Bush's Intellectual Process

Before I started this blog, I kept a journal. This entry is so appropriate to the revelations about Bush ordering electronic surveillance that I went and recovered it:

"Sunday
February 15, 2004
3:45 AM

Erica brought me Friday's LA Times Calendar section, which contained a review of three books critical of Bush's Iraq war. One of them quotes Bush telling a Palestinian diplomat that God chose him to be the president who would be in office when the 9/11 attack occurred and to attack Afghanistan and Iraq.

Later, Saturday morning, I pulled Vol. 2 of Bill Warren's book Keep Watching the Skies off the shelf to read his review of Panic In Year Zero, and then skipped around reading a few other reviews. Then I came to this sentence in Warren's critique of the film Kiss Me Deadly:

"Hammer never bothers to justify his actions-he never questions them, so no justification is necessary."

That's the essence of Bush's intellectual process, if it can be called that. He has no self-doubt. Legal justifications and rationales don't precede a decision, they come after the fact for public consumption only.