I Voted!

After voting to put Bush on ice this morning (and seeing reality TV legend Toni Ferrari at my polling place), I started thinking about how one could sum up the four years of the Bush regime. You know, if one day a grandkid or something is learning about it in history class and says, "Hey Grandpa, you were around for Bush II. Could you upload your thoughts on his presidency to my hand PC using this mindmeld firewire 3X?"

Of course, my main thought is that the Bush administration continually and consistently fucked up every single thing they touched. It was almost like watching a movie where Pauly Shore was the stepbrother of some respected scientist, and every time Pauly dropped by for a visit, he accidentally destroyed his stepbrother's lab. "Hey bro, what's in this beaker?" "Be very careful! That's ammonium..." "Paulllllyyyy!"

But I think the following two examples - one foreign, one domestic - neatly sum up just how BushCo used ideology and complete ineptness to bungle everything they tried. Let's tackle the simple one first.

THE EPA - For some reason, a few folks thought Bush would be a good steward of the land. I guess they ignored Bush's tenure as governor, when he passed scores of pro-business environmental regs and Houston blew past LA to become the most polluted city in the country. Appointing Gale Norton, a former energy industry lobbyist, to Secretary of the Interior was a terrific start for business. But it only got better. In short time, Bush appointed former energy industry executives and lobbyists to EVERY SINGLE branch of the EPA. I suppose he thinks a former timber company executive is the perfect person to head the forestry department of the EPA. Hey, who knows more about trees than a guy who chops them down for a living? Others might think, you know, a scientist would be good there, but they're crazy! These EPA appointments are a perfectly disturbing example of Bush putting his pro-business ideology (ironic enough, since he never ran a successful business) ahead of all other concerns at all times, no matter the cost.

ABU MUSAB al-ZARQAWI - If you don't know who Zarqawi is, he's the guy responsible for the terrorist insurgency and multiple beheadings in Iraq at the moment. Just a really terrific person. But hey, how is that Bush's fault? Well, in the run-up to the Iraq invasion in 2002, US intelligence was aware of a weapons lab and a terrorist training camp in northern Iraq that was being run by Zarqawi. Northern Iraq is mostly lawless and untied to Baghdad and Hussein. Of course, that didn't stop Bush, Wolfowitz, Cheney and the rest from loudly declaring that Hussein was harboring terrorists and that's part of why we needed to invade Iraq. But then the US caught what should been an intelligence break and the Pentagon drew up a plan to launch missile attacks that would destroy the weapons lab, training camp and possibly kill Zarqawi. But the White House killed it. Months later, a second strike was planned and also killed by the White House. Why would Bush and Cheney shoot down a plan that could've killed a terrorist mastermind? Because they needed the camp in place for Colin Powell's presentation to the UN. In other words, if they destroyed the camp and killed Zarqawi, they would lose a possible rationale for invading Iraq and deposing Hussein. Naturally, when the US later attacked Iraq, Zarqawi escaped, only to return later and orchestrate these insurgent attacks. He's credited as responsible for over 700 deaths at this point. And what's more, he's aligned himself with bin Laden - a former rival - in order to defeat Bush and the US! So, not only did BushCo let a terrorist run free so they could attack Iraq like they planned all along, they actually strengthened his radical association! Nice work.

And those are the two examples of ineptness that I think really perfectly sum up the disaster that was the Bush administration. I say was, because today's record vote turnout is making him a thing of the past. And thank fucking God for that.