Obama on Top of the World: The Latest in US Foreign Policy (23 January)

Latest Post: US Finally Joins Convention on Conventional Weapons
Latest Post: The Afghanistan Muddle
Latest Post: The President Bans Torture

Text of Order Closing Guantanamo Bay
President Obama’s Remarks to State Department Staff (22 January)

6:45 p.m. An intriguing development, but one which will need some detective work to assess its significance. President Obama "asked Saudi King Abdullah for support in halting weapons smuggling into Gaza and underscored the importance of U.S.-Saudi ties" in a Friday phone call.

The call takes on added significance because an influential member of the Saudi Royal Family, Prince Turki al-Feisal, launched an attack against the Bush Administration's "poisonous legacy" in a newspaper article on Friday morning, warning, "If the U.S. wants to continue playing a leadership role in the Middle East and keep its strategic alliances intact -- especially its 'special relationship' with Saudi Arabia -- it will have to drastically revise its policies vis-a-vis Israel and Palestine."

So the first message in Obama's call was not to get active Saudi participation in the naval blockade of Gaza but assurances that Riyadh would not try to undermine it by moving cash and material to Palestinian groups in the area. The second message, however, is more important and hard to decipher:

Do those US-Saudi ties mean that Obama will accept Saudi ideas for Israel-Palestinian negotiations, for example, a revival of the 2002 Mecca proposals that the Bush Administration flagrantly rebuffed? Or is Washington expecting the Saudis to follow the lead of a yet-seen approach that will be unveiled in the visit of George Mitchell to the region? (cross-posted from Israel-Palestine-Gaza Updates)



3:40 p.m. White House announces that President Obama has reversed Ronald Reagan's ban on funding of federally-supported groups who carry out abortions overseas.

3:30 p.m. Not So Fast, General Petraeus. Here's a curious story, unlike you're a fan of Kirghiz politics, that you might have missed. On Wednesday, General David Petraeus and the US military were telling anyone who would listen of their great triumph in securing land and air supply routes into Afghanistan (and trying to cover up the inconvenience that the main supply route over the Khyber Pass has been closed down).

Well, on Thursday the Government of Kyrgyzstan, where a major US airbase is located, decided that it wasn't ready to play the good guy quite yet: "Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev will make a decision on the future of a U.S. military base in Kyrgyzstan by next month, an official said Thursday."

Is Russia, which also has an airbase in Kyrgyzstan, having a bit of competitive fun with Washington? Or has the Kirghiz Government decided to get a higher price for their cooperation?

3:15 p.m. The Netherlands won't be joining the next US adventure in Afghanistan: "Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende ruled out on Friday the possibility of the Netherlands keeping its troops in Afghanistan past 2010 with a force comparable to its current deployment."

2:55 p.m. The Marines Show Their Hand. Marine Corps Commandant General James Conway says that up to 20,000 Marines could be deployed as part of the US military "surge" in Afghanistan. While Conway capped the number at 20,000, that indicates that an overall increase of 30,000 troops, which would include Army units, is still the military's preferred option.

At the same time, Conway seemed to offer support for President Obama's plans for withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq: "The time is right for Marines in general terms to leave Iraq. It's very much a nation-building kind of environment that's taking place there."

2:25 p.m. Facebook Message of the Day:

Dear World,

The United States of America, your quality supplier of ideals of liberty and democracy, would like to apologize for its 2001-2008 service outage. The technical fault that led to this eight-year service interruption has been located. Replacement components were ordered Tuesday, November 4th, 2008, and have begun arriving. Early test of the new equipment indicate that it is functioning correctly and we expect it to be fully operational by mid-January.

We apologize for any inconvenience caused by the outage and we look forward to resuming full service and hopefully even improving it in years to come. Thank you for your patience and understanding,

The USA

2 p.m. On his blog, CNN's Anderson Cooper posts a guest article by former interrogator Ken Robinson: "The truth is --- torture doesn't work."

Nice job, Anderson. Just one question: why didn't you put up such comments in 2003? 2004? 2005? At any point during the Bush Administration?

12:35 p.m. Al Jazeera: 19 killed in northwest Pakistan in two US missile strikes.

12:05 p.m. CNN website reporting 10 killed in US strike on northwest Pakistan, but CNN television is reporting two attacks.

10:10 a.m. The State Department's Twitterers pass on news of a US interception and two-day search of an Iranian-owned ship in the Red Sea.

No jackpot this time, however, in the quest to link Tehran and Hamas. The ship was carrying artillery shells, but the Gazan organisation doesn't use artillery.

9:30 a.m. White House officials are briefing that Obama later today will reverse Ronald Reagan's "Mexico City" order, which banned federally-funded non-government organizations from performing abortions overseas. Bill Clinton lifted the ban in his first week in office, only for George W. Bush to reinstate it in his first Presidential order.

