Plagued by record disapproval ratings and a pair of shoes during his waning days in office, President George W. Bush hopes to burnish his legacy by establishing a presidential library. Dallas has been selected for the institution's site because Baghdad's Green Zone and Wall Street were deemed insufficiently secure until The Rapture. Aside from selecting the site Mr. Bush developed the template for this project- code named Op Fuscate.
The Bush presidential library will not simply be a clone of those developed by his predecessors. The most dramatic departure will be the near absence of books, reports, memos, letters and other print documents. President Bush has often stated that he does not enjoy reading and he wants his library to be particularly user-friendly for those sharing his predilection. As Vice-president Dick Cheney recently observed, "The president doesn't even like to read newspapers. He relies on me to give him the important news. Of course, I don't cover it all. I tell him the baseball scores, but he particularly likes the comics which are hard to understand if you don't actually take a look."
The relative absence of evidence will not, however, mean evidence of absence. The institution plans to provide heavily redacted summaries of the kinds of printed matter available at his predecessors' libraries. For a nominal fee, visitors will be able to rent earphones and listen to tapes of Mr. Cheney reading from documents pre-selected for their uplifting content. One tape, for instance, will feature the president exulting in a 2004 letter to a friend that "The Texas Rangers beat the Yankees bad last night and this made me feel a lot better after I just was told another one of our convoys was attacked in Iraq."
Some highly sensitive materials will not be made available until the president chooses to declassify them at a future date, typically---never.
Besides immersing themselves in the triumphs of the current Bush Administration visitors can take time out to explore the terrain on mountain bikes, cut brush and worship at prayer services in every Christian denomination.
While excited about the having his own library, the president is cognizant of potential security problems. The building will be designed to thwart terrorist attacks there, and possibly elsewhere, in concert with the Department of Homeland Security.
A decision tio allow entry into the library will initially be based on checking photo ID, fingerprints and any records gleaned from personal, postal or electronic surveillance. In addition, behavior inside the institution will be monitored. Not surprisingly, persons requesting materials, for example, on "water-boarding endurance stats: Guantanamo vs. Abu Graihib detainees" or "extraordinary rendition travel vouchers, " among many others, will be red flagged and probably escorted to undisclosed locations for lengthy five-on-one interactions with attentive "Friends of the Library and America."
One certainty is that library security will inevitably be fluid, reacting constantly to emerging concerns. A case in point: only recently have rules been established requiring future visitors to have their shoes removed by armed attendants prior to entering the premises. Finally, Blackwater-trained guards, given blanket immunity for any security-related behavior they deem necessary, will have enormous discretion to rapidly respond to any suspicious speech or action. It is for this reason that visitors are requested to bring extra-clothing and toiletries, but not cameras, writing implements or recording equipment.
When light-heartedly questioned regarding the legality of some of the
proposed library policies, former Attorney General and currently chief
counsel to Op Fuscate, Alberto Gonzales said "The institution will want to be involved in community outreach in the broadest sense, including identifying and neutralizing potential terrorists. President Bush wants to protect our country from them while they're at the library, not wait until they're detonating a nuclear device in Orange County, Grosse Pointe, or at a visitor's restricted country club back home.
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