Let's cut George W. Bush a little slack

KENNETT, Mo. -- I think it's about time we cut President George W. Bush a little slack. Here's a national leader who's trying to protect his country, unlike some presidents and dictators who shall remain nameless and who are always trying to push a few favors toward their friends and allies and ignore everybody else.

And just because he has made a few errors in predicting how easy it would be occupy Iraq after Hussein high-tailed it out of Baghdad doesn't mean he should be constantly reminded of them. After all, the president didn't have a clue what would happen and was forced to rely on the likes of his defense gurus and intelligence hot-shots to tell him how those crazy, mixed-up Muslims would act once their leader passed the city limits sign.

And this constant bickering over the absence of any solid evidence of weapons of mass destruction, in all fairness, the president didn't say he had actually seen them with his own eyes but, again, being forced to rely on what some dim-witted "expert" across the Potomac had reported. For all we know, all our poor chief executive had to rely on was the word of the prime minister of England, and how do we know he isn't in cahoots right now with Saddam in a secret campaign by Her Majesty to regain the lost colonies across the Atlantic?

As for the president's conduct toward an alleged ally like France, everyone who's kept up his reading of "Scholastic Current Events" knows that the snooty, odoriferous French have been bad-mouthing us for years. And speaking of bad-mouthing, how come France imports such small amounts of that great Texas wine which our connoisseurs know as Redneck Bordeaux while trying to push all that alleged vintage stuff from Bordeaux on our thirsty palates?

When it comes to strategic planning, let's remember our chief executive is a graduate of a snooty Ivy League college, an institution incapable of beating good old Texas A&M on a month of Saturdays and one that doesn't even allow the serving of Budweiser in the school canteen. And when our president was forced to spend his military time at a National Guard unit in another state during the Vietnam War, how was he supposed to learn the principles of nuclear warfare in some barracks classroom?

Let us not overlook the stigma the president has suffered when Newsweek spread it all over Washington that he relied on the use of prayer to guide the nation. Is the phrase "One nation under God" meaningless to all those godless critics who haven't found a religious person in the Oval Office since Jimmy Carter?

Lately the president has been under fire for the rapid escalation of the national debt, and once again the critics are overreaching themselves. Following the Twin Towers attacks, which were precipitated by the scandalous behavior of that notorious Democrat, Wild Bill Clinton, what was our chief executive supposed to do for all the federal money required to create a huge new department with a rapacious appetite for federal dollars, and give our own John Ashcroft the means of investigating our children's library book checkouts? Activities like these cost big bucks and the Oval Office wisely used all the money available to stamp out the wild-eyed, liberal protectors of the radical bomb-throwers in our midst. What would these detractors suggest the president do when he needed cash to protect our constitutional rights: Take up a collection every time a crowd gathered on the grounds outside his busy office?

It's time for sleeping Americans to pay attention to the wisdom of such expert commentators as Rush Limbaugh and Bill Bennett and learn the importance of an enlightened public before striking out at our hard-working, dedicated commander in chief. Now is not the time to utter words of disparagement against our chief executive, who has devoted much of his time to undoing the shameful surpluses of his philandering successors and all those wasteful federal programs designed to meet some of the educational, health and prescription drug needs of our young children and tottering old senior citizens who are gullible enough to be taken in by all the criticism that is being unfairly heaped on our beloved leaders. Be patriotic: Keep a lid on it.

Jack Stapleton is the editor of Missouri News & Editorial Service.