How Bush Can Change The World In 365 Days

Two stories examining what President Bush hopes to, and could realistically, achieve in his final year in office. It really all comes down to this, his last year in the White House. Will Bush be remembered for helping to plunge the world into the fourth great global conflict of the past century, or will his legacy become that of a visionary leader who defied much of the world, and most of his own people, to change the world for the better?

The first piece is from the Los Angeles Times (excerpts) :

One year from today, the next president of the United States will take the oath of office. If history is any guide, for the next 365 days, President Bush is likely to be one of the lamest ducks in history. Deeply unpopular, mired in the fifth year of war in Iraq and presiding over an economy slipping toward recession, he will be given no quarter by the Democratic-controlled Congress whose powers he has consistently sought to crimp. But history must not be permitted to circumscribe what Bush and Congress could yet accomplish. Both must reject the election-year paralysis that has become a self-defeating political tradition.

Lame-duck years typically feature torpor broken by last-ditch presidential foreign policy initiatives, usually unsuccessful. This year, the world faces problems far too serious to shelve for 12 months in deference to the American political calendar.

The seizure of highly enriched uranium in the Republic of Georgia last year proves once again that the most likely source for terrorists to obtain nuclear weapons materiel isn't Pakistan or Iran, at least not yet. It's Russia, which has secured only about half of its nuclear materiel. To its credit, the Bush administration has embraced the Global Threat Reduction Initiative to secure such materiel overseas, but at the current pace, it will take 15 years to complete the job. Experts say it can be done in four or five years. And it must.

Amazingly, there is no senior official in the U.S. whose sole responsibility is to prevent nuclear terrorism. Bureaucracies being what they are, it's essential that one person coordinate efforts and be accountable. Bush could appoint a White House deputy national security advisor for preventing nuclear terrorism. Best of all, he wouldn't even need congressional approval.

Bush could do his country and his legacy a big favor by closing the detention center that has become an international symbol of U.S. injustice. Terrorism suspects should be indicted and transferred to prisons such as Ft. Leavenworth, repatriated or released.

The second piece is from the Washington Post (excerpts) :

With one year left in the White House, Bush is trying to turn the normal plight of a lame-duck president to his advantage in an effort to salvage his foreign-policy legacy -- not only seeking an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal but also attempting to stabilize Iraq, isolate Iran and curb North Korea's nuclear ambitions.

...Bush's power to sway world events during his final months in the White House is dwindling, along with his political influence at home. While polite and warm to the president in their private meetings and phone conversations, the world's leaders are making their own calculations: Should they work with Bush, or are they better off waiting him out in favor of an unknown president in 2009?

Those deliberations differ from country to country and hinge on who foreign officials believe might be the next occupant of the Oval Office. Some leaders -- such as Olmert, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki -- appear to have strong political incentives to work with Bush during his final year. Others, in places such as North Korea or Iran, or even in friendly nations interested in progress on global warming, may be playing for time, hopeful that a new U.S. president might be more responsive to their concerns.

....Bush and his advisers left the region believing they made some headway in convincing officials that the president will use his final year in office to make progress on key issues such as Iraq and Iran. With a new administration likely to accelerate a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, this might be the last year for the Maliki government to push toward political reconciliation with U.S. protection.

While heartened by the administration's new vigor in trying to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, others in the region believe the new engagement from the administration -- after seven years of allowing problems to fester, in their view -- is a case of too little, too late.

Bush spent much of his Middle East trip trying to address such perceptions, acknowledging them in an interview in Riyadh last week with some of the reporters who accompanied him. "After years of disappointment," he said, "those of us directly involved in the process have a lot of work to try to instill confidence in the people."

But however Bush changes the world the world for the better, or for the worst, most Americans will remember him for what he did to his own country during his time in the White House, and how he handled the great dramas of the past decade : 9/11, the Iraq War, the 'War on Terror', Hurricane Katrina and the immolation of the American economy.

Bush is likely to leave the White House, one year from now, as one of the most unpopular and controversial American presidents in history.

