA: "You can't handle the truth!"

Ain't it just like the movies? You know, Jack Nicholson squaring up to Tom Cruise in "A Few Good Men" and telling him: "You want the truth? Well, you can't handle the truth!"

Bush's administration has suddenly decided it doesn't want US network television to broadcast pictures of the bodies littering New Orleans "out of respect for the dead." The subtext here must be "out of respect for my popularity", because TV has been showing these pictures for nigh on ten days now and maybe he's beginning to feel some heat.

The US media is up in arms about this, as they notably weren't when Bush demanded that no pictures be broadcast of US coffins returning from Iraq.

I'll come to the media's attitude in a moment, but first and foremost can we just stand back and admire the breathtaking arrogance and the jaw-dropping assumption of the Bush administration. Twice now, it has had the arrogance to ride roughshod over the Constitution, which explicitly protects a free press; and assumed the fundamental stupidity of the American people; that by not showing them the ugly consequence of its actions, the government hopes that it won't be judged as harshly as previous administration were over Vietnam?

And let's say it out loud. Iraq is Vietnam II.

What's wrong with the American people that means they can't handle pictures of what's really happening? Are they less gutsy than the rest of us? Do they have more delicate consitutions? No, I don't think so. So what could the reason possibly be?

Now, to the media. So what's the deal here, guys... when Mother Nature takes a chunk out of you it's OK to insist on the right to publish harrowing pictures, but when a ham-fisted piece of electoral strategy goes wrong and kills US soldiers you get all mimsy? I fail to see the difference myself. Neither Mother Nature nor Bush are up for re-election, after all.

Anyway, I'm contradicting myself here because as I mentioned a couple of days ago, Katrina seems to have roused the media out of their drugged slumber. We got outrage, we got questions being asked, we got an administration on the defensive for once, casting around for a scapegoat. Hey! We just got one! Michael Brown, head of the Federal Emergency management Agency, just got fired, not 48 hours after his pal the president told him he was doing a "heck of a job".

And doesn't that sound like yer average British football club, where the chairman gives his manager a vote of confidence just before he gives the poor guy the chop? What club should Bush be chairman of?