8:20 a.m. The first application of Obama tough love in Pakistan. Reports are coming through that US missiles have killed five people in the northwest of the country. (9:45 a.m.: Death toll is now 9. Six members of a family are among the dead; intelligence officials claim "some foreign militants were also killed".)

6:35 a.m. For those watching the Obama rollback of the Bush War on Terror, some interesting signals from Dennis Blair, Obama's nominee for Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, in his confirmation hearings yesterday.

Blair backed up the President's headline actions, telling Senators that torture "is not moral, legal or effective" and that "there will not be any waterboarding on my watch". However, the nominee also indicated that Obama might not hand back other executive orders resting on dubious legal ground, as he "hesitated to directly challenge as illegal the Bush administration's approach to interrogations and surveillance".

6:25 a.m. And, Barack, We've Been Talking to the Washington Post. Those waging the counter-offensive against the Obama plan for a 16-month withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq have gotten the ear of the editors of The Post. Their call in their lead editorial today for a slower withdrawal, bizarrely, rests on the argument that Iraq is rapidly becoming more secure:

Iraq's continuing improvement and the low and declining rate of U.S. casualties -- four soldiers have been killed in hostile action so far this month -- ought to decrease the urgency of a quick pullout. Pragmatism calls for working within the agreed U.S.-Iraqi plan, and for allowing adjustments based on positive and negative developments in Iraq, rather than on any fixed and arbitrary timetable.

6:10 a.m. The "New Diplomacy" of the Obama Administration? On Thursday, "the chargé d’affaires at the American Embassy, Krishna Urs, walked out of a speech in Bolivia’s Congress by President Evo Morales."

5;55 a.m. One Dissent is Annoying, Two is a Rebellion. Meanwhile, on the Iraq front, departing US Ambassador Ryan Crocker has also gone public to put brakes --- albeit in diplomatic phrasing on Obama's plan for withdrawal of combat troops in 16 months. Citing "a continuing need for our security support" despite the "enormous progress" of Iraqi security forces, Crocker asserted, “If it were to be a precipitous withdrawal, that could be very dangerous, but it’s clear that’s not the direction in which this is trending.”

Far from incidentally, Crocker was also involved in Wednesday's National Security meeting with military commanders, speaking by videophone from Baghdad.

5:30 a.m. Naughty, Naughty Pentagon. Do you recall that less than 24 hours ago the military started spinning against the President's plans for withdrawal from Iraq? Well, now they're taking aim at his intention to close Guantamo. Officials have fed the following story to Robert Worth of The New York Times:

The emergence of a former Guantánamo Bay detainee as the deputy leader of Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch has underscored the potential complications in carrying out the executive order President Obama signed Thursday that the detention center be shut down within a year.

And it should be noted that this is not a sudden leak. The amount of information on the released detainee, Said Ali al-Shihri, and the contribution by four Times reporters to the story indicated that this "exclusive" was fed to them well before Obama became President.

Moreover, this is only the latest salvo in the campaign to undermine Obama's plans. Last month "Pentagon officials" began spreading the story that dozens of released detainees were rejoining Al Qa'eda and other terrorist organisations. The supposed information was discredited quickly by journalists who followed up the details --- as the New York Times notes, albeit well below its dramatic headline:

Although the Pentagon has said that dozens of released Guantánamo detainees have “returned to the fight,” its claim is difficult to document, and has been met with skepticism. In any case, few of the former detainees, if any, are thought to have become leaders of a major terrorist organization like Al Qaeda in Yemen, a mostly homegrown group that experts say has been reinforced by foreign fighters.

4:10 a.m. The excellent analyst Jim Lobe finds grounds for optimism both in the appointment of George Mitchell as President Obama's envoy to the Middle East and in Obama's statement yesterday.

3:15 a.m. We've posted separate blogs on Obama's order banning torture and on an apparent muddle over Afghanistan policy, highlighted by Administration statements yesterday.

2:30 a.m. The Guantanamo Bay Effect Reaches Afghanistan. An intriguing statement by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who was quick off the mark to welcome President Barack Obama's order closing Camp X-Ray: "Closing this will have a good impact, a significant impact on the minds of Afghans here in Afghanistan. We see it as extremely important and timely and we appreciate the decision taken by the new administration."

Why pay special attention to Karzai's statement beyond the welcomes coming from around the world? Well, there's the small matter of more than 600 detainees, as compared to 245 at Guantanamo, in the US military's Camp Bagram in southern Afghanistan. Karzai is being pressed by Afghan campaigners to do something about unlimited detentions closer to home, so his statement on matters far away is a symbolic nod in their direction.

