Great filter again!! It's not a marauding foreign invader, or a weak puppet government fomenting a religious war, it's not the lack of a civil infrastructure, or lack of basic utilities, or even any combination of those.

IT'S CORRUPTION. Well, no wonder Bush & Co. are in a bind. Honest to a fault, as upright as Jesus' cross, they just don't have a chance against CORRUPTION. Like lambs to the slaughter, those corrupt bastards have taken complete advantage of Bush. And Cheney. And Rumsfeld.

Nice guys finish last, I suppose. That must be why Bush, Cheney & Co., Limited Liability Regime, have lost. Way, way to ethical, decent, law-abiding. They just get taken advantage of by those wily, crooked bastards, at least the ones that can dodge WP and napalm, that is. The ones who aren't having their gonads shocked in Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo, or Rumania or Poland. Or dragged out of their homes and shot.

Our better nature is what's gotten the best of us.

And they won because they used their secret weapon: CORRUPTION. Snuck right up on those ol' Republicans.

It's nice to know that the lesson has been learned from this debacle.

Arf