One year is not enough to repair the damage of his NeoCon-infected vision for changing the world, or to renew the faith of Americans who feel so utterly betrayed by the Iraq War and the endless lies and controversies that have poisoned and fouled his eight years in the White House.

Bush : "I'm A Peacemaker, Not A Warmonger"

President Bush's first visit to Saudi Arabia is primarily so he can seal the deal on a remarkable $20 billion arms sale. All the rest is mostly fluff and photo opps. Bush won't get down on his knees and beg the Saudis to ramp up oil production to get the price at the pumps to fall, Bush is an oil man himself, and oil men don't beg. They particularly don't beg in front of each other.

Despite overseeing some of the biggest arms and weapons deals in history, Bush insists he's "not a warmonger". Most Saudis, most Palestinians, most people anywhere, find this hard to believe.

But Bush keeps on signing that same tune. As he's said before, sometimes you have to keep repeating the propaganda to try and make it stick in peoples' minds.

From ABC News :

In Riyadh....the president participated in a traditional sword dance with one of the princes of the royal family. It was a public, and a little awkward, display of affection, all part of Bush's first visit to Saudi Arabia aimed at repairing strained relations between the world's biggest oil producer and the world's biggest oil consumer.

The president sat down with "Nightline" co-anchor Terry Moran at one of the vast royal palaces, and it became clear who holds the cards right now in the oil markets, with the price up near $100 a barrel.

The president, who once said he'd "jawbone" Saudi leaders into lowering prices, told Moran what he intended to say to King Abdullah on the topic in their meeting.

"I will say to him that, 'If it's possible, your majesty, consider what high prices is doing to one of your largest customers,'" Bush said. "In other words, the worst thing that can happen to an oil-producing nation is that the price of oil causes the economy to slow down, because that will inevitably lead to fewer purchases [of oil]."

Bush said he's worried about an economic slowdown in the United States and around the world because of those high oil prices.

"These are smart people. They know that the price of oil can affect our economy, and they know that if our economy weakens and there's less purchasing power that it will affect their ability to sell barrels of oil."

Today, however, Saudi Oil Minister Ali Naimi said that Saudi Arabia would allow market forces to dictate oil production and prices. "We will raise production when the market justifies it," he said. "This is our policy."

When Bush took office, the United States imported just about 53 percent of its oil. Today, that number stands at 60 percent.

"That's why I've got these alternative energy projects going on that I think will make a difference," the president said. "They don't make a difference in the short term because we're talking about actually beginning to encourage people to change habits, such as using ethanol. And we're also not exploring for oil and gas in our own country like we should be."

The president acknowledged that he had something to prove on this trip.

"I do, but it's not so much to prove for my sake. It's really to prove for peace," he said. "And I believe the time is right to push for a Palestinian state. The time is right because there's an Israeli leader who understands that and a Palestinian leader who understands that."

The president said he believes it is the right time to renew the Israeli-Palestinian peace process because "the environment has changed," both with the leaders involved and the support of the Arab world.

"It's going to be tough," the president said, but he believes that by the end of his term in office there will be a deal for a Palestinian state.

When asked whether that deal would address "core issues," for the first time the president said, "I do believe so."

"I have talked to these leaders face to face," he said. "I have asked them point blank, 'Do you understand how difficult these issues are?' Yes. 'Are you prepared to make the painful political compromises?' They say they are."

Despite that optimism, the president also said that he feels misunderstood in the Middle East.

"My image [is] 'Bush wants to fight Muslims.' And, yes, I'm concerned about it. Not because of me, personally. I'm concerned because I want most people to understand the great generosity and compassion of Americans," he said.

"I'm sure people view me as a warmonger and I view myself as peacemaker," the president said. "They view me as so pro-Israeli I can't be open-minded about Palestinian peace, and yet I'm the only president ever to have articulated a two-state solution. And you just have to fight through stereotypes by actions."

The president said he hopes to change that image by opening a dialogue and letting "the results speak for themselves."

"I mean, when this democracy in Iraq solidifies and emerges and is whole, people will understand what I meant about the democracy agenda. People will know that my view is not American democracy, but it's freedom based upon certain principles that honors the traditions and culture of the host country."