But will it mean the Afghan Government presses the Americans to bring the rule of law into Bagram? Karzai's spokesman was suitably cautious: "As we rebuild our justice system, as we rebuild our law enforcement capabilities and can ensure there will be due process provided, we do expect the detainees to be gradually and slowly transferred to Afghan custody by mutual agreement,"

President Obama's Remarks to State Department Staff (22 January)

Reprinted from The Washington Post, which also includes the remarks of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Vice President Joseph Biden, and special envoys George Mitchell and Richard Holbrooke

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Please, everybody. Thank you. Be seated. Thank you so much.

It is my privilege to come here and to pay tribute to all of you, the talented men and women of the State Department. I've given you an early gift, Hillary Clinton.



(APPLAUSE)

You -- in her, you will have a secretary of state who has my full confidence. And I want to thank Chairman Kerry and the Senate for acting swiftly to confirm her, because we have no time to lose.

My appearance today, as has been noted, underscores my commitment to the importance of diplomacy and renewing American leadership. And it gives me an opportunity to thank you for the services that you perform every single day.

Sometimes I think the American public doesn't fully understand the sacrifices that you and your families make, the dedication that is involved in you carrying on your tasks day in, day out.

And I know I speak for Joe Biden, as well as everybody else on this stage, when we tell you that we are proud of you. You are carrying on a vital task in the safety and security of the American people.

And part of what we want to do is to make sure that everybody understands that the State Department is going to be absolutely critical to our success in the years to come, and you individually are going to be critical to our success in the years to come. And we want to send a signal to all kinds of young people who may be thinking about the Foreign Service that they are going to be critical in terms of projecting not just America's power, but also America's values and America's ideals.

The inheritance of our young century demands a new era of American leadership. We must recognize that America's strength comes not just from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from our enduring values. And for the sake of our national security and the common aspirations of people around the globe, this era has to begin now.

This morning, I signed three executive orders. First, I can say without exception or equivocation that the United States will not torture.

(APPLAUSE)

Second, we will close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and determine how to deal with those who have been held there.

And, third, we will immediately undertake a comprehensive review to determine how to hold and try terrorism suspects to best protect our nation and the rule of law.

The world needs to understand that America will be unyielding in its defense of its security and relentless in its pursuit of those who would carry out terrorism or threaten the United States. And that's why, in this twilight struggle, we need a durable framework.

The orders that I signed today should send an unmistakable signal that our actions in defense of liberty will be just as our cause and that we, the people, will uphold our fundamental values as vigilantly as we protect our security. Once again, America's moral example must be the bedrock and the beacon of our global leadership.

We are confronted by extraordinary, complex and interconnected global challenges: the war on terror, sectarian division, and the spread of deadly technology. We did not ask for the burden that history has asked us to bear, but Americans will bear it. We must bear it.

Progress will not come quickly or easily, nor can we promise to right every single wrong around the world. But we can pledge to use all elements of American power to protect our people and to promote our interests and ideals, starting with principled, focused and sustained American diplomacy.

To carry forward that effort, we are going to be calling on your hard work and perseverance in the months and years to come. Given the urgency and complexity of the challenges we face and to convey our seriousness of purpose, Secretary Clinton and I are also calling upon the two distinguished Americans standing with us today.

It will be the policy of my administration to actively and aggressively seek a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians, as well as Israel and its Arab neighbors. To help us pursue these goals, Secretary Clinton and I have asked George Mitchell to serve as special envoy for Middle East peace.

George is renowned in this country and around the world for his negotiating skill. He brings international stature and a lifetime of service. His years in the Senate were marked by strong leadership and bipartisan achievement. His efforts on behalf of peace in Northern Ireland were indispensable in reconciling a painful and protracted conflict.

Time and again, in public service and private life, he has acted with skill and acted with integrity. He will be fully empowered at the negotiating table, and he will sustain our focus on the goal of peace.

No one doubts the difficulty of the road ahead, and George outlined some of those difficulties. The tragic violence in Gaza and southern Israel offers a sobering reminder of the challenges at hand and the setbacks that will inevitably come.

It must also instill in us, though, a sense of urgency, as history shows us that strong and sustained American engagement can bridge divides and build the capacity that supports progress. And that is why we will be sending George to the region as soon as possible to help the parties ensure that the cease-fire that has been achieved is made durable and sustainable.

Let me be clear: America is committed to Israel's security. And we will always support Israel's right to defend itself against legitimate threats.

For years, Hamas has launched thousands of rockets at innocent Israeli citizens. No democracy can tolerate such danger to its people, nor should the international community, and neither should the Palestinian people themselves, whose interests are only set back by acts of terror.

To be a genuine party to peace, the quartet has made it clear that Hamas must meet clear conditions: recognize Israel's right to exist; renounce violence; and abide by past agreements.

Going forward, the outline for a durable cease-fire is clear: Hamas must end its rocket fire; Israel will complete the withdrawal of its forces from Gaza; the United States and our partners will support a credible anti-smuggling and interdiction regime, so that Hamas cannot rearm.

