I'm trying to remember the last time I listened to President Bush. Six years into his presidency and he's fallen so far off my radar that I don't even think of him as a lame duck president. I think he's become almost irrelevant.

With the Iraq war dragging into it's fourth year with no end in sight, Bush has been going around trying to pump up the folks back home (and his horrible poll numbers) with a lot of happy talk about how we're making progress and turning the corner and democracy is on the march. Seems we've been down this road before dont'cha think?

Vice President Cheney said Sunday that his 10-month-old claim that the insurgency was in its "last throes" was "basically accurate" and reflects reality. Since Cheney's original comment, on at least 70 days there have been violent attacks that in each instance killed more than 10 people. Two weeks ago, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the United States is making "