Bush said despite Saudi Arabia's connection to some of the Sept. 11 hijackers and terrorism ideology in general, he views the Saudis as "our friends." He spoke of meeting with Saudi entrepreneurs and business leaders during his trip who worry that Americans view them as enemies, not friends.

"There's a lot of really good people here," Bush said. "Look, you can't deny the fact that some, a majority, of the terrorists came from Saudi, but you should not condemn an entire society based upon the actions of a handful of killers."

The president stressed the importance of fostering business connections and cultural and education exchanges between the two countries.

"If Americans are concerned about U.S. perceptions in the Middle East, the best way to defeat that perception is through opening up our colleges and universities," he said. "And I believe we can make sure that, as best as we can, terrorists don't come to our country, and at the same time, be more open."

The president said he was surprised by the "deep concern that people won't welcome Middle-Eastern investments into the United States. & And I found that in most of my stops, not the Israeli-Palestinian stops, of course, but in the Gulf, I found that to be the case. And it's disturbing to me."

The president says he still believes that freedom and democracy are possible in the region, and will ultimately be the way to bring an end to terrorism against the United States.

"Look, I know I've been accused of being a hopeless idealist. On the other hand, I don't see any alternative, if you believe it's an ideological struggle."

"The way to protect America in the short term is to use our intelligence services to find [terrorists] and bring them to justice. In the long term is to offer a better alternative than the status quo, or societies that don't give people their rightful place, or societies that don't listen to the demands of people."

"And so the freedom agenda is absolutely essential. And the freedom agenda doesn't develop in one man's term of office. It takes a while. My job is to plant the seeds. [The] truth of the matter is that freedom is advancing quite amazingly in the Middle East."

"The other thing is, if I could be perfectly blunt about it, I think people who say we can be free, but you shouldn't be, are elitist," the president added.

The president said that "elections themselves represent freedom," even when they put in power leaders who are against the interest of the United States.

At the same time, the president defended his support of undemocratic regimes in countries such as Saudi Arabia.

"The American president doesn't come and lecture somebody. The American president develops a relationship where he can work with somebody. And as I told you, his majesty is, he is modernizing his society. Is it going to meet somebody's standards sitting in Washington, D.C.? Probably not overnight. Can it eventually? Yes. And for us to say that you can't have a democracy if you've got a king is just not right."

During his trip, the president visited the Mount of the Beatitudes where, by tradition, Jesus is understood to have said the words, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God."

When asked to respond to the fact that many Americans do not view him as a peacemaker, the president replied, "We'll see what history says. I happen to believe that the actions I've taken were necessary to protect ourselves and lay the foundation for peace. That's what I believe. But history...I've often said this...I don't think the history of my administration is going to be written during your time as a newscaster, or my time on Earth. I believe that it's going to take a while for people to determine whether or not the foundation of peace has truly been laid."

Bush Quietly Advises Hillary Clinton On Iraq War And 'War On Terror'

Bush Says His White House Successor Will Find Gitmo And The War On Iraq "Necessary"

The War On Iraq will not end if Hillary Clinton is elected POTUS at the end of next year, just as the War On Iraq came no closer to ending when the Democrats won the mid-term elections last year.

President Bush wants to make sure that Hillary Clinton knows, as if she didn't already know, that shutting down the War On Iraq will be bad news for the United States, and the political and business elite.

Remember Vietnam is the chant, and the Democrats are not only listening, they're already singing along :

President Bush is quietly providing back-channel advice to Hillary Rodham Clinton, urging her to modulate her rhetoric so she can effectively prosecute the war in Iraq if elected president.

In an interview for the new book “The Evangelical President,” White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten said Bush has “been urging candidates: ‘Don’t get yourself too locked in where you stand right now. If you end up sitting where I sit, things could change dramatically.’ ”

Bolten said Bush wants enough continuity in his Iraq policy that “even a Democratic president would be in a position to sustain a legitimate presence there.”

“Especially if it’s a Democrat,” the chief of staff told The Examiner in his West Wing office. “He wants to create the conditions where a Democrat not only will have the leeway, but the obligation to see it out.”

