Must see: Bush accuses UK journalist of "slander"

The George W. Bush European farewell tour continues to Wow, but for all the wrong reasons. Yesterday, during an interview with Adam Boulton, a British journalist with Sky News, Bush accused him of slander, for having the temerity to bring up the Bush embarrassments of Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. Watch the video above. A partial transcript:

BOULTON: And yet there are those who would say, look, let's take Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib and rendition and all those things, and to them that is the, you know, the complete opposite of freedom.

BUSH: Of course if you want to slander America, you can look at it one way. But you go down — what you need to do — I think I suggested you do this at a press conference — if you go down to Guantánamo and take a look at how these prisoners are treated — and they're working it through our court systems. We are a land of law.

Really?!? "Working it through our court systems?!?" Where is our president headed next, Comedy Central? The Supreme Court recently ruled against the Bush administration regarding the prisoners at Gitmo (basically) having any rights whatsoever. The Guantánamo detainees now have the right to appeal their cases in our legal system (which, by the way, has the right-wing neo-cons all in a tizzy, but more on that in a minute).

It gets better - check out this exchange:

BOULTON: But the Supreme Court have just said that — you know, ruled against what you’ve been doing down there.

BUSH: But the district court didn't. And the appellate court didn't.

BOULTON: The Supreme Court is supreme, isn't it?

Wow - it just went downhill from there. I guess we should all be grateful that Bush "accepts" the Supreme Court's decision. And I'd like to know just what "law" Bush is referring to? The USA PATRIOT Act? The 1,100+ document that members of Congress had mere hours to read before it was rammed through a Congress ruled by Republican majorities? That law? Sure, it passed by wide margins in both houses of Congress, but legislators were under tremendous pressure to "do something" in the wake of 9-11, even if that "something" turned out to be a bad thing. A few years later, when the Act came under review, I distinctly remember the likes of Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, etc. questioning critics' patriotism, decrying that they were "siding with the terrorists." I know - it seems pretty absurd to read it now, and to some unbelievable, but it did happen.

History will also reflect that Bush has been rebuked by a conservative Supreme Court, time and time again, regarding the detainees at Gitmo regarding habeas corpus, military tribunals, and their rights to fight their charges in U.S. courts.

I'd say that Bush should be embarrassed, but he passed that signpost a long, long time ago (perhaps when he was busy running oil companies into the ground and profiting from it).

Bush just got bested by a British journalist, and he revealed something that anyone with a brain has known since he first was appointed to the presidency (& that I've been complaining about for at least that long) - when a court rules in favor of the Bush administration, Bush has nothing to say (but he's no doubting high-fiving his aides and sycophants in the West Wing), but when a ruling goes against the administration, Bush decries "activist judges" who are "legislating from the bench."

Honestly, Bush has pretty much lost the ability to surprise me, but this one even had me reeling for a Philadelphia minute. Click Here to see the full transcript, as well as the full interview, if you can stomach it.

Enjoy. Or cry.

h/t C&L