_THIS_

I was never a fan of Bush II and his malicious sidekick Cheney, and even less so of their misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Yesterday's revelations of CIA Torture are crimes.  These people abused prisoners in ways that all Western powers should be horrified by, and they knew damn good and well what they were doing.

When we first starting hearing rumours of an "extraordinary rendition" program, and the wrongdoings at Abu Ghraib, I figured that there was something much, much worse going on.  Sure enough, that's what was happening.

Round up the lot of these rotten bastards and hang them out to dry.  Ship them off to the World Court in The Hague and lock in a cell while prosecutors put together a case against them.  These are crimes the magnitude of which cannot be ignored.

Canadians need to remind Stephen Harper that torture is wrong.  Not only will it produce exactly zero useful information, it is morally and ethically wrong.  For Canada to even implicitly endorse the use of torture by accepting "information gathered" through those means goes against the values of Canada as a whole.  We are better than that.

It is a shame that Harper isn't.

Right Wing Hypocrisy 101

With the Rethuglicans desperate to rebuild their suddenly crumbling base in the United States, they seem to be desperately dragging out anything they can ... in this case, it's been Dick Cheney.

An October 23, 2001, memo from Justice Department lawyers John C. Yoo and Robert J. Delahunty said, "First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully."

Former Vice PresidentCheney also believes, according to these same memos, that the federal government can send troops to burst into the homes of American citizens without a search warrant, despite the Fourth Amendment's protection against such unreasonable searches. He believes that the federal government has the right to arrest an American citizen on American soil and hold him in prison without charges. He believes that the federal government can listen in on your phone conversations without a court order.

Now, think about this for a minute, and reflect on the Conservatives in Canada trying to resurrect unnecessary laws that give the government unprecedented police-state powers in peacetime.

"I worry a lot," he told King, "that they're using the current set of economic difficulties to try to justify a massive expansion in the government, and much more authority for the government over the private sector. I don't think that's good. I don't think that's going to solve the problem."

Set aside the, umm, irony of a guy who is alive, thank God, because of government-provided health care opposing health care for taxpaying Americans. And set aside the hypocrisy of the Bush-Cheney Medicare prescription drug entitlement, the greatest expansion of the federal role in health care since President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Focus instead on Cheney's alarmist rhetoric: "a massive expansion in the government", "much more authority for the government." Cheney is comfortable with a government that has the authority to torture, imprison, censor and kill. Just not a government that has the capacity and compassion to write a health insurance policy or take on Big Oil.

There's a second irony here - and it falls forth from Cheney's own mouth. In "worrying about" an expansion of government under Obama, Cheney fails quite utterly to admit that under Bush II (and Cheney), the government expanded dramatically - in ways that invade people's privacy and fundamental rights such as due process before the law far more negatively than anything that the Obama administration has proposed. Cheney has repeatedly denied many people access to the courts, has invaded their privacy and tortured others. Under Bush II, more happened to expand the reach of law enforcement and the military - aspects of government intrusion into private lives that we really should be worried about.

Consider that Canada's Con$ are pouring money into the military like there's no tomorrow, and want to resurrect laws that expired for good reason. These people take their cues from Bush II/Cheney ...

Dear Dick: B*!!Sh!T

The morality of "the ends justify the means" logic - coming from Dick Cheney.

Cheney told CNN's "State of the Union" that the Bush administration's "alternative" interrogation techniques were "absolutely essential" to preventing further assaults like the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.

Critics said those techniques amounted to the torture of prisoners in American custody.

"President Obama campaigned against it all across the country, and now he is making some choices that, in my mind, will, in fact, raise the risk to the American people of another attack," Cheney said.

Right, asshole. So, in your view torture, illegal detention, handing people over to other countries for "interrogation" is all fair game. That's nice - it just proves to the rest of us that you truly are despicable.

Quite frankly, Cheney's rationale about the Bush II program of torture, illegal detention etc. being a "successful program" because it "stopped further 9/11 style attacks" is like selling shark repellent in Alberta. You can claim it works because there's no sharks in Alberta, but I don't think that exactly demonstrates anything meaningful.

Bush II: The Reign of Error

Tomorrow, the world will see George W. Bush step aside as President of the United States, bringing to an end one of the most disappointing presidential tenures that the world has ever witnessed.

Under Bush II, things went from 'not bad' to 'really awful' in short order.