Yesterday I spoke to President Mubarak and expressed my appreciation for the important role that Egypt played in achieving a cease-fire. And we look forward to Egypt's continued leadership and partnership in laying a foundation for a broader peace through a commitment to end smuggling from within its borders.

Now, just as the terror of rocket fire aimed at innocent Israelis is intolerable, so, too, is a future without hope for the Palestinians.

I was deeply concerned by the loss of Palestinian and Israeli life in recent days and by the substantial suffering and humanitarian needs in Gaza. Our hearts go out to Palestinian civilians who are in need of immediate food, clean water, and basic medical care, and who've faced suffocating poverty for far too long.

Now we must extend a hand of opportunity to those who seek peace. As part of a lasting cease-fire, Gaza's border crossings should be open to allow the flow of aid and commerce, with an appropriate monitoring regime, with the international and Palestinian Authority participating.

Relief efforts must be able to reach innocent Palestinians who depend on them. The United States will fully support an international donor's conference to seek short-term humanitarian assistance and long-term reconstruction for the Palestinian economy. This assistance will be provided to and guided by the Palestinian Authority.

Lasting peace requires more than a long cease-fire, and that's why I will sustain an active commitment to seek two states living side by side in peace and security.

Senator Mitchell will carry forward this commitment, as well as the effort to help Israel reach a broader peace with the Arab world that recognizes its rightful place in the community of nations.

I should add that the Arab peace initiative contains constructive elements that could help advance these efforts. Now is the time for Arab states to act on the initiative's promise by supporting the Palestinian government under President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad, taking steps towards normalizing relations with Israel, and by standing up to extremism that threatens us all.

Jordan's constructive role in training Palestinian security forces and nurturing its relations with Israel provide a model for these efforts. And going forward, we must make it clear to all countries in the region that external support for terrorist organizations must stop.

Another urgent threat to global security is the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is the central front in our enduring struggle against terrorism and extremism. There, as in the Middle East, we must understand that we cannot deal with our problems in isolation.

There is no answer in Afghanistan that does not confront the Al Qaida and Taliban bases along the border, and there will be no lasting peace unless we expand spheres of opportunity for the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is truly an international challenge of the highest order.

That's why Secretary Clinton and I are naming Ambassador Richard Holbrooke to be special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Ambassador Holbrooke is one of the most talented diplomats of his generation. Over several decades, he's served on different continents and as an outstanding ambassador to the United Nations.

He has strengthened ties with our allies, tackled the toughest negotiations, and helped deliver a hard-earned peace as an architect of the Dayton Accords. He will help lead our effort to forge and implement a strategic and sustainable approach to this critical region.

The American people and the international community must understand that the situation is perilous and progress will take time. Violence is up dramatically in Afghanistan. A deadly insurgency has taken deep root. The opium trade is far and away the largest in the world.

The Afghan government has been unable to deliver basic services. Al Qaeda and the Taliban strike from bases embedded in rugged tribal terrain along the Pakistani border. And while we have yet to see another attack on our soil since 9/11, Al Qaida terrorists remain at large and remain plotting.

Going forward, we must set clear priorities in pursuit of achievable goals that contribute to our collective security. My administration is committed to refocusing attention and resources on Afghanistan and Pakistan and to spending those resources wisely. That's why we are pursuing a careful review of our policy.

We will seek stronger partnerships with the governments of the region, sustain cooperation with our NATO allies, deeper engagement with the Afghan and Pakistani people, and a comprehensive strategy to combat terror and extremism.

We will provide the strategic guidance to meet our objectives, and we pledge to support the extraordinary Americans serving in Afghanistan, both military and civilian, with the resources that they need.

These appointments add to a team that will work with energy and purpose to meet the challenges of our time and to define a future of expanding security and opportunity.

Difficult days lie ahead. As we ask more of ourselves, we will seek new partnerships and ask more of our friends and more of people around the globe, because security in the 21st century is shared.

But let there be no doubt about America's commitment to lead. We can no longer afford drift, and we can no longer afford delay, nor can we cede ground to those who seek destruction. A new era of American leadership is at hand, and the hard work has just begun. You are going to be at the front lines of engaging in that important work.

And I'm absolutely confident that, with the leadership of Secretary Clinton, with wonderful envoys like Richard Holbrooke and George Mitchell, with the dedicated team that is before me today, that we are going to be able to accomplish our objectives, keep America safe, and bring better days not just to our own country, but all around the world.

Thank you very much, everybody.

A Farewell To George Bush: The Ten Low-Lights of the Presidency

Brad Reed's piece, reprinted from AlterNet, is an unashamedly partisan, angry, and at times darkly comic review of the last eight years. It's also an ideal conversation-starter for readers to chip in, either with low-lights that Reed underrated or that occurred after he wrote this in July (say Bush's "the economy is strong" statement in October).

