Score one for "Bush on the Couch"

Mom, Who Lost Son In Iraq, Talks About 'Disgusting' White House Private Meeting With Bush AfterDowningStreet.org

Cindy Sheehan, whose son was killed in Iraq, has become a pwerful force in the anti-war movement. Here she describes her meeting with the man responsible for her son's death:

Sheehan said the June 2004 private meeting with the President went from bad to worse to a nightmare when Bush acted like he didn’t even want to know her name. She said Bush kept referring to her as ‘Ma’ or ‘Mom’ while he "put on a phony act," saying things like ‘Mom, I can’t even imagine losing a loved one, a mother or a father or a sister or a brother.’

I just finished reading Justin Frank's Bush on the Couch, a rather devastating analysis of the dangerously defective human being acting as our king. Frank, like most shrinks, attributes great significance to the events of early childhood. (Not that I disagree.)

Here's the amazing thing: Bush had a sister who got cancer and died when he was six years old. Frank talks about how the dysfunctional dynamics of the Bush family completely walled young George off from the grief of that experience, and how this stunted his emotional and even intellectual development.

Which brings us to 2004, when Bush says, quite possibly with all the insensitive sincerity in his body, that he "cannot even imagine" losing a sister.

As frightening as it is when Bush lies, it tends to be even scarier when he reveals such inner truths.