(1) In the wake of 9/11, he started a heavy armour war in Afghanistan to smoke out a handful of people. (anybody else remember Osama bin Laden? yeah - we were supposed to find him in weeks, not years) Anybody with an iota of sense would have long ago realized that capturing someone like bin Laden doesn't take tanks, it takes stealth, intelligence and patience.

(2) Then he leveraged the limited success in Afghanistan and did a bunch of chest-thumping to justify finishing off what his father started in Iraq a dozen years before. I think we all know how swimmingly well that war has gone. We shouldn't ignore the blatant lies that he used to justify attacking Iraq - the mysteriously non-existent WMD's, among other topics.

(3) Guantanamo Bay - never before has a US President gone to such lengths to detain people in a legal no-man's land. In doing so, Bush II and his sidekick Dick Cheney created an environment which encouraged torture, abuse and maltreatment of inmates.

(4) We shouldn't ignore the systemic nature of the attitudes with respect to Guantanamo Bay, because they gave implicit license for the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

(5) Under Bush II, the US government went from surplus to deficit, and the national debt has spiralled out of control as the government attempts to finance wars it has little chance of actually succeeding at.

(6) It certainly didn't help matters that Bush II encouraged people in the wake of 9/11 to "spend, spend, spend". People took that message to heart and leveraged their houses, using them as ATMs rather than long term investments. The result? Unheard of levels of consumer indebtedness, and rates of foreclosure on properties unseen since the Great Depression of the 1930s once the "housing bubble" popped.

(7) Tax cuts that served to benefit the very wealthy, and further downloaded the tax burden onto middle-income earners.

(8) Woefully inadequate oversight of the banking industry allowed it to lose sight of the fundamental principles of banking, succumbing to the atmosphere of greed that resulted from writing predatory mortgage loans, and then being able to resell them as "Asset Backed Commercial Paper". Separating risk and reward was a huge mistake, and where was the oversight?

(9) What he couldn't legislate, he passed into existence as "executive orders" and "rules" - some of which are so ill considered that they jeopardize people's health on the altar of "faith".

(10) Abstinence Only sex-ed. This is one of the great oxymorons of our time. Abstinence Only programs aren't about educating people about sex and sexuality, they're about scaring youth into not being sexual beings. Good luck with that - hormones are amazingly powerful things, as are instincts ... and teenagers will figure things out - sadly they may have more misconceptions about healthy sexuality than their grandparents did.

I'm sure I could come up with more if I wanted to. Needless to say, incoming President Barack Obama has his work cut out for him. He inherits a nation bruised and battered, it economy a shambles and its credibility on the world stage ruined.

On the other hand, when you start at the bottom, there's only one way to go, isn't there?

So Much For Women's Health

It seems that Bush has signed his "rule" permitting health care providers to deny treatment if it "violates their conscience".

Who does this affect - primarily women and members of the GLBT community. Who else? After all, when does a man ever need an abortion? And goodness knows, that no straight WASP ever does anything "morally suspect"... do they?.

Basically, what it does is give carte blanche for health care providers to deny care on their moral whims. Whether or not the patient needs the treatment is irrelevant - the only thing that matters is whether providing treatment violates the provider's morals now. Lovely.

If you are a woman, and you need treatment for anything to do with your reproductive system, (after all, the moralizing rules all focus on that) you better hope you live in one of the larger urban centers ... or plan on immigrating to Canada.

If you are part of the GLBT community, your already limited options just became a little narrower today...because Bush just gave free license to the bigots.

I hope that Barack Obama is smart enough to introduce that turd of a 'rule' to the Presidential shredder as soon as he is sworn in - the women and GLBT people of the United States deserve far better than that.

Dear HarperCon$:

So ... a Canadian citizen lies in legal limbo. Held not to face charges in the recognized courts of the country holding him, but rather to be subjected to a questionable, if not outright illegal, tribunal system prepared to accept evidence from such reliable sources as torture.

Never mind that he was a youth when captured. Nor is it significant to the Con$ that it was his father who dragged him over there. Nope. None of that seems to matter here. Neither does the fact that there is essentially no appeal beyond the tribunal itself.

Your stated position on this?

"Mr. Khadr faces very serious charges," Cannon said Thursday from Lima, Peru, where he was attending APEC ministerial meetings.

"He is being held and it's our government's intention to follow and respect the process that's in place and, of course, to respect American sovereignty on this issue."

Of course, throwing Canadians onto the trash heap has been pretty much standard fare for Conservative foreign policy since day one. Khadr is but one of a growing list of Canadians rotting in foreign prisons because the Harper government will not lift a finger to intervene.