All in all, then, an excellent good-bye gift for our 43rd President

The 10 Most Awesomely Bad Moments of the Bush Presidency

In a lot of ways, choosing the Bush administration's 10 greatest moments -- disastrous failures, all -- is about as pointless as picking out your 10 least favorite hemorrhoids: There are entirely too many of them, and taken together they all add up to a throbbing mass of pain. But unfortunately, history demands that we at least make the effort so that future generations will understand why we perform voodoo rituals cursing Bush's memory before we go to bed every night.



Narrowing down the Bush administration's various debacles to a mere 10 was no easy feat. In fact, I expect that many people will express dismay that their least favorite moment was left off the list. "How could commuting Scooter Libby's sentence not even make the top 10??!!" I can hear some of you shrieking already. Well, I'll tell you. Essentially, I tried to rate each Bush disaster by two main criteria: its body count and its damage to the country's reputation. So while Bush's awkward groping of German Chancellor Angela Merkel may be personally humiliating to everyone, it doesn't have the same heft as, say, the Iraq War.

But for those of you who insist on seeing your least favorite moment get its due, here is list of every honorable mention I could come up with: warrantless wiretapping; Valerie Plame; Scooter Libby's sentence commuted; Bush believes Rafael Palmeiro is innocent; soldiers face neglect at Walter Reed; signing statements; the Kyoto treaty ripped up; loyalty oaths; the fake turkey; a staged teleconference with troops, staged FEMA press conference, extraordinary rendition, support for junk science; endorsement of neo-creationist "intelligent design"; inaction against global warming; record oil prices; record budget deficits; record trade deficits; record number of Americans without health insurance; two recessions; no-bid contracts; bin Laden still at large; the Federal Marriage Amendment; stem cell research vetoed; waterboarding ban vetoed; "Last throes"; "Old Europe"; "It's hard work"; "Bring it on"; "Yo, Blair!"; "I'm the decider"; "I'm the commander guy"; "I'm a war president"; "This is the guy who tried to kill my dad"; "So?"; "Let the Eagle Soar"; John Bolton; Kenny Boy; Harriet Miers; John Roberts; Sam Alito; Blair talks Bush out of bombing al-Jazeera; Cheney shoots some guy in the face; the Military Commissions Act; Jose Padilla arrested and held without charge or access to counsel; endless tax cuts for the rich; let's waste a shitload of money by sending people to Mars and let's hire some Heritage Foundation staffers to rebuild Iraq.

And with that, let's go onto our 10 worst moments.

10: Bush Gets Re-elected

In a way, Bush's re-election was even more depressing than the shady shenanigans the GOP used to get him elected in 2000. See, back then Bush ran as a "compassionate conservative" who promised to be a "uniter, not a divider" who would run a center-right administration like his father did. By 2004, the myth of Bush the Uniter had been demolished by his exploiting the 9/11 terror attacks for political gain, by dropping poison pills into bills to make Democrats vote against their own proposals, and by supporting needless and divisive initiatives such as a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. On top of this, the Bush re-election crew ran one of the nastiest and most negative campaigns in recent memory. The low point in the whole affair came when administration allies and surrogates took to the airwaves to falsely accuse Democratic candidate John Kerry of lying about his service in Vietnam, even claiming in one instance that he intentionally shot himself to get out of the war.

The reason for this historically negative campaign was obvious: As Paul Krugman deftly observed at the time, Bush had "no positive achievements to run on." But this didn't stop more than 59 million Americans from voting to give Bush yet another four years to build on his already-impressive resume of negative achievements.

9: Alberto Gonzales' Congressional Testimony

One of the Bush administration's favorite pastimes over the past eight years has been gleefully urinating in the faces of the other two branches of government. This tendency is best exemplified by Ex-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee to answer questions under oath about whether a group of eight federal prosecutors had been fired for partisan reasons. Essentially, all of the attorneys in question had exemplary performance records but were targeted because they did not prosecute several so-called "voter fraud" cases to then-presidential adviser Karl Rove's satisfaction. When the Senate Judiciary Committee called then-Deputy AG Paul McNulty to testify about the firings, he claimed that all of them had been dismissed due to "performance-related issues." About a month later, Gonzales penned an editorial for USA Today reiterating McNulty's claim that the attorneys were fired for performance reasons and called the entire controversy an "overblown personnel matter."

After it emerged that six of the fired attorneys had actually been given positive job evaluations, Gonzales rushed up to Capitol Hill to perform damage control. He said he "regretted" saying that the fired attorneys had lost his confidence, and then went on to say that he had no idea why the attorneys had been targeted for dismissal. Additionally, Gonzales said there was nothing at all improper about the firings, despite the fact that he admitted that he had "limited involvement" in the ordeal. Gonzales also responded to questions by answering "I don't recall" a total of 64 times.

Although several GOP senators called on Gonzales to resign in the wake of his testimony, Bush said Gonzales' performance had "increased my confidence in his ability to do the job" and that he would stay on as attorney general.