To that end, the president has been sending advice, mostly through aides, aimed at preventing an abrupt withdrawal from Iraq in the event of a Democratic victory in November 2008.

“It’s different being a candidate and being the president,” Bush said in an Oval Office interview. “No matter who the president is, no matter what party, when they sit here in the Oval Office and seriously consider the effect of a vacuum being created in the Middle East, particularly one trying to be created by al Qaeda, they will then begin to understand the need to continue to support the young democracy.”

To that end, Bush is institutionalizing controversial anti-terror programs so they can be used by the next president.

“Look, I’d like to make as many hard decisions as I can make, and do a lot of the heavy lifting prior to whoever my successor is,” Bush said. “And then that person is going to have to come and look at the same data I’ve been looking at, and come to their own conclusion.”

As an example, Bush cited his detainee program, which allows him to keep enemy combatants imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay while they await adjudication. Bush is unmoved by endless criticism of the program because he says his successor will need it.

“I specifically talked about it so that a candidate and/or president wouldn’t have to deal with the issue,” he said. “The next person has got the opportunity to analyze the utility of the program and make his or her decision about whether or not it is necessary to protect the homeland. I suspect they’ll find that it is necessary. But my only point to you is that it was important for me to lay it out there, so that the politics wouldn’t enter into whether or not the program ought to survive beyond my period.”

The Examiner asked Bush why Democratic candidates such as Clinton and Barack Obama, who routinely lambaste his handling of Iraq, should take his advice.

“First of all, I expect them to criticize me. That’s one way you get elected in the Democratic primary, is to criticize the president,” Bush replied. “I don’t expect them to necessarily take advice from me. I would expect their insiders to at least get a perspective about how we see things.”

He added: “We have an obligation to make sure that whoever is interested, they get our point of view, because you want somebody running for president to at least understand all perspectives, apart from the politics.”

Vice President Dick Cheney was philosophical about the possibility of a Democratic president fundamentally reversing the policies that he and Bush have worked so hard to implement in Iraq.

“It’s the nature of the business, in a sense,” he shrugged during an interview in his West Wing office. “I mean, you get two terms. We were fortunate to get two terms. And I think we’ll increasingly see a lot of emphasis on deciding who the next occupant of the Oval Office is going to be.”

The War On Iraq will not end, regardless of who is elected president in 2008.

History Will Not Be Kind To President Bush

In twelve months, a new government will be elected in the United States. Only a few weeks later, President Bush will leave the White House and his controversial, history changing administration will come an end. Many Americans will obviously be very grateful, and happy, when that day comes.

With only 400 or so days left in power, President Bush is searching for a legacy, a final mission that will mark the end of his administration with a gleam of major success. A final peace between Israel and Palestine was one of Bush's dream, and while the Annnapolis talks currently underway may provide yet more routes on the roadmap, they are unlikely to be judged a great success.

Freedom for Iraq, and the spread of democracy across the Middle East was the key goal, according to Bush, of his two terms of presidency.

Bush will leave the White House with Iraq and the Middle East in a state of chaos. The early histories will claim that Bush failed to bring a lasting peace to the Middle East, but Bush himself claims that future decades will judge him more kindly.

Acclaimed historian, Professor David Kennnedy, believes historians in the decades to come will be even more harsh on Bush than the 2009 and 2010 histories of his presidency will turn out to be. Kennedy says the loss of American moral authority will one of the more lasting legacies of Bush in the White House.

From ABC Radio :

Q : ....polls show that America's moral authority around the world has been damaged post-September 11, and also your own domestic opinion polls show that many Americans disapprove of their President. Are there any comparisons in history, points at which America's reputation in the world has been at a low but it's bounced back?

DAVID KENNEDY: Well, I suppose there's some kind of a parallel in the Vietnam era, in which the same phenomenon, both aspects of the same phenomenon were manifest. That is to say both majorities of the American public and public opinion around the world at large turned very sharply against the United States as the Vietnam War went on, but the country managed to put that episode behind it, by and large, and get on with things through the decades of the 70s and the 80s and the 90s.

