Fiasco

AP: A man looks after two young Iraqi boys wounded from a
suicide car bomb blast, Monday, July 24, 2006, in Samarra,
95 kilometers (60 miles) north of Baghdad, Iraq.



BBC News:

Neither man talked about failure, nor were
they likely to, but that was the subtext to the
meeting between US President George W Bush
and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki.

The security operation in Baghdad, which the
Iraqi leader launched six weeks ago - and which
Mr Bush had endorsed during his unannounced
visit to the Iraqi capital last month - has not
produced results.

Or, more accurately, it has produced the wrong
ones.

The upsurge in sectarian violence which has
coincided with the crackdown, has seen the
Iraqi civilian death toll rise to about 100 per
day.

It’s a good thing we’re blessed with a president who is
so very concerned with protecting innocent human life.

And yet, I tend to agree with Wolcott’s belief that when
the dust finally clears -- if anyone’s still alive -- history
will not be kind to President Bush, or to us for that matter.

The war crimes of the United States compound
by the minute, the hour, the day. I predict that
George Bush, upon leaving office, will be the
most despised president in American history. He
will have his core support, the clotted, stunted
brains that collect at sites like Lucianne.com and
Powerline, but he will enjoy no Reaganesque
orange sunset afterglow (or Nixonian self-
rehabilitation), so deep, lasting, and tragic is the
damage he's done, a damage abetted by a
craven, corrupt political class and a press that
even now, as the full dimensions of the disaster
unfold before us, is unable to sound alarm, so
accustomed as they've become to their role as
sponges and clever snots. History will not
forgive Bush or the United States, nor should it,
for raising and destroying the hopes of the Iraqi
people, and presiding over the dissolution of
their nation into a failed state.

But as the great American philosopher Yogi Berra once
said, “It gets late early around here.” Perhaps we won’t
have to wait so long for history's judgment after all.