And the fun didn't stop there. When the Senate Judiciary Committee hauled Gonzales back to testify about his frantic hospital visit to get a fresh-from-surgery John Ashcroft to approve Bush's warrantless wiretapping program, it resulted in the sort of clown show that would have put Barnum and Bailey to shame. The lowlight came during a classic debate between Gonzo and Arlen Specter over whether Ashcroft could have effectively performed his duties as attorney general while he was under heavy sedation. After Gonzales finally stepped down in August 2007, Bush stamped his feet and cried that Gonzo had had "his good name dragged through the mud."

8: North Korea Conducts a Nuclear Test

In his 2002 State of the Union Address, Bush stated forthrightly that "the United States will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons." And to show how serious he was, Bush decided to invade Iraq, a country whose vast stockpile contained precisely zero weapons of mass destruction.

But while Bush was busy freedomizing the Iraqis, North Korea -- a country best known for being home of the world's worst government -- steadily built up its nuclear capabilities and eventually conducted a nuclear test in October 2006.

Oopsie-doodles!

While there is a great deal of dispute over whether the North Korean test was actually a successful test, it seemed clear that Bush's strategic doctrine of ignoring our enemies until they meet every one of his demands has failed somewhat spectacularly. Naturally, Condi Rice declared that the test was actually a significant win for Bush administration policy, thus proving once again that down isn't just up for the Bush administration, but sometimes sideways as well.

7: Colin Powell's Bogus WMD Presentation at the U.N.

For those of you who are too young to remember, there was a time when Colin Powell was an internationally respected diplomat and military leader who was seen as the sort of rare Republican straight-shooter who also had a fine sense for global sensibilities. Indeed, at the time of Powell's appointment to the State Department, the BBC described him as Bush's "trump card" and as "a national hero whose charismatic image bridges America's racial divide." But little did anyone know that Powell's public image as a renowned warrior-scholar would come crashing down to Earth less than four years after his appointment.

In February 2003, Powell gave a presentation before the U.N. Security Council that was instrumental in convincing both the American public and large swaths of the international community that Saddam Hussein had large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction that posed an immediate threat to global security. During his speech, Powell told scary tales of mobile biological weapons labs, chemical weapons stockpiles and aluminum tubes that could be used in a nuclear weapons program. All of these claims turned out not only to be wrong, but based on sourcing that even Powell acknowledged was "deliberately misleading" in some cases.

And what's more, Powell knew how shaky a lot of the intelligence was before he made his infamous presentation to the United Nations. As Bob Woodward reported in his book Plan of Attack, Powell had deep doubts about an intercept between two senior members of the Iraqi Republican Guard that vaguely sortakindamaybe might have mentioned something along the lines of using vehicles for bioweapons labs. Yet despite reservations about the intel, Woodward reports that Powell "decided to use it" for his U.N. presentation anyway. Ditto for an "inferential" report on Iraqi Scud missiles that Powell acknowledged had not been seen by anyone.

Years after feeding bogus intel to the Security Council, Powell said his performance was a "painful" "blot" on his record. Well la-tee-da. I'm sure that's a fine comfort to the hundreds of thousands of people who died needlessly as a result of Powell's Security Council boo-boo.

6: The Terri Schiavo Affair

In what will no doubt go down in history as one of the craziest things our federal government has ever done, the U.S. House and Senate both passed an emergency law to save the life of a woman who had been near-brain dead for more than a decade. The case of Terri Schiavo, who collapsed in her home and who later lost oxygen to her brain after her doctors misdiagnosed the cause of her collapse, was undoubtedly tragic for everyone involved; it was also undoubtedly none of the federal government's business.

After numerous state courts had sided with then-husband and guardian Michael Schiavo and ruled that Terri's condition was irreversible and that her feeding tube could be removed to end her life, the Christian Right launched into an epic freak-out the likes of which America has not seen since 17th Century Salem. After much Tasmanian devil-style screeching and hollering from the GOP base, the Republican Congress passed a bill transferring jurisdiction of the Schiavo case to federal court. Bush, who seemingly never misses an opportunity to take a naked ride on the crazy train, interrupted one of his frequent Texas vacations to sign the damn thing into law.

Ah, if only he'd been this swift and alert when Hurricane Katrina hit (see Moment #4).

While there were several moments of sheer, unbridled lunacy throughout (Pat Buchanan calls Michael Schiavo and his supporters Nazis! Tom DeLay issues threats against judges who don't rule how he wants them to! Peggy Noonan calls Michael Schiavo supporters part of "culture of death!"), the craziest by far was then-Senator Bill Frist's declaration that Terri had been misdiagnosed after he spent an hour watching a video of her in his office.

5: Bush and Condi's Excellent Gaza Adventure

The Bush administration can be described as a slapstick comedy with an unusually high body count: Picture the Three Stooges and the Keystone Cops duking it out with cruise missiles.