Why should they pay any attention to George Bush's little kangaroo courts designed explicitly to get him one conviction in Guano Bay before he leaves office in January? Perhaps because it would be the right thing to do. If Khadr actually should face charges, repatriate him and charge him here - where at least the legal system has a modest degree of transparency and accountability.

Meeting Low Expectations

Heard on the news tonight:

"aim should not be more government. It should be smarter government."
George W. Bush speaking on the economic crisis

I'd say that the moment he steps aside, that he will have helped the US achieve that one goal - there's little question the government will be a little smarter for his absence.

Interesting Challenge of Guantanamo Bay

I see that six detainees at Guantanamo Bay are challenging their detention in a US court.

The six Algerians were arrested in Bosnia in the weeks following the 11 September 2001 attacks on New York and Washington and have been held without charge ever since.

They deny government claims that they were planning to travel to Afghanistan to fight with al-Qaeda and the Taleban against US troops.

This is very much at the heart of my long standing objections to the very existence of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. Not only have the people being held there been denied basic access to due process, but worse they have been held even in the absence of coherent evidence to support the ostensible reasons for their detention.

I have to imagine that this case is the first of many that will ultimately dismantle some of the more awful aspects of the Bush II legacy. (Like trying to hold people in a legal limbo indefinitely)

Schadenfreude

The irony in this story is hilarious.

"They were always producing negative reports about Venezuela," Chavez told reporters. "They forgot about themselves ... and 'boom!' they were bankrupt."

For years, we've been listening to the Americans trashing Hugo Chavez, but as he rightly points out, the American government and the large financial institutions haven't exactly been doing a good job of stewardship where their economy is concerned.

I may not agree with everything Chavez says or does, but in this case I'd say he's earned the right to poke the current meltdown in the US financial sector.

The tally so far?

Taken over (for all intents and purposes) by the US government:

Fannie Mae
Freddie Mac
AIG

Bankrupt:

Lehman Brothers

Bailed Out By US Government: (not sure if control moved or not)

Bear Sterns

That's quite a list of failures. I'm not actually sympathetic to any of these businesses - they hung their fates on the 'subprime mortgage' hook, and it fell off the wall.

What does surprise me is that they were foolish enough to do that in the first place. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the terms of the sub-prime mortgages were predatory, nor does it take a lot to realize that giving people credit when they can't support it is going to sooner or later backfire.

The entire US economy has relied entirely on consumer spending since 2000/2001, and what gains were to be had after 2004 were almost entirely based on debt-funded consumer spending. You had to know that this was going to be messy.

It really does put paid to the standard right-wing shtick about good fiscal management. Every time we see a paleoCon government, the economy ends up tanking, it seems. It was a mess in Canada throughout the Mulroney era, and under Bush II, the US economy is being left in a deplorable state as a result of short-sighted policy and a dogma about not intervening in the so-called 'free market'.

Starting Another Cold War

After last week's invasion of Georgia by Russia, Poland and the US signed a missile defense pact to allow the US to deploy a an assortment of armaments on Russia's doorstep.

Then, perusing BBC today, I see Russia is getting in bed with Syria. If this pattern sounds familiar, it should - it strongly reflects patterns that were common in the cold war era.

But why? Well, simply put, post-communist Russia is still a big country, and one that doesn't entirely trust the US on a good day. (and few in the Russian power structure think that there have been many 'good days' since GWB came to power)

As for Bush, well, he's interested in one thing - creating another enemy for the Rethuglicans to demonize in the coming months. Just as he didn't see anything wrong with starting a second front of war in the Middle East, his objectives are focused on power, and maintaining power. The spectre of totalitarian russia isn't far removed from most people's minds these days, and that makes it an ideal propaganda tool.

Speaking Truth

The name "Pravda" used to be something of a bad joke back in the era of the Soviet Union.

Although it translates into English as "Truth", Pravda was best known as the propaganda mouthpiece of the Soviet Union. That was then.

Now, on the other hand, their writers can say what Faux News won't.

How about your missile shield breathing down the neck of the Russian nation? There to protect Europe from Iran? The most totally absurd thing that only a moron would believe.

How about your deliberate breaking of your agreements regarding Serbian Kosovo? UN Resolution 1244 which your country agreed to, is the ink dry…you deliberately went against it and recognized Kosovo in total disregard and in violation of that agreement.

And you expect your words to be heeded or even listened to? You are joking! It is said when Caligula went mad he heard laughing.

