No way!  After 8 horrifying years of Bush, Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and Donald Rumsfeld, the consequences are horrifying!

Supreme Court Justice David Souter, who is retiring courageously, let the U.S. public know recently that he wept when the Court disallowed time in Florida for a thorough analysis of the vote count.

In other words, the Supreme Court demolished U.S. democracy by refusing to allow time for an investigation of what appeared to be outright fraud determining the choice of Resident George W. Bush.

Much of the world has watched with horror at the display of arrogance, corruption, and above all, the rush to war in Iraq.

Nobody could say that President Reagan went to war in Afghanistan to deliver either freedom or democracy by putting the Taliban in power.

We know that Russia was arming Afghanistan fighters on one side, while the U.S. supplied the Mujahideen, the forerunners of the Taliban, with our latest technology capped by stinger missiles that were used to shoot down Soviet Union planes.

Oh, and there was also a tall, gangly, largely unknown leader of that conflict who kept the CIA posted on activities.  You may have since heard of him.  This "freedom fighter" was none other than Osama bin Laden.

The Taliban consists of radical Islamic extremists who refuse to allow women to be educated and deny many other freedoms.  Could this have really been a fight to control those oil pipelines running across Afghanistan to the sea, where ships can carry oil to thirsty nations?

Fears of Communism taking over in Vietnam triggering all of Asia to collapse, to Communism like a row of dominoes.  This fear helped ignite the Vietnam War.  

Ignoring a poll of Vietnamese conducted by our own CIA  indicating that 90 percent of the population wanted Communistic rule, the U.S. ignored democratic preference and charged ahead into the ill-fated Vietnam War.

After 60,000 U.S. service personnel were killed and estimates of up to 2.5 million Vietnamese and Cambodians killed, Vietnam did become a Communist nation.

And surprise, Asia never fell like a row of dominoes as the warmongers propagandized to get this war going.

Why are there different policies for Somali terrorists and for Mideast terrorists?

There is simply no negotiation resulting in multi million dollar profits for Mideast terrorists.

Is the most profitable business in Somali now piracy?

All this business enterprise involves is a small lifeboat with a few Somali pirates armed with weapons.

The intense anger and rage lingers that George W. Bush generated with the false claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction threatening the U.S.A.  Adding to his State of the Union fright scenario was Bush's false claim that Saddam Hussein was well on the road to developing nuclear power.  This false proclamation hastily launched the Iraq War.

If the claim of ex-fed chief Alan Greenspan in his book "Age of Turbulence" that "The Iraq war was largely about Oil" is accurate, we must objectively analyze the cost of Iraq oil acquisition.

Was Iraq oil acquisition worth the tragic loss of 4,242, U.S. service personnel whose flag-draped coffins coming back to the U.S.A. were barred by the Pentagon from being shown on TV?

Was it worth the wounding and suffering of over 55,000 U.S. service personnel?

Ari Fleischer is the latest of former Bush-Cheney team members to seek to reconstruct the history of the Iraq War.  The sharp repudiation of the world community added to huge poll majorities in America have caused neoconservative operatives to seek to spin a fabric of disinformation to obliterate reality.

Fleischer, former Bush-Cheney Press Secretary, in an appearance on Chris Matthews' "Hardball" on MSNBC, kept repeating in mantra fashion how fortunate Barack Obama is to have Saddam Hussein removed from Iraq.  In the manner of neocon spin artists, his comments about the menace of Saddam and his removal were constantly linked to the necessity of making the world safer following 9/11.

Neocons have used 9/11 as a pretext for launching a regime from hell on scenes both foreign and domestic.  Had it not been for Bush's failure to achieve "Mission Accomplished" in the timely manner that they had envisioned, who would seriously argue that Iran would have been next in prompt line for invasion.

Two resolute neocon media propagandists, William Kristol and George Will, were making the case for attacking Iran before America became bogged down in Iraq.  Neocon fantasist were believing in their own invincible will to conquer would occur, and that Iraq would fall into line as a set of dominoes.  

One might ask at this strategic moment in U.S. history, at which point did America cease being good?

Some might claim the beginning of the end of real American goodness began with the ill-fated Vietnam War.  59,000 U.S. service personnel perished in the Vietnam conflict.  Estimates of the total death toll of Vietnamese Cambodians go beyond 2 ½ million.

The domino theory propaganda pitch to inflame the American public into the war mode was that if Vietnam became a Communist nation, all of Asia would collapse to Communism like a row of dominoes.

U.S. leadership at that point in history conveniently ignored Vietnamese preference of government polls revealing 90 percent of the Vietnamese people wanted Communist rule.

George Bush's Iraq War scenario was dramatically launched during his State of the Union Message when he declared the U.S. had proof that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction threatening the U.S.A. and was developing nuclear power.

Everyone in the world now knows that was the big lie that understandably frightened the U.S.A.  There were no "weapons of mass destruction."  Bush insisted his claim concerning those non-existent weapons of mass destruction was simply based on faulty intelligence.

The Iraq War rages on with 4,321 U.S. service personnel dead, over 55,000 wounded, and the Pentagon admitting 96,000 Iraqis killed.  However, the Just Foreign Policy website on February 4 released a report claiming, "Iraqi deaths due to U.S. invasion 1,307,319."