The damage that we've done to our moral authority and our legitimacy as an international citizen I think, in my own view again right now, is probably even more severe than it was in the 1960s, in the Vietnam era, but I'm hopeful that we can find our way out of this.

Q: You mentioned the way that America was able to bounce back after Vietnam. Are there any lessons that the next administration in the US can take from administrations that were running the country in that era, in terms of trying to get their own bounce back happening now?

DAVID KENNEDY: Well, yes, absolutely. I mean if you remember the way that President Nixon and Secretary of State, Kissinger, found the exit from Vietnam was by deepening their relationship with the two great communist states of that era, China and the Soviet Union.

So, in a sense, the United States embraced a kind of multilateralism and normal diplomacy with its two principal adversaries as a way of finishing the Vietnam episode, and I think something like that, there won't be an exact parallel, but some way for the United States to find its way back to multilateral relationships, to sharing power.

Q: You once wrote that history tends to reduce people to one sentence - 'Washington founded the nation', 'Lincoln freed the slaves and preserved the union', 'Churchill saved Europe'. What will Bush's one sentence be?

DAVID KENNEDY: Actually, that formula is not original with me. I was quoting Claire Booth Luce. But it's a very good way to think about this kind of thing, and I think George Bush's sentence will probably be something like, 'He vastly overreacted, indeed virtually panicked, in the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks and took the United States on a unilateralist course of foreign policy that seriously undermined the multilateral and mutualistic kinds of institutions the United States had done so much to build after World War II'.

Now, that's a pretty long-winded sentence (laughs), but you get the idea.

Karl Rove : Bush Legacy Will Be A Bright And Shining Light...Or Something

As one of his last acts of official loyalty to BushCo. Karl Rove has written a gushing, dripping editorial defending the Bush administration policies he helped cook up and implement and spin to a confusing muddle of facts and fiction, and attempts to claim that the Bush legacy will something historians will praise and hold up as an example of how to...

I can't do it. I can't sum up Rove's spectacular twaddle.

You just have to read it to for yourself, if you can stomach it :

I believe history will provide a more clear-eyed verdict on this president’s leadership than the anger of current critics would suggest.

President Bush will be viewed as a far-sighted leader who confronted the key test of the 21st century.

He will be judged as a man of moral clarity who put America on wartime footing in the dangerous struggle against radical Islamic terrorism.

Following the horrors of 9/11, this president changed American foreign policy by declaring terror sponsors responsible for the deeds of those they shelter, train, and fund. America, he said, will not wait until dangers fully materialize with attacks on our homeland before confronting those threats.

The president gave the nation new tools to defeat terrorism abroad and protect our citizens at home with the Patriot Act, foreign surveillance that works in the wireless age, a transformed intelligence community, and the Department of Homeland Security.

And this president saw the wisdom of removing terrorism’s cause by advocating the spread of democracy, especially in the Muslim world, where authoritarianism and repression have provided a potent growth medium for despair and anger aimed at the West. He recognized that democracy there makes us safer here.

President Bush will be seen as a compassionate leader who used America’s power for good.

History will see President Bush as a reformer who focused on modernizing important institutions.

He is concerned with fundamental change that will — among other goals — strengthen the ways our children are educated and health care is provided.

He will be seen as an innovative conservative thinker with a positive, optimistic agenda for action.

He will be recognized as a strong advocate of traditional values.

He advanced a culture of life where every child is protected and welcomed.

He supported traditional marriage when it came under attack from the courts. He sought to strengthen families and encourage personal responsibility.

The outcome in Iraq and Afghanistan will color how history views the president.

History’s concern is with final outcomes, not the missteps or advances of the moment. History will render a favorable verdict if the outcome in the Middle East is similar to what America saw after World War II.

Beyond his policies and actions, history will take the measure of the man.

I have known George W. Bush for nearly 34 years and have had the privilege of watching from nearby as history has placed its demands on him and our country. I know his humility and decency, his intelligence and thoughtfulness, his respect for every person he comes in contact with, his unwavering commitment to principle-based decision-making, and the quiet and compassionate hearts of the man and his graceful wife, Laura.