Do you hear people laughing at you Mr. Bush?

Do These People Ever Look In The Mirror?!?

George Bush opens his mouth on the Russian/Georgian conflict, and promptly demonstrates a complete lack of self awareness:

In Washington, President Bush on Friday chided Russia for Cold War-style behavior, saying, "Bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the 21st century."

Bush said the United States stands "with the people of Georgia and their democratically elected government." He said the country's sovereignty and territorial integrity "must be respected."

"We will not cast them aside," he said.

Bush said Russia's invasion of Georgia in recent days has "damaged its credibility."

Funny, I wonder just what Bush thinks the difference between Iraq and Georgia is? (Or perhaps he'd like to consider his actions in Iraq and more recent posturing towards Iran?)

How these people can look themselves in the mirror every morning is beyond me.

How Generous Of Them

Not that I think much of recent US ambassadors to Canada, but this is missing the point utterly.

The fact is that Canada's governing politicians - The Stephen Harper Party™ are more than prepared to allow a Canadian to rot in the hell of a foreign prison for no better reason than they are afraid of how the Bushites will respond.

Think about this, and ask yourself if that represents the kind of government that Canadians want? I don't really care if the US is now generously 'giving permission' or not - Canadians deserve better than this from our government.

Bom! Bom! Go The Drums Of War

Gee - Bush II couldn't be any more transparent about stirring up fear of the evil Iran threat in time for this year's presidential elections, could he?

US President George W Bush says he wants to pursue diplomacy to deal with Iran's controversial nuclear programme, but "all options are on the table".

Mr Bush and German Chancellor Angela Merkel said further sanctions against Iran were possible.

"The first choice is to solve it diplomatically and that's exactly what we're doing," Mr Bush said.

He was speaking after talks in Germany, on the latest leg of what is likely to be his last tour of Europe.

Uh huh...coming from a man whose idea of diplomacy involves holding the trigger of a gun to the other party's head, I don't think that he's really trying that hard. Similar noises were made about Iraq a few years ago too.

I'm guessing that the current focus on Iran has more to do with sagging Republican fortunes in the US than it does anything else. The Rove formula for electoral success tends to require that the population be scared of something - preferably a remote and easily demonized adversary - it distracts the masses from what's happening at home.

Holding Up The Mirror

Sometimes a political leader says something so boldly daft that you just have to hold up the mirror of their words in front of them. Such is the case with Bush's speech in Israel yesterday.

Quoth the Bush (Jr):

In his speech to Israel's Knesset, Bush said: “Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals.”

“We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler all this might have been avoided'.”

“We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

Yes, and how many lies did BushCo propagate to "justify" their invasion of Iraq? Many - possibly more than any of us want to think about. Was anyone going to be able to "appease him"? Not a snowball's chance - Bush was hell-bent on finding an excuse to invade Iraq, and his shifting lies about the subject made the point for me.

Further, we can see from the progress in Iraq (or lack of it...) just how successful Bush's "six-shooter diplomacy" has been. His actions have further polarized the world and have done little to stabilize anything. Arguably, Bush's pugilistic approach to world affairs has done little more than guarantee that organizations like Hezbollah and al Qaeda will continue to find more fertile grounds in which to put down their roots - for they thrive in the shadows and rubble of conflict.

Or perhaps, when Bush moralizes about the evils that Hezbollah and others perpetrate, we should reflect upon his support of torture - done by either his people or others; the legal limbo of "not-quite-POWs" he's created; pseudo-courts rigged to achieve a political outcome rather than justice; or the myriad international treaties he has blithely ignored in the prosecution of his wars.

Bush The Peace Broker

So, I see the oh-so-insightful "Dubya" has decided to set foot in the Middle East to promote his ideas as to how to achieve peace in the region.

Off the top, he's made two mistakes that are apt to be fatal to any hopes of making real progress before the end of 2008.

First is starting his Middle East visit in Israel. While I'm sure the Israeli government loves it, with the United States still prosecuting war in Iraq, Afghanistan and threatening same to Iran, one might imagine that the Arab states that are so crucial to any peace agreement in the region might look upon this as a signal of Bush's intentions.

The second comes out of a speech he gave in Israel:

“Our two nations both faced great challenges when they were founded,” Bush said in remarks at Ben Gurion International Airport. “And our two nations have both relied on the same principles to help us succeed. We built strong democracies to protect the freedoms given to us by an almighty God ... and we built an enduring alliance to confront terrorists and tyrants.”