There is no better example of this than Bush and the State Department's wild adventures in the Gaza Strip in 2006. As Vanity Fair's David Rose reported earlier this year, the trouble began when Bush started stamping his feet and throwing a hissy fit about having elections in the Palestinian territories. Essentially, Bush's desire to be seen as a "freedom president" meant forcing various swarthy third-worlders to vote in elections that would presumably result in U.S.-friendly regimes around the world. After Hamas predictably defeated Fatah in the elections, Bush decided he didn't like democracy in the Middle East so much after all, and he had Condi Rice tell Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas that "America expected him to dissolve the Haniyeh government as soon as possible and hold fresh elections." Apparently, Condi believed that having an American-backed leader dissolve a democratically elected government would warm the Palestinians' hearts to American aims. Long story short: The U.S. government decides to bolster Fatah by sending them a bunch of arms. Word of these shipments leaks to a Jordanian newspaper. All hell breaks loose; Hamas defeats Fatah and proceeds to use the American-supplied arms it confiscated from Fatah against Israel. The entire ordeal was an amazing illustration of the administration's complete inability to anticipate entirely predictable outcomes. Or as Khalid Jaberi, a commander with Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, put it: "Since the takeover, we've been trying to enter the brains of Bush and Rice, to figure out their mentality. We can only conclude that having Hamas in control serves their overall strategy, because their policy was so crazy otherwise."

Epic, epic fail.

4: "Brownie, You're Doing a Heckuva Job"

Yes, we're getting into Bush's real crowning achievements here. The Think Progress blog has done an admirable job of chronicling the entire affair, so I'm just going to summarize the lowlights from its timeline:

Aug. 29: Katrina makes landfall, then-FEMA chief Michael "Brownie" Brown warns Bush that the levees could overflow, Bush gives John McCain a cake. Brown, a Bush hack who had previously worked as "the chief rules enforcer of the Arabian Horse Association," also preemptively asks Cindy Taylor, FEMA's deputy director of public affairs, if he "can quit now." He also declares himself "a fashion god."

Aug. 30: Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff learns that the New Orleans levees had failed, looters run rampant in New Orleans, Bush plays guitar, then-White House spokesman Scott McClellan says that Bush will return to his Texas ranch for one more night of vacation before returning to Washington.

Aug. 31: Federal relief workers try to evacuate New Orleans residents in what Chertoff describes as "conditions of urban warfare."

Sept. 1: Bush says, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." Brownie says he's received "no reports of unrest."

Sept. 2: Karl Rove begins to enact his strategy of blaming local officials for the Katrina disaster, Bush tells Brownie that he's doing "a heckuva job" and also says he's "satisfied with the response" of the federal government but "not satisfied with all the results," and pledges to rebuild Trent Lott's house.

Sept. 4: Chertoff says that "government planners did not predict such a disaster ever could occur."

And so on. While watching Katrina unfold live on my television, I suddenly had the urge to sell all my belongings, purchase several firearms, move out to a remote cabin in Montana and wait for society to fall apart. Because hey: If the entire world was going to completely collapse around me, I might as well have a wise-cracking psychic dog to keep me company.

3: Abu Ghraib

In its May 10, 2004, issue, the New Yorker magazine published an explosive report by renowned investigative journalist Seymour Hersh detailing the systematic torture of prisoners by U.S. military personnel at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Administration apologists used two distinctly different strategies to push back against the inevitable bad press that ensued: One was to condemn the guilty parties but refer to them merely as "a few bad apples" who weren't reflective of American policy; the other was to dismiss the entire scandal as "an out-of-control fraternity prank."

But it turned out, of course, that the crimes committed at Abu Ghraib weren't merely the work of a few rogue soldiers. Indeed, it turns out that the tactics employed in the infamous Iraqi dungeon were first taken out for a test spin at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. And what tactics did those include, you ask? Why, sleep deprivation, stress positions, sexual humiliation and a technique called waterboarding that is meant to simulate the experience of drowning. And where did they get the idea to use these techniques? Why, from senior Bush administration officials, of course! With the full approval of Bush himself! As ABC News reported earlier this year, "the high-level discussions about these 'enhanced interrogation techniques' were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed."

Amazingly, the Bush administration tried to justify its decisions by claiming that waterboarding was perfectly legal and did not constitute torture. Despite the fact that, you know, it was deemed illegal 40 years ago by U.S. generals in Vietnam.

This particular scandal was so bad that even the John Birch Society (!!!) concluded that the administration and its flunkies were war criminals.

2: 9/11

The terrorist attack of Sept. 11, 2001, was one of the most terrifying and traumatic moments in American history. Thousands of people perished that day, all due to an evil act carried out by a group of religious fanatics who crashed airplanes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field near Shanksville, Penn. But while the loss of life on that day was indeed a major tragedy for all Americans, what happened afterward was in many ways more disturbing: In essence, the politicization of 9/11 caused us to lose our collective minds for a long period of time.