I have come to understand true leadership leans into the wind. It tackles big challenges with uncertain outcomes rather than taking on simple, sure tasks. It does what is right, regardless of what the latest poll or focus group says.

History demands much of America and its leaders and I am confident it will judge the 43rd president as a man more than worthy of the great office the American people twice entrusted to him.

There's a fat ton of 'maybes' riding on Rove's final declaration of how history will view President Bush, in decades or a century to come. So very many 'maybes'.


Go Here For The Full Rove Editorial From The National Review

Cheney : Bush Will Be Remembered Fondly...When He's Dead

Dick Cheney was interviewed by Larry King over the weekend, and spoke about the all important Bush legacy, and his own duties as vice president in backing the president, to the hilt.

From Raw Story :

President George W. Bush will be remembered fondly on his deathbed.

Vice President Dick Cheney appeared to deliver that message on CNN's Larry King Live Tuesday night. When asked if he should take the President's poor poll numbers more seriously, Cheney pointed to the administration of Gerald Ford, in which he also served. Ford, who replaced Richard Nixon after his resignation from the Watergate scandal, was remembered well after his death.

"[J]ust last year, when he passed away and we had memorial services and so forth for him, he was held in very high regard; across the country his praises were sung for some of the really tough decisions he made that were very unpopular at the time," Cheney insisted.

The Vice President's paralleling of Bush's 6 1/2 years with Ford's abbreviated succession into a disgraced presidency stood out in the pre-recorded interview, in which a largely defiant Cheney stood by his decisions and acknowledged little error or wrongdoing.

Cheney attempted to insist that as Vice Presidents have gone, he was more modest because he was not 'angling' for future elected office.

"I made the decision when I signed on with the President that the only agenda I would have would be his agenda, that I was not going to be like most Vice Presidents," he told King. "And that was angling, trying to figure out how I was going to be elected President when his term was over with."

Top Republican Senator Tells Bush : The Iraq War Has F..ked Your Legacy

Warns "Fur Is Going Fly" In Republican Ranks Over The War

It's not just President Bush who exhibits a disturbing focus on the legacy he will leave behind once his reign in the White House is over, even while hundreds of American soldiers are being killed and wounded in Iraq every month.

Republican senator George Voinovich has told White House svengali Karl Rove that Bush must pull together a workable plan to get American troops out of Iraq, or his legacy will be left in ruins.

He told CNN that he had given a clear warning to Rove that :

“The president is a young man and should think about his legacy.”

He should know history will not be kind unless he can come up with a plan that protects the troops and stabilizes the region,” Voinovich said he told Karl Rove, whom Bush dubbed “the architect” of his 2004 re-election.

Voinovich added that other Republicans are close to speaking out against the President’s current strategy.

“I won’t mention anyone’s name. But I have every reason to believe that the fur is going to start to fly, perhaps sooner than what they may have wanted.”

In private, Voinovich is more blunt, using a profanity to describe the White House’s handling of Iraq by charging the administration “f—ed up” the war.

“I got into this to get them to move, and they’re moving,” said Voinovich, who is pushing for the president to put together a workable plan for withdrawing U.S. troops that will be ready in time for a September progress report on the military surge from Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq.

And while Voinovich is giving the White House some breathing space until September to receive the progress report from Gen. Petraeus, the senator is privately warning if there’s not a dramatic new strategy ready to be unveiled in the fall, he will endorse a Democratic plan mandating a timeline for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq within 120 days.

His break with the White House came one day after another senior Republican, Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, delivered a dramatic Senate floor speech declaring the president’s current strategy was not working.

Not surprisingly, there is plenty of fury from commenters at the CNN blog, here, who vent their disgust that a Republican senator appears to be more concerned with how history will view President Bush, and his legacy, than he is about the constant death and mutilation of American soldiers in Iraq.

A war, by the way, that this Republican senator heartily endorsed in 2002, and continued to support until only very recently, when it became clear that going into the 2008 elections, with no end to the war in sight, would all but destroy the Republican Party.

