A Billion Things I Hate (cont)

(The Bush Legacy Edition)

- The war in Iraq. When we invaded, I trusted Bush when he said that Iraq posed an immediate threat. When we discovered that there were no WMD's, we discovered that the administration was not only incompetent, but deceitful. This betrayal of the American Public's trust is unforgivable. The Iraq strategy in the early years was fatally flawed. From Abu Ghraib, to un-armored troops, to the mishandling of the insurgency, this was a complete and utter disaster. The US has no good options left. We have to clean-up the mess we made as best we can. But it is clear that we should never have been there in the first place.

- The failure to find Osama Bin Laden. This is the mastermind of 9/11. He needs to be caught. He needed to be caught 5 years ago. That he is still alive, let alone still free, is inexcusable.


- The devastation of New Orleans. Katrina was a terrible hurricane. But cities have been destroyed by hurricanes before. The difference in New Orleans was the lack of a proper response. This was a failure at all levels: city, state, and federal. The buck has to stop somewhere though, and it stops at the president. A slow and insufficient relief effort cost people their lives. "Heckava job."

- The failure to stop genocide in Darfur. The world stood idle and watched as hundreds of thousands of civilians were brutally massacred. All of the administration's lofty rhetoric about saving innocent Iraqis from a brutal dictator falls on deaf ears when that same administration is unwilling to save the Sudanese from the Janjaweit militia. This is shameful.

- The erosion of civil rights. How many examples do I need? Government wiretapping of American citizens, Guantanamo Bay, the Patriot Act, "enemy combatants," extraordinary rendition.... The list goes on and on. The United States is a free society, and the bedrock of any democracy is civil rights. The administration hands us the illusion of security in exchange for our freedom. The trade is never worth it.

- Alberto Gonzalez and the partisan DoJ hirings/firings. Justice should be blind. Under Alberto Gonzalez and the Bush administration, it wasn't.

- Dick Cheney and the expansion of the VP office. Cheney has wielded unprecedented power in his role as Vice President. But the blame is larger than a power-hungry VP, this was by design. The administration has expanded executive power to an alarming level. There is an old cliche that says, "power corrupts." This administration is living proof.

- The war on science. If the facts don't agree with the President, than the facts must be wrong? Nowhere was the administration's quarrel with reality more apparent than in the refusal to accept global warming as a scientific fact. They agree now, but we forget that for the first few years of the presidency, the administration was arguing that a)It might not be happening and b)If it is happening, it's not due to human causes. This despite a consensus from the scientific community that it IS happening and there ARE human causes. The Bush administration omits, ignores, or outright lies about any evidence that is contradictory their position. These outrages against reason are terrible enough, but the administration slides even further by creating misleading documents and finding fringe scientists to claim "controversy" over scientific issues that have been settled. Reality does not bow to the President's whims.

-and on and on and on and on..... These are the things I hate most about the Bush administration, but it is by no means a complete list. I hate that he can't speak intelligently without a teleprompter. I hate that he has vacationed more than any other president in history. I hate that he choked on a pretzel. But for my own mental well-being I have to end the list somewhere. No matter who wins the election tomorrow, we know that it will NOT be George W. Bush. Hooray!