The topic below was originally posted on my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal as well as The Wild Wild Left, the Independent Bloggers Alliance, The Peace Tree and Worldwide Sawdust.

Most Americans are eager to turn the page on the Bush years. Yet even as we elect a new president we're still coming to terms with an era that has both tarnished America's reputation and diminished its influence.

Fred Kaplan chronicles the folly of the Bush years in his new book, Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power (John Wiley & Sons).

Kaplan writes that,

"Nearly all of America's blunders in war and peace these past few years stem from a single grand misconception: that the world changed after 9/11, when in fact it didn't.

Certainly, things about the world changed, not least Americans' sudden awareness that they were vulnerable. But the way the world works - the nature of power, warfare, and politics among nations - remained essentially the same."

I discovered this morning that the Bush presidency is a success.
Boy, was I surprised.

Bill Kristol explains it all in an article at The Washington Post that gets my recommendation for the Fatuous Nonsense of the Week Award.

He opens by admitting that such an assertion may expose him to some "harmless ridicule" and proceeds to offer two pages of proof as to why such ridicule might be justified.

"Let's step back from the unnecessary mistakes and the self-inflicted wounds that have characterized the Bush administration. Let's look at the broad forest rather than the often unlovely trees. What do we see? First, no second terrorist attack on U.S. soil -- not something we could have taken for granted. Second, a strong economy -- also something that wasn't inevitable."

Mark Sawyer of Shoreline, Washington in his letter to the Seattle Times March 29, put the Bush Administration's damage to America's image this way:

"I am an American who travels all over the world as part of his work, and what this Administration has done to erode the status and credibility of the U.S. overseas is both huge and reprehensible.

"I have to admit, yes, we invaded Iraq based on lies.  Yes, we torture people now.  Yes, we hold people for years at Guantanamo Bay without charging them.  Yes, we ignore Geneva Conventions.  Yes, our FBI spies on many of us."

The Republican Bush backers have to be held accountable for the horrifying role in the bloody track record of a despicable 6 years of the Cheney-Bush democracy destruction derby.

Presidential security advisor Steven Hadley declines to call Iraq "apocalypse"


Washington, DC (Rotters) - Presidential security adviser Stephen Hadley yesterday, in a news conference at the White House, steadfastly maintained that the Bush administration was correct in its insistence that the conflict in Iraq cannot be referred to as a civil war. Answering questions from reporters, Hadley stated that the recently released National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq was far rosier than some of its misleading language would have some reporters believe. He insisted that the White House had taken great care to have the document reflect what the president believes is the true situation and that it was being interpreted incorrectly by the press.

The reason why the U.S. is in such a quagmire in Iraq is simply because neither Bush nor his frightful Republican Administration have ever had the common decency to admit that going to Iraq was a horrifying mistake, just like going into Vietnam.

The Republicans must acknowledge what the entire world knows.  The American public was tragically misled by the tainted media blitz.  We were told with Bush's dramatic State of the Union propaganda pitch that the United States was under threat from "weapons of mass destruction."  Saddam was threatening us and Condoleezza Rice was conjuring up the grave tragedy of a "giant mushroom cloud" enveloping America.

If a child in school tells a lie, some teachers insist that the child write the truth a hundred times on a blackboard to impress upon the child as well as the rest of the class the importance of telling the truth.  

Not once has George Bush or the misleading Bush Administration acknowledged the terrible consequences of blatant misrepresentations followed by a bloody trail.  This trail now consists of 22,000 U.S. service personnel injured along with the deaths of 3,014 U.S. service personnel.

The topic below was originally posted in my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal.

Gerald R. Ford, a man fate placed on a stage far bigger than his modest persona suggested he belonged is dead at 93. In August 1974 he was appointed America's 38th president when Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace because of the Watergate scandal. Had he not resigned Nixon surely would've been impeached in the House of Representatives and convicted by the Senate.

I started a series called "Danse Macabre" to illustrate the dangerous signs and trends of the Bush Administration and their neoconservative ideology. The third installment to the series has now been posted on the ePluribus Media Journal. It's entitled "Danse Macabre: The Return of Ja(a)far [Donald Rumsfeld]."  

This diary serves both as an invitation to check it out if you haven't seen it yet (it's long, bring coffee) as well as an opportunity to touch upon the various artists responsible for the images found within. Come on inside, and learn a little more about the artists and their works.

Title Screen: There was a land of Profiteers and Oil Fields called the New South... Here in this petty world, Fealty killed its last sow... Here was the last ever to be seen of individual rights and their basest scares, of disasters that would enslave... Look for it only in neo-con texts, for it is no more than a scheme dismembered. A Machination gone with the spin...

Just kidding. Actually that was the only stupid question I'll ask here -- knowing full well that you all know the answer.

What I will do is note the sad irony (for Republicans) that, had Rumsfeld done the right thing and resigned long ago, the Republicans might still have control of the Senate. He didn't. They don't.