Kristol : Bush Ain't So Bad

NeoCons Are "Breathlessly Idiotic" And More

Chief NeoCon operative, and 'journalist', William "The Bloody" Kristol wants Bush Co. to bomb the living hell out of Iran as one of president's final duties to the NeoCon cabal that got him elected and helped to keep in power through two terms.

As part of the price he must pay to get Bush to complete the current NeoCon agenda, Kristol is required to pay homage to the president, and get the idea out there that Bush really ain't so bad, and history will be much kinder to him than the vast majority of the world's media and more than 70% of Americans, who currently believe the president is a danger to the nation and more incompetent than Homer Simpson hepped up on goofballs.

Kristol wrote a semi-coherent editorial praising Bush, and claiming the War On Iraq is just about to get a whole lot better, but if he published it in NeoCon propaganda bible, The Weekly Standard, only a few thousand people would have read it.

Time Magazine, for whom Kristol miraculously managed to score an editorial gig, despite being wrong on virtually every prediction he's ever made about the War On Iraq and the War On Terror over the past five years, knew a blind, crippled dog of an editorial when they saw it.

Kristol couldn't get his 'Let's Praise Bush Before It's Too Late' piece up on Time, but the Washington Post, naturally, came to his rescue :

I suppose I'll merely expose myself to harmless ridicule if I make the following assertion: George W. Bush's presidency will probably be a successful one.

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.

And third, and most important, a war in Iraq that has been very difficult, but where -- despite some confusion engendered by an almost meaningless "benchmark" report last week -- we now seem to be on course to a successful outcome.

Interesting that Kristol counts what he believes to be a turn for the better in Iraq to be far more important than a healthy US economy and the fact that no successful terror attacks have occurred in the homeland since 9/11.

You can read Kristol's turd-polishing on Bush's economic genius and anti-terror fight for yourself, and attempt to comprehend why Kristol sees the stacking of the Supreme Court with conservative judges to be a cornerstone of the Bush double presidency for yourself.

Let's move onto Iraq :

Bush is a war president, and war presidents are judged by whether they win or lose their war. So to be a successful president, Bush has to win in Iraq.

Which I now think we can. Indeed, I think we will. In late 2006, I didn't think we would win, as Bush stuck with the failed Rumsfeld-Abizaid-Casey strategy of "standing down" as the Iraqis were able to "stand up," based on the mistaken theory that if we had a "small footprint" in Iraq, we'd be more successful. With the new counterinsurgency strategy announced on Jan. 10, backed up by the troop "surge," I think the odds are finally better than 50-50 that we will prevail. We are routing al-Qaeda in Iraq, we are beginning to curb the Iranian-backed sectarian Shiite militias and we are increasingly able to protect more of the Iraqi population.

Al Qaeda didn't not exist as a competent fighting force in Iraq until the country was already deep into a resistance against the coalition's occupying forces and riven with sectarian civil war. Even now, it is widely acknowledged by the CIA and the world's major intelligence agencies that Al Qaeda the smallest of the key agents of terrorism in Iraq, and may only claim a few hundred people, at most, as part of its fighting forces, and most of them are now believed to be from Saudi Arabia, a chief American ally.

As for protecting the Iraqi population - more than 100 Iraqis a day are killing fighting, terror attacks, executions and massacres, with hundreds more wounded.

Back to Kristol :

If we sustain the surge for a year and continue to train Iraqi troops effectively, we can probably begin to draw down in mid- to late 2008. The fact is that military progress on the ground in Iraq in the past few months has been greater than even surge proponents like me expected, and political progress is beginning to follow. Iran is a problem, and we will have to do more to curb Tehran's meddling -- but we can. So if we keep our nerve here at home, we have a good shot at achieving a real, though messy, victory in Iraq.

American forces will begin drawing down in mid-2008 because the US Army missed its recruiting targets for most of 2005 and 2006 and will run out of troops to deploy in the next nine months, even with some soldiers going back for fourth and fifth tours.

Back to "The Bloody" :

But can Bush maintain adequate support at home? Yes. It would help if the administration would make its case more effectively and less apologetically. It would help if Bush had more aides who believed in his policy, who understood that the war is winnable and who didn't desperately want to get back in (or stay in) the good graces of the foreign policy establishment.

