The Laming of the President...

Here it is, June nearly over...Dubbyuh's poll numbers sinking like a rock...His social security "reform" legislation DOA...Republicans jockeying for position in '08...Bolton's nomination ground to a halt. It sounds as if Dubbyuh has become a the lamest of ducks. Not the legacy he had planned.

Things could have been different if he'd actually used the put the faith America placed in him after 9/11 to good use. Instead he focused on the politics of polarization and divisiveness. He worked to concentrate power in the hands of the Republican majority in Congress rather than working to form a bipartisan coalition that could actually accomplish something.Instead, he and his advisors chose to brand any who opposed them as "unpatriotic" and "traitors".

He squandered the goodwill extened to the US by the rest of the world after 9/11 in a foolish, wrongheaded and illegal invasion of Iraq. A war which few Americans now support and one which is gutting our all voluteer military and enfeebling it to the point that it may not be able to adequately deal with any other threat to national security. In the course of that war, the attrocities committed at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, GITMO and elswhere shredded the remaining fabric of US credibility abroad. They also served as potent for the recruiting ot the terrorists the Administration claims to be fighting.

This Administration may yet go down as one of the greatest failures of a presidency in American history. We can only hope that the next president, regardless of party or ideology, will be able to pick up the pieces and restore the standing of the office as well as America's standing with the world.

Dubbyuh is fast heading towards irrelevancy as congressional Republicans look beyond 2008 and to their own political fortunes and the risks that will come from riding Dubbyuh's tattered coat-tails. It can't come soon enough.