The first shot was fired by Karl Rove in a January 2002 address to the Republican National Committee in which he implored the GOP to "go to the country on (the War on Terror) because they trust the Republican Party to do a better job of protecting and strengthening America's military might and thereby protecting America." And sure enough, by the time the midterm elections rolled around, Bush and his GOP minions were milking 9/11 to get as many votes as they could. When Senate Democrats tried to extend union rights for workers in the newly created Department of Homeland Security, for instance, Bush issued a pissy veto threat, and then-spokesman Ari Fleischer described the Dems' proposal as "a step backward, not forward, in protecting the country."

And that's just a mild example. Here are some other choice GOP attacks that accused Democrats of helping al Qaeda win by not kissing Bush's ass with the sufficient level of enthusiasm:

"America sits and wonders why it is that al Qaeda, this ragtag bunch of terrorists scattered all over the globe, can reorganize themselves. I think the difference is that al Qaeda doesn't have a Senate. Al Qaeda doesn't have a Senator Daschle." -- Dick Armey

"As America faces terrorists and extremist dictators, Max Cleland runs television ads claiming he has the courage to lead. He says he supports President Bush at every opportunity, but that's not the truth. Since July, Max Cleland voted against President Bush's vital homeland security efforts 11 times." -- An attack ad targeting then-U.S. Senator Max Cleland. Cleland is a vet who lost both legs and an arm in the Vietnam War.

"Al Qaeda terrorists. Saddam Hussein. Enemies of America. Working to obtain nuclear weapons. Now more than ever our nation must have a missile defense system to shoot down missiles fired at America. Yet Tim Johnson has voted against a missile defense system 29 different times." -- An attack ad targeting Sen. Tim Johnson. This one was particularly rich, since a missile defense shield would have done precisely nothing to stop the 9/11 attacks.

"How dare Senator Daschle criticize President Bush while we are fighting our war on terrorism, especially when we have troops in the field?" -- Trent Lott, who freaked out because then-Senate majority leader Tom Daschle had the gall to suggest that we'd have to capture Osama bin Laden in order to consider the war on terror successful.

"(Daschle's) divisive comments have the effect of giving aid and comfort to our enemies by allowing them to exploit divisions in our country." -- Virginia Representative Tom Davis, also attacking Daschle's remarks. Who knew that demanding the capture of our enemies was tantamount to treason?

And so on. The Republicans' "The Democrats Want to Help al Qaeda Kill You" gambit worked for two consecutive elections before finally running out of gas in 2006. But even so, the ability of one political party to garner votes simply by yelling about treason incessantly is incredibly depressing.

Pass me that bucket of Freedom Fries, will you?

1: "Mission Accomplished"

A lot has been written about Bush's aircraft carrier stunt over the past few years, and with good reason. After all, no other incident better illustrates how Bush's presidency was built entirely on hubristic arrogance, shameless propaganda and a destructive disregard for reality. In what Noam Chomsky correctly called "the opening of the year 2004 election campaign," George W. Bush delivered a so-called "victory speech" for the Iraq War after landing on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln aboard an S-3B Viking jet dressed in full flyboy gear.

Bush's posturing as a war hero was, of course, laughable. During the Vietnam War, Bush used his family connections to obtain a gentleman draft dodger's assignment flying planes in Alabama for the Air National Guard -- a cushy assignment that he didn't even do very well. But no matter! As long as he gave off an aura of steely resolve, and as long as he wore a ridiculous outfit to emphasize his "manly characteristic," our ever-watchful pundit corps endlessly praised him as the gin-you-wine article.

A sample of the atrocities, painstakingly compiled by Media Matters:

"(T)hat's the president looking very much like a jet, you know, a high-flying jet star. A guy who is a jet pilot. Has been in the past when he was younger, obviously. What does that image mean to the American people, a guy who can actually get into a supersonic plane and actually fly in an unpressurized cabin like an actual jet pilot?" -- Chris Matthews

"A little bit of history and a lot of drama today when President Bush became the first commander in chief to make a tail-hook landing on an aircraft carrier. A one-time Fighter Dog himself in the Air National Guard, the president flew in the co-pilot seat with a trip to the USS Abraham Lincoln." -- Wolf Blitzer

"And two immutable truths about the president that the Democrats can't change: He's a youthful guy. He looked terrific and full of energy in a flight suit. He is a former pilot, so it's not a foreign art farm -- art form to him. Not all presidents could have pulled this scene off today." -- Brian Williams

And in the time since Bush performed this grotesque PR stunt, roughly 4,000 troops have been killed in action along with tens of thousands of Iraqis, with nary a WMD in sight to justify the carnage. Heck of a job, all around.