But Bush has the good fortune of having finally found his Ulysses S. Grant, or his Creighton Abrams, in Gen. David H. Petraeus. If the president stands with Petraeus and progress continues on the ground, Bush will be able to prevent a sellout in Washington. And then he could leave office with the nation on course to a successful (though painful and difficult) outcome in Iraq. With that, the rest of the Middle East, where so much hangs in the balance, could start to tip in the direction of our friends and away from the jihadists, the mullahs and the dictators.

Following through to secure the victory in Iraq and to extend its benefits to neighboring countries will be the task of the next president. And that brings us to Bush's final test.

The truly successful American presidents tend to find vindication in, and guarantee an extension of their policies through, the election of a successor from their own party. Can Bush hand the presidency off to a Republican who will (broadly) continue along the path of his post-9/11 foreign policy...?

Sure.

Right. So the whole point of the piece was to pump the Republican chances of keeping control of the White House in 2008. That's optimism!

The Kristol formula for ultimate success for Bush is a simple one :

If Petraeus succeeds in Iraq, and a Republican wins in 2008, Bush will be viewed as a successful president.

I like the odds.

You're an idiot of mammothic proportions.

At the end of the Kristol's mind-boggling drivel, the Washington Post invited readers to comment.

As of this posting, more than 2500 readers had lodged their disgust, horror and shock at Kristol's mind-boggling attempt to spit-polish the president' appalling presidential record.

2500 comments is the largest amount of comments we've ever seen attached to any news story or editorial in the Western world media. This is probably not record-breaking, but it's definitely the most widely commented-on pro-Bush piece we've yet seen.

If you want to get an insight into the mind of Americans who read their news online, dip into the calvacade of comments here.

It's surprising just how few positive comments Kristol has attracted, considering part of the NeoCon propaganda campaign for all things Iraq, and Iran, is to get the message out to friends and allies to flood comment pages and message boards with 'On Message' comments.

The pure outrage and disgust that so many express at Kristol's turd-polishing antics is breath-taking, and disturbing. America is angry, and isn't holding back anymore.

Credit to the Washington Post that it allows so many commenters to claim that it is a mouthpiece for the CIA and/or the NeoCons, and that Kristol is a propagandist of the old-school Nazi kind.

No doubt even Kristol is shocked today by the outrage and pure hatred he has stirred up by simply trying to point out what he claims are the positive points of the Bush presidency, and why Bush may not go down in history as America's Worst President, or one of modern history's greatest monster.

Commenter at the Post, Kelletim, wins the award for the most outrageous, but partially truthful, comment we've ever seen posted on any major news site. Ever :

Neocons are all imbecilic, aging, wheezing syphilitic pathological creeps, dirty old men that smoke Cuban cigars and go on child sex slave vacations in third world nations while on oxycontin between snorting viagra and having secret affairs with gay sex workers.

When they're not spouting homophobic bullshit or writing breathlessly idiotic, fact free columns in major newspapers, clinking crystal tumblers brimming with $38,000 a bottle bourbon with the Skull and Bones / AEI classmates at grand elite socials, getting drunk and shooting people in the face, brazenly granting trillion dollar contracts to their former companies, raping teenaged boys in Texas Prisons, chronically sexually harrassing their female employees, they're out doing what they do best: ravaging the life savings of thousands of people and committing genocide.

All this while being ardently fawned over by the liberal media.

These revolting sub-human colostomatic shitbags of filth and perversion should all be in GITMO right now receiving sex changes from Cuban doctors, only to spend the rest of their lives as a drag show touring East African nations.

Now that's a comment. Kelletim's comment appears on page 241 of the Washington Post comments that follow Kristol's editorial. As he type this, the pages just expanded to 248 and counting.

Anything that Kristol wrote in 'Why Bush Will Be A Winner' that might have actually hit home with his critics has been thoroughly drowned in the hurricane of comments, many of which are more coherent, more precise and far more informative and interesting than anything Kristol was paid thousands of dollars to write.