Religion and faith are very important in that part of the world - but they are also extremely polarizing topics. It is unwise indeed to walk into the region as an obvious outsider and then start making grandiose pronouncements about supposedly shared aspects of faith with any one party.

There is no party in the Arab-Israeli dispute that is either blameless or noble in their conduct.

The Palestinians have responded to Israel with riots, suicide bombers and random rocket attacks from within their "territories". Hardly a happy moment for the Israelis.

On the other hand, trying to "wall in" the Palestinians and use highly restrictive border zones with them is divisive and many liken the situation on the West Bank to a seige of days past - not exactly a situation which is going to make the Palestinians and their Arab allies happy either.

Waltzing into the region and starting off by not only flaunting the close relationship with the White House that Israel enjoys, but also a faith tradition that is seen by many in the Arab world as being at odds with their values puts Bush into a position of having little or no real credibility with the key power brokers outside of Israel.

Having Israel "on side" is unquestionably important, but failing to have the various power brokers on the other side of the discussion feeling that you respect them as well puts Bush into a position of having no practical ability to effect change or even the most basic of consensus.

It Does Little To Change My Opinions

In spite of the efforts to sanitize Guantanamo Bay and the prisoners held there, it's clear enough to me that the entire model that BushCo cooked up when they decided to use Guantanamo Bay for holding their prisoners remains not only legally dubious, but morally and ethically vile as well.

The simple fact is that the American government has had neither the honesty to call these people what they are - Prisoners of War (POWs), or to charge them with actual crimes and bear the consequences of attempting to apply US criminal law to events that happened halfway around the world from the USA.

Besides the obvious jurisdictional problems that attempting to apply US legal codes in foreign lands presents, the harsh reality is that the American government likely could not assemble sufficient evidence to make their claims against the detainees stand up in a court of law.

If they were to be honest, and declare them to be POWs, the United States would have to admit that they were engaged in a war, but then the problem becomes just as sticky for the Americans because the first question would be "who is the enemy?" - something which BushCo knows it cannot answer in terms that would satisfy the Geneva conventions that the USA is signatory to. It would also recognize a fairly broad set of rights as being applicable to the Guantanamo detainees that are currently vigorously denied.

However, the US has created a "double damnation" problem for itself. Not only is it unlikely that any body will ever hold the Guantanamo Bay trials being planned to be valid expressions of any understandable legal construct, but the the vast majority of the detainees held there today are now in something of a legal limbo - their home countries do not acknowledge them as citizens, and the US and its allies refuse to consider these people as refugees or other forms of civilian war casualty.

Given the conditions that the Americans have kept these people under, I can appreciate that there would be some reluctance to simply turn them loose in American civil society - it's a little bit of a "Tiger By The Tail" moment, and that isn't something that any of use really want to experience. However, that problem is a direct result of American ham-handedness in the entire affair, and it is now up to the American government to negotiate with other countries to find a home for captives who are arguably victims of American foreign policy in the first place.

Any "criminal trial" held at Guantanamo Bay is unjustifiable. Not only is the Bush Administration concocting a "judicial system" here based not upon any sense of reasoned law, instead they are dependent upon political expediency that puts them in an ever precarious position - for not only are the charges themselves (those few that have been laid) questionable (How can someone who is a participant in a "non-war" be held accountable for "war crimes"? If these people are "war criminals", then by definition they are held as "prisoners of war" - oh wait - that means they might actually have rights that can and should be measured...

No matter what steps the US takes to convince us that they are "looking after" the detainees at Guantanamo Bay "well", they are still holding people in a legal no man's land that is unconscionable - no matter how "humane" the conditions are.

So, Mr. Bernier, Is WaterBoarding Torture or not?

So, a manual which lists Guano Bay as a potential site of torture is "wrong" according to Maxime Bernier?

Really? So, just what is "waterboarding" if it is not torture, Maxime?

Or are you adopting the insane perspective of Rachel Marsden and other Bush apologists? (Notably, Marsden's writings are so clinically insane that The Sun Media group dropped her like a hot potato)

As if I really needed more reason to believe that Harper and his gang are taking their orders from the Whitehouse.

Just to be clear about Harper's Foreign Policy

Shorter version: tokhe straav' Willing slave.

For those less familiar with the Star Trek Universe, would someone care to provide another explanation for Maxine Bernier's sudden appearance in Israel so close on the heels of Bush's "where's my legacy" Tour in Israel.

