A little over a month ago, I was flipping channels and saw Condoleeza Rice delivering a speech on CNN. Since I always like to keep myself informed about the current stance of the Bush Administration, I decided to listen in. Frankly, I was quite confused by what I heard. Dr. Rice said that the report issued by the Iraq Survey Group (commonly referred to as the Kay Report, after David Kay, head of the ISG) offered "hard evidence of facts that no one should ever have doubted"¹ on the existence of weapons of mass destruction.

The reason this was confusing to me was that the Kay report says there is no hard evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.¹ In addition, the little proof Kay found of any weapons programs is sketchy at best, and much of it has been debunked by the media and government sources. I was left scratching my head. Why would Dr. Rice say they had found weapons of mass destruction when they hadn't? Surely our government wouldn't lie to us, so the only logical answer is that she truly believes they had found weapons. This led me to an incredible conclusion: President Bush and the key players of his Administration are clearly from the Bizarro Universe from the comic book Superman.

For those of you who are not [pathetic – ed.] comic book nerds like myself, let me explain the Bizarro Universe to you. Basically, everything is backwards from the reality we know in Bizarro Universe. To quote Al Franken, "...if you like a hot dog in Bizzaro [Universe] and would like another one, you would say, 'Me hate hot dog. Me want more, me hate them so much.'" So if you took everything you hold to be true in this reality and turned it on its head, you'd have Bizzaro Universe. Based on some of their statements, actions, and opinions on different topics, I can only assume that the Bush Administration is not fully moored in our reality.

In 2001, President Bush withdrew the United States from the Kyoto Treaty, which had the goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions to reduce the effects of global warming.² At the time, he claimed there was no clear proof that human activity contributed to global warming. However, the Environmental Protection Agency released, less than a year later, a report that admitted that global warming did exist and was caused by the human race.³ Did the Bush Administration, in light of this new information, return the United States to the Kyoto protocol? No. They just acted like this report never came out and continued to bring about the degradation of our planet.

Another example of the Bush Administration's tendency to ignore facts and live in a fantasy world is their continued support of Reagan's absolutely ludicrous "Star Wars" missile defense system. Our government has never fully stopped working on this defense system, even during the Clinton years; in fact, over $40 billion have now been spent developing it, with little to nothing to show.⁴ However, Bush has been an extremely staunch supporter of this program, despite the fact that this technology is not only impractical, but almost entirely useless.

Despite the years of research and tremendous amounts of money spent, the technology for a missile defense system is just not feasible. Most tests have placed the missile interception ratio at about 30%, and that number goes down as the altitude grows higher. 30% is not a high enough percentage to spend a vast amount of money on a defense against something that is unlikely to happen in the first place.

Consider the following facts: The number of countries with nuclear weapons has decreased since this program was first suggested, and the only countries with the ballistic missile capability to actually hit the United States are our allies, or countries that we have had increasingly better relations with. In addition, instead of checking proliferation, the development of an anti-missile system would actually encourage other countries—most notably China and Russia—to build up a ballistic missile arsenal, according to National Intelligence Estimates.⁵ These facts make the scenario of a missile attack against the United States highly unlikely. Yet the Bush Administration continues to push this as an important and necessary program, which only furthers my theory that they are from a backwards reality, or as they might say, "Me from forwards world. Tax cut to wealthy help the not wealthy."

Another strange belief that Bush has, another which seems to contradict reality, is his view of freedom. He speaks frequently of the importance of freedom, as he did in this discussion with Southeast Asian leaders: "I love freedom. I understand the importance of freedom in peoples' lives... I worry about a regime that is closed and not transparent."⁶ This would be fine, if it were concurrent with his actions. Unfortunately, Bush only pays lip service to the ideal of freedom, as based on his treatment of the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay.

The treatment of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay has been utterly reprehensible. According to the limited information Amnesty International was able to get from the government and through interviews with attorneys, detainees, relatives, and former detainees, they are being held without any access to legal help, any knowledge of the length of their incarceration, or, in many cases, any knowledge of what they are being held for. They are also being denied the right to a trial, which is guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States. All the things I've just said are guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States.

They are not only being denied their lawful rights, but their basic human rights. There have been reports (also from Amnesty International) of "cruel treatment, including prolonged solitary confinement, heavy shackling of detainees (including use of chains and leg shackles) during visits or court appearances and lack of adequate outdoor exercise. There have also been allegations of physical and verbal abuse."⁷ This is a flagrant violation of the Geneva Conventions and international law. It also sounds a lot like a "closed regime" that is not transparent. Abusing people who have been convicted of no crime for an indefinite period of time certainly does not count as freedom in my reality, but apparently it's just fine in Bush's.

However, some of the Bush Administration's most bizarre and frightening beliefs involve the ongoing war in Iraq. One of these beliefs was put forth by Bush in a speech on Oct. 27. Bush said that the more progress is made in Iraq, "the more desperate [the insurgents] become." Basically, Bush was postulating that the more good we do for the Iraqis, the more the Iraqis will hate us, and thus the greater losses our troops will suffer. The final result of this is that the higher the death toll coalition troops have, the better Bush can claim the war is going. Last I checked, the general consensus is that the more troops are dying in a war, the worse the war is going. However, the Bush Administration obviously knows better by the rules of their alternate reality.

This last belief is the only one I truly am confounded by. After Bush signed the ban on "partial birth" abortions, Bush said that the right to life "cannot be granted or denied by government because it does not come from government. It comes from the creator of life."⁸ However, as a result of Bush's misguided and unjustified war on Iraq, 500 soldiers from the invading coalition have died⁹ and anywhere between 7878 and 9708 Iraqis have died.¹⁰ How Bush can say that the government doesn't have the right to "grant or deny" life, after the government, under George W. Bush himself, has caused the death of up to 10,000 people truly baffles me.

It is my belief that the only way any of this could make sense is that the Bush Administration must be anchored in some alternate universe where everything is backwards from the truth. The constant contradictions and logical fallacies can only be explained either through ignorance, which I highly doubt given that they have access to far more information than the general public does, or through the willful disregard of anything that doesn't fit in with their view of the world. That scares me. What scares me even more is that they might get four more years in 2004. And with no Superman in the real world, all we can hope for is the amazing Rando to save us...or short of that, an intelligent voting demographic.