You let the election season and its partisan tone turn you from happy, well-adjusted people to bitter, bitter, folks with axes grinding at the millstone.

You just don't get it.

Bush will be history. Politics of -isms of any sort will never be your salvation, no more than any religion.

The grab for power tends to backfire. And I'm not talking Tupolev bombers here. The GOP inherited power because the left messed up so badly they had shown they were incompetent, do-nothings. The right has now done quite a bit. Clinton let Osama walk and the nation paid the price. He was too busy under his desk.

That sort of finger-wagging incompetence is not forgotten and the left has nothing better to offer today. As a result Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Condi Rice hold the people's trust.

Sure the left is screaming about quagmires and deaths in Iraq, and the less educated poor folk who know little history and can barely find Iraq on a map, scream and shout how awful it all is and what a nightmare.

I point out that the murders, kidnappings and brutal killings have gone on at the EXACT same level as they do now, fifty years ago, and the left here don't ever quite get to the point where they can comprehend it. They are too subservient to their media outlets like MSNBC, CNN and Newspapers like the WP, NYT, etcetera to chew and digest history for them and regurgitate it in Gerber Lefty Bite Size history jars.

Iraq is no worse off now than it was under Saddam, and, in fact, many hundreds of thousands have left for greener pastures - free. That's something that has changed.

There are no more Shiites than there were under Saddam, and their death toll is the same. Pulling hair out about Iraq barbarism just because one was ignorant of its existence before and blaming Bush for its existence now is just really...well... dumb.

D U M B.

That's the problem. There are millions who rabidly denounce Bush and the most rabid are the least educated or on the other hand are career educators with a lifelong anti-GOP agenda who don't give a darn about the ME except as how it can be used as a club to further their own power grab.

Bush is guilty of sweet-coating the outcome. He should've called a spade a spade and pointed out that removing Saddam would remove a major threat to the region and to the US, and replace it with a period of anarchy until a new strongman government is established that is more pro-US. But it's easy to understand why he didn't. People wouldn't understand. You can't educate historically illiterate folks in a sounbite or a few speeches. So you tell them what they want to hear and can understand: SADDAM=BAD MAN. BAD MAN must go away.

Russia needed Czars to rule and oppress the diverse masses who would never willingly work together. Iraq and the middle east with the limited education and generations of inbreeding is also unable to handle a full democracy. There are simply too many unintelligent and violent folks in these regions.

The US is far too nice to rule with the iron fist and because the media were pressing for a transfer to the Iraqi people, such was arranged quickly. The media and their whining and attempts to control the ignorant masses interpretation of events has naturally harmed the region. Fortunately Bush & Co. ignore the media as much as possible and don't let them usurp the power of the Presidency by newscast politicking.

Iraq and the Middle East are ALREADY better off. The FREEDOM that Iraqis now have is envied by the Iranians and the other nations realize they will never be able to lock down things like they used to. Saddam's downfall stands as mute testimony to the vulnerability of strongmen who grow unpopular or take on the US.
All the blood, guts and suicide bombs are in many ways the byproducts of freedom.

Freedom has a downside, and we are no able to witness it. We see now that some people are IRRESPONSIBLE and ABUSE others when FREE.

These folks eventually attract scorn and a group forms to take away this FREEDOM thus used destructively.

The Bush administration did what no other President wanted to do out of fear of polls and popularity - they actually took on and addressed the intractable, perpetual bloodbath that is the middle east. The US influence is very subtle but like a blood transfusion it has served to free millions who were not free before and change the entire concept of Pan-Arab exclusionary politics and infighting.

Like it or not, these nations will be forced to address the wills of a minority of their inhabitants who want to move out of the 15th century and into at least the twentieth century.

The Popes references were no accident. The whole world wants to see Islam reformed and now, the only nation in the world that can make it happen, has already brought about the largest self-assessment the religion has ever experienced.

That's good. That's real good. One just needs the wealth of historic knowledge to appreciate what Bush has had the courage to do - adertantly or inadvertantly.