Nation Building. Bush Style!

George sure has done an excellent job in Iraq. As the recent report makes clear, his personal invasion of Iraq has done more to help The Base than perhaps anything else he could have done in the aftermath of 9/11. Thanks Dubya. Nice job. Oh, and thanks to the cabal of moronic neocons who convinced you this was a swell idea. You have indeed built a nation; the nation of al Qaeda! Terrorists are using Iraq as their base and are developing a thriving industry that is doing almost as well as Halliburton is in that "country."

The world hasn't been this unstable and "on the brink" since the height of the Cold War.

You want a legacy, dimwit? How's this?

"He ruined the U.S. and destablized the rest of the known world, which eventually led to a nuclear disaster."

Not Leaker-In-Chief, but Liar-In-Chief.

I have started to write this post several times. But I just can't put all of it together. I can't find a hook to hang it on.

I thought about comparing George Bush to this woman I once worked with who was a wonderful and very successful liar. She'd smile in your face and stab you in the back. But that seemed silly. Her lies were, compared to Dubya's, inconsequential fibs.

I thought about the mentioning how schoolchildren once thought that "being President" was the most honorable profession they could hope to acheive. Again, it seemed too juvenile. Surely, as we grow, we realize this is tantamount to believing in the Easter Bunny.

So I have nothing to do on but my gut and my anger and my desperation.

George Bush has now (and the Irv Libby revelation only solidifies what some many already assumed) outranked Nixon in the pantheon of GOP Presidents (in my lifetime) whose names will live in infamy. (I thought an FDR reference would really tick them off...) Bush has proven that he is everything those of us on "the Left" knew he was; a lying, cheating, stealing creep of a human being who has, along with a cadre of close advisors, managed to lower the status of the United States of America several serious notches. I am intensely proud of this nation and its traditions. Proud of what we have so often represented to the world. A chance, a break, a hope for something better. A place where, while the streets may not be paved in gold, they are, at least, paved.

But George W. Bush has taken the good will of this nation and pissed on it, like a smart ass cowboy putting out the last remnants of a smoldering campfire. He has made a show of clearing brush while brush fires still burned around the world. And he has fanned those flames, with his incessant "good ole boy" bloviating - talk which doesn't matter much when spoken over a beer at the local Dew Drop Inn, but which turns nations against us, which makes enemies of our friends and moral enemies of those we might have been able to talk down off the nuclear ledge.

So here we sit. Bush lies with impunity and the world knows it. It makes them wonder, as every citizen of this nation should, whether anything this man says is true.

Not exactly a strong hand to deal from.

No exactly what those schoolkids had in mind for The President of the United States.

For that matter, not what I had in mind, either.