Now, the Democrats have taken over both houses of congress and the Administration has no choice. They dare not retain Rumsfeld and provoke the newly found powers of oversight and investigation that the American electorate has given the Democrats.

But don't expect this move to totally assuage Democrat's desire to investigate this administration. Not totally, but certainly some.

And though I would love to see this administration pay for it's many trespasses, I would put a much higher priority on such things as a higher minimum wage, universal healthcare, stem-cell research, reconnecting with our allies, and a new plan for Iraq.

But that's just me.

Either way, there is going to be some serious changes for the better - if for no other reason than the newly found set of checks and balances necessary to keep our nation from teetering on the edge of lunacy.

"Stay the course!"

That is all you will get from both Bush and Lieberman.

Despite President Bush's recent denials that "We've never been stay the course" and the NY Times' FALSE assertions to counter Ned Lamont's caqmpaign charges that Joe Lieberman has been a consistent cheerleader for Bush's failed "Stay the course!" policy, the fact remains that this is a bold face lie that exposes BOTH Bush and Lieberman's  penchant for polticizing this war by telling people whatever they have to in order to cover their political asses and get more votes.  It also doesn't say much about the researchers and writers at the post Judy "neocon propaganda" Miller NY Times.

In Bush's and Lieberman's own words BELOW:

When it rains it pours.  It is currently pouring for George W. Bush as he desperately attempts to rescue Republicans, many of whom are saying "no thanks" and running as fast as they can to avoid the stigma of failure increasingly enveloping him along with his entire regime.

The other day Bush poured out glowing praise for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, expressing his desire for him to continue.  The warm words of praise apparently had no effect on Army Times, Air Force Times, Navy Times, and Marine Corps Times.

In a bruising editorial slated to run on Monday, just one day before America's voters go to the polls in the crucial mid-term congressional election, the aforementioned papers, which are published by the Military Times Media Group, a subsidiary of Gannett Co., Inc., Rumsfeld's termination is urged.

Rumsfeld recently told critics to just relax and wait for his promised positive results.  The Army Times feels otherwise, as expressed in these sharp words:

George Bush, how desperate you, Karl Rove, and Dick Cheney are as this bitter and divisive 2006 campaign season draws to a close.  

When all else fails, as your mentor Rove knows, following lessons from his political patron saint Richard Nixon, when all else fails hurl all the mud possible at your opponents and hope enough sticks to achieve some slimy political victories.

Now John Kerry is the convenient target after making a comment relating to getting a good education or getting stuck in Ira    q.  Immediately you used words like "sickening" and "disgusting" pertaining to a comment you claimed denigrated the educational levels of fighting men and women in Iraq.

This is just the latest in a series of lies that you and your Republican partners in crime and destruction have unearthed.  The first thing one does in evaluating any comment is to place it in its most reasonable context.  Kerry has been supporting America's troops while lamenting the policies that put them in harm's way, attributing them to poor judgment, i.e., demonstrating a need for additional education.

The above-referenced question flashed across my mind as I stood in line at a bank the other day.  I saw a young man with a prosthetic leg.  My mind flashed back to my teenage years where I worked as a bus boy at an army hospital for wounded vets.  I saw many men trying to adjust to prosthetic arms or legs.

Occasionally the men would confide to me how hurt they were that fiancées had broken off engagements or family members who lived close by failed to come and visit them.

These indelible memories haunted me as I stood in that line at the bank.  I asked the woman standing ahead of me, who was observing the man with the artificial leg, if she thought the Iraq War was worth what the wounded service personnel had lost.

In a word she replied, "I think it is outrageous!"  That was her succinct assessment, and recalling the pained expressions on the faces of the amputees in that army hospital where I worked still haunts me.

Mike Hutcherson of Kenmore, Washington, writing in the October 3 Seattle Times, had this to say:

"To those who voted to put these misguided, incompetent people in charge of our government, I say, `Have you seen and heard enough, at last?  Or do you still want to stay the course with these dangerous, incompetent people?'

"Time to repudiate Bush Administration and Republican Party policies that have brought scorn and shame on countries throughout the world."

Ever since George Bush began making decisions in the role as President of the United States, tragically horrifying events have happened in rapid succession.  Long before 9/11 it was apparent that George Bush wanted to invade Iraq.  

We stand at the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 tragedies. No solid answers have been provided.  An unconvincing cover-up has been presented, and only under great public duress.  

It is time to assess what really happened on 9/11 and conceive of creative strategies to dig the truth from out of the dusty caverns to which a thoroughly unprincipled unelected government has buried it.

In that the law has been creatively used in a class action lawsuit regarding 9/11 on behalf of deceased victims' family members, another lawsuit that should be promptly filed in federal court is one pertaining to the unconscionable, blood-stained profits that neoconservative warmongers representing America's invisible and unelected government have realized over the corpses and shattered bodies of service personnel and civilians in the Middle East.

The class action lawsuit alluded to earlier creatively employs the RICO statute in an attempt to demand the truth about the causes of the World Trade Center calamities as well as the repercussions that followed.