An oil contract with Iraq that the U.S. has wanted the Iraqis to sign would grant the U.S. long-term lease rights to 63 of Iraq's 80 oil wells, allowing Iraq complete control of only 17 of their greatest asset -- their oil wells.

In the New York Times December 16, 2008 an editorial headline read:

The editorial went on to explain:

"Darfur, Congo, Rwanda, and before that Bosnia.  It is hard to contemplate man's inhumanity without feeling despair and paralysis.

"The world usually pays attention only after the killing has spun out of control when ethnic, religious and political divides are rubbed so raw that the furies are infinitely harder to calm.  By that point the United States and others are faced with the agonizing choice of either intervening militarily or allowing the killing to go on.

Ahmed Ayad of Redmond, Washington in the January 7 Seattle Post-Intelligencer wrote the following letter to the editors:

"Your coverage of the current conflict in Gaza is a testament to failure of professional, honest journalism and of simple human conscience.

"You choose to focus on rockets of a legitimate resistance to an illegitimate occupation and breaches of `truce', ignoring the continual blockade of a besieged population and a nonstop, humanitarian crisis.  You parrot that `Hamas has broke the truce' line and ignore the documented 160 plus times Israel has breached such truce through the blockade and through targeted and blanket killings.  You ignore the numerous international resolutions condemning the occupation, the expansions, the killings and the many multiples more that are stonewalled by the blind support of the current and previous U.S. governments that went even beyond the dreams of the bloodiest leader of the Israeli Likud.  You print letters supporting the only point of view they know about, the only view you give them in a sad cycle of ignorance aided and abetted by your coverage and parroted `opinions' and `editorials'.

"It is shameful to see Jews, even Israeli Jews, who cannot afford supporting such atrocities on their conscience express this loudly and forcefully while the U.S. media and the U.S. public are sedated.

This is apparently what the Israeli military is quoted as saying in an article in the Seattle Times January 4 by Isabel Kershner and Taghreed el-Khodary:

"The Israeli military in a statement about the ground campaign stated, `Destroy the terrorist infrastructure of Hamas!'"

The article is datelined Jerusalem, and stated:

"Israeli tanks and troops swept across the border into Gaza Saturday night, opening a ground war against the militant group Hamas after a week of intense air strikes.

As someone who wrote a book, "Struggle for the Holy Land,"  on the Middle East encompassing the long histories of Arabs and Jews I recognized from the outset the imperative need for international leadership to be exercised through constructive diplomacy.

When I recently sent a manuscript to a British publisher with the reputation of tackling tough and controversial international issues, and that prided itself on being progressive, the editor sent me an e-mail declaring that it took him 32 pages to decide that I had concluded that Arabs and Jews were equally at fault for the conflict while he believed that the root problem lay at the doorstep of the Israelis.

I promptly e-mailed and took him over the route of my first 32 pages.  I pointed out that I had not found "fault" with either group and that this was not the objective and my effort, which was to address the long history of each people extending back some 3,500 years, focusing on points on common along with differences.  The objective was to develop understanding and point the way toward diplomatic conflict resolution.

My response to the editor's criticism, which pointed out areas that he had mentioned, and from which he had drawn an erroneous conclusion about my work, was greeted by silence.  This was not surprising.  Too many believe that all writers approaching the Middle East should ultimately praise one group and denounce the other.  

Raymond A. Orr of Westport, Conn. On December 22 in his letter to the New York Times Orr wrote:

"Re:  `The Disciples of Hatred, in Their Own Words and Images' by Brent Staples about an exhibit of lynchings:

 "According to the Tuskegee Institute records, from 1882 to 1968, 4,743 people were lynched in the United States.  Of those 1,297 were white.

"Lynching is more than about black hatred.  The values that allow a community to lunch are the same values that allow a nation to torture.

The Los Angeles Times on November 23 reported that tens of thousands rallied in Baghdad against a security pact with the U.S.

Tina Susman and Caesar Ahmed reporting from on the scene in Baghdad wrote the following:

"At the spot where U.S. forces toppled a statue of Saddam Hussein in 2003, protestors Friday tore down an effigy of President Bush and set it afire during a demonstration over plans to keep American troops in Iraq through 2011."

The people of Iraq are recognizing the fact that the U.S. embassy in Iraq is among the largest in the world.  They also are aware of the U.S. request for 50 bases for the U.S. to operate from.  

In surfing You Tube one of the most popular of all entries is Bill O'Reilly's interview of Phil Donahue.  Considering the amount of meaningful substance distributed over an 8-minute interview span this enthusiasm is understandable.

O'Reilly on his home Fox News turf began by introducing Donahue as a supporter of one of the right's most hated anti-war symbols, Cindy Sheehan.  

As a veteran television moderator who regrettably lost his own MSNBC program when he dared, in the lead-up to the Iraq War interview experts who persuasively argued against invasion, Donahue knew the value of delivering short, pungent comments in the face of a host known to intimidate some guests through loud accusations and swaggering bravado.

O'Reilly unleashed his full bag of tricks and came up empty.  Donahue was successful in countering his host's anticipated propaganda tricks and reliance on blustery emotional by delivering a concise barrage of attacks that left O'Reilly initially shrieking, then softer spoken in the manner of a shouter who has lost his steam.