Once again, we are treated to the Harper regime parroting the Bush administration line:

"We will need to see demonstrable progress in (peace) negotiations by both sides, as well as progress in Palestinian democratic reforms," Bernier said after meeting with the Palestinian Authority's foreign minister, Riad Malki.

Fascinating, when Bush met with the Palestinian leadership:

"I am confident, with proper help, the state of Palestine will emerge. I am confident the status quo is unacceptable, Mr. President, and we want to help you."

The White House later said that Bush intends to return to the Middle East "at least once and maybe more" over the next year.

Of course, we don't hear so much as "boo" out of the Harperettes about Israel's conduct, do we?

Of course, I'm sure we'll shortly start hearing out of Ottawa the threat of Iran, after all, Iran's busily arming the Taliban, right? (BTW - somehow, I suspect that trying to start a third war in the region with Iran is not going to lend the aura of success to Bush's efforts to "achieve peace" in the Israel/Palestine conflict - it somewhat undermines any credibility on the part of the United States.

"Willing Slave" - to the whim of the Bush Whitehouse - what a lovely prospect.

George W. Bush is Today's Churchill?

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. When we start seeing drivel like Rachel Marsden's column in the Toronto Sun, you know that we are dredging the bottom of the intellectual swamp.

For Bush's critics to have to admit that his vision has even caught on in France would likely be too much to take.

George W. Bush is the Winston Churchill of our time. Don't see it? Keep an eye on that rear-view mirror.

Myopia and simplistic ideology are absolutely the two easiest political stances to adopt. George Bush represents both in spades.

However, it isn't the end of Marsden's column that is so pathetic, it is her rabid defense of right-wing extremism in politics (especially US politics) that is particularly revolting:

Poor GOP Senator Joe McCarthy was persecuted and vilified for audaciously suggesting the U.S. government was rife with communist spies at its highest level. Now that the VENONA Project has successfully decoded encrypted Soviet communications, we know his assessment was bang-on.

Yes, let's consider McCarthy for a moment. It was his "investigations that created an era of fear and oppression the waves of which are still rippling through society today. Just as the US no doubt had its "moles" lurking in the Kremlin doing their business, most sane people would have expected the USSR to have moles in the Washington D.C. corridors as well. Investigating such prospects is admirable and valid. Using that same supposition to vilify people (McCarthy went after homosexuals with a unique degree of paranoia and viciousness) is not admirable or valid.

Ronald Reagan hit a 42% approval rating in 1983, as unemployment peaked prior to his visionary Reaganomics policy kicking in. When he died, you'd think the previously critical liberal media had spent a lifetime partying with the guy.

Yes, trickle-down economics was such a smashing success, wasn't it. While I realize that the neocon crowd idolize both Thatcher and Reagan, that doesn't necessarily mean that they are above reproach. Reagan's economic policies were a disaster for people at the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum. Reagan's policies were also the beginning of the explicit undermining and devaluing of publicly-funded education in the United States. The price of that is only just becoming apparent with now a full generation reaching adulthood with significant deficits in their education.

She goes on to snidely dismiss Jimmy Carter's Nobel Peace Laureate as follows:

Even president Jimmy Carter -- who let American hostages rot in Iran for 444 days and was drop-kicked from office with a 39% approval rating that year -- went on to win a Nobel Prize for his, um, efforts.

Of course, she ignores Carter's ongoing activity after his presidency, as well as the fact that he actually did rather more constructive foreign policy work than most presidents do.

She claims that the events which will make "Dubya" great in history are things like executing Saddam Hussein, and other events in Iraq:

Sammon, a registered Independent who brings the usually foreign concept of fairness to journalism, also suggests that events like the execution of Saddam Hussein and the capture of al-Qaida's Abu Musab al-Zarqawi -- the man largely responsible for triggering sectarian violence in Iraq -- will eventually loom larger in retrospect than, for example, Dick Cheney shooting his pal during a hunting trip.

I disagree. Cheney shooting his friend during a hunting trip is perhaps the perfect metaphor for the Bush Administration. In their desperate desire to rush into an unnecessary, and arguably illegal war in Iraq the Bush Administration shot the American people with their own gun. The ongoing costs of that war have resulted in the biggest deficits a US government has ever experienced, and now threaten not only to devalue the US dollar further, but could easily provoke an economic collapse.

As important as history is, you do not run a country by looking backwards, any more than you drive a car through the rearview mirror. Bush has done both, and worse, has repeated the mistakes of the past - the world is just waiting for the off-screen sound of crashing bits.