President Bush shed a tear during a recent memorial to a U.S. Navy Seal killed in Iraq. Never mind that his own arrogant stupidity caused the war when he lied about taking out weapons of mass destruction that weren’t there.

       Now, the story is, our troops are fighting to quell the violence. Thus, when the war first started, it was sold to the American people as a lightning quick punitive strike to take out fictional weapons. When that proved false, Bush changed his explanation and said it was a war to establish democracy in the Middle East.

       Now, it’s changed again.

       It’s a war to quell violence.

       The reasoning changes every month.

       Huh? We’re fighting to quell violence?

       By injecting war into an area, you quell violence? That’s worthy of George Orwell. I’ll have to think about that one.

       What will the reasoning be next month? I know! We’re in Iraq because like the mountain climber explained why he climbed the mountain…because it (Iraq) is there.

       We could argue about the war all day. That’s not the point here. This story is about crying.

       If you’re a politician and you cry, it shows you care. One tear can be worth 50,000 votes. Was Bush’s tear real?

       Never mind that he never shows any emotion except to smirk. He parades around smiling in his National Guard uniform on an aircraft carrier. Never mind that he didn’t want you to see flag-draped coffins of soldiers coming home, so the networks to their discredit don’t run such footage.

       Any president from now on, must if he wants to be seen as compassionate, master the art of crying in public. Bill Clinton was a pioneer of sorts. He was one of the first presidents to cry in front of TV cameras at the funeral of a long-time crony. Were those tears real?

       If a president is willing to lie, like Bush did when he said, “the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, we’ll find ‘em.” If a president is willing to tell a lie, what’s to stop him from fake crying? To get a photo op (opportunity)? To make him seem human instead of the scheming, conniving, ruthless, bureaucrat he really is?

       There are many ways to fake cry. One way is to bite your tongue. Crunch down hard on it with your teeth. You don’t need a flood of tears. One tear will do. Another way is to, while nobody is looking, stomp down hard with your heel on the toe of your opposite foot.

       Another way is to carry an onion, smear some on your hands, and simply wipe your eyes. When they tear up, all you have to do then is look sad.

       This establishes you as a humanist, despite the fact you want to approve the torture of prisoners, despite the fact you’ve never once mentioned regret for the thousands upon thousands of innocent Iraqis who died simply because they were caught in a cross-fire… in a war we started.

       Bush apparently cries only for Americans. That shows patriotism, but he’s no Gandhi.

       With Abraham Lincoln, you could tell he hated the Civil War. He aged a hundred years in appearance during the conflict. Bush on the other hand, he loves it. He actually looks younger. He smiles all the time.

       Except for that tear. Was that tear real? Or was it something in his eye?    

       There was a time when we never would have doubted. But we live in an age of professional ego maniac politicians like Hillary Clinton, who with a straight face, said she came under hostile enemy fire while getting off a plane in the Balkans (she was greeted by a child), in a losing attempt to show us she’s tough.

       I highly doubt the sincerity of Bush’s tear. If we could have captured it, before it slipped to the ground, we could have it tested, analyzed for its salt content, which might tell us if it’s real.