The best adjective for Bush

Are there any people left in this country who think it is so bad in the White House that things cannot get any worse?

If you are out there, people, please take note that things just got much worse. Again.

This time Bush the Decider is asking for one hundred and ninety billion more dollars to continue funding the US military presence in the middle of the vicious Sunni-Shia civil war that he birthed in Iraq. That's $190,000,000,000.00. That is to say, $190 billion dollars.

The other day someone in the media--I cannot remember who it was--encapsulated this president very succinctly: George W. Bush is delusional.

According to Merriam Webster, delusion is a persistent false psychotic belief regarding the self or persons or objects outside the self that is maintained despite indisputable evidence to the contrary.

Enough said. But not nearly enough done.

Let the impeachment process begin.

For oil and staying in power

Hundreds of thousands of us, more likely millions of us, told George W. Bush way before March 19, 2003 not to attack Iraq. (My original bumper sticker is still in good shape: ATTACK IRAQ? NO! Later I added STOP THE OIL WAR!)

3,787 American deaths and possibly a million Iraqi deaths later, Bush remains as stubborn as ever, and the blood continues to flow every day. The Decider refuses to admit that he laid the groundwork for this horrendous civil war, and he raves on and on about "victory."

Today was perhaps the Democrats' last chance under Bush to throw a monkey wrench into the Iraq war machine -- by getting enough votes to give the troops as much time to rest at home as they spend in the middle of the inferno. But Republicans who had provided hope for a majority vote chickened out. (One would think that, with even Allan Greenspan admitting this is a war for oil, they would find some guts.)

Clear-sighted analysts point out that you can bet those same Republicans will change their tune once the spring primary elections are over. They must keep their warmongering base happy till voting time, so morality will just have to wait and more young lives will have to be sacrificed.

Thus do empires crumble.

Pocketed by The Decider

It is crystal clear. George W. Bush lied and began an immoral, illegal war that has turned into a ferocious civil war in a non-country that is really three countries. Because of his decisions, 3,774 Americans and countless Iraqis, possibly over a million, have already lost their lives.

The Decider has presided over a system that has spurned the Geneva Conventions Against Torture and clandestinely carried out Extraordinary Rendition, the extrajudicial transporting of prisoners to secret jails around the world. He has tried to nullify Habeas Corpus. With our country in health care crisis, schools deteriorating, and 160,000 bridges needing maintenance, Bush is pouring $1 billion every three days into the Iraq quagmire, even as Osama Bin Laden continues to plot over in Pakistan. It is crystal clear that Bush has created a hellish debacle like none other in our history. It is foreign policy gone mad.

With the picture so clear, how can it be that a highly respected General Petraeus and a highly experienced Ambassador Crocker have let themselves be tucked into Bush's pockets? Probably nobody is surprised, but multitudes must be painfully saddened.

Tomorrow night on national TV, Bush will rev up the spin machine. He'll talk about bringing some troops home - the ones who were going to come home soon anyway. Democrats had better respond not with any more fuzzy words but with loud energy, putting a lot of pressure on conscientious Republicans to cross the aisle and produce veto-proof legislation that cuts off the money flow and starts the withdrawal of troops right now.

This miserable presidency

It looks like we will have to live under this miserable presidency for another 16 months. There is not the congressional courage to impeach Bush and Cheney. In the meantime, the media has been going on endlessly about senatorial solicitation of airport sex instead of really honing in on White House dishonesty about Iraq, including the demonstrable failure of the "surge."

Much of the latest hype is about tribal chiefs who used to shoot at US soldiers and now are helping to fight Al Qaeda. (This is Sunni against Sunni.) Whether or not these new converts start shooting at US soldiers again, the fact remains that most of the blood in Iraq flows from Shia killing Sunni and Sunni killing Shia in their civil war.

Bush continues to be the prince of distraction, most recently getting headlines by telling troops in Iraq that he just might be able to bring some troops home before long. This is cruelty, pure and simple. Anyone with open eyes and an operational brain knows that Bush wants to keep this war going and hand it over to his successor in January 2009.

The lies seem eternal, going back to the WMD and Iraq-behind-9/11 hoaxes. The latest whopper is that he (The Decider) and Cheney did not really want to dismantle Saddam's army and send all those young guys into the streets with no job. The record clearly says otherwise.

Next week Bush's man Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker will bring home their much vaunted report. They are the writers. Guess who is the editor. It will make no difference; everybody knows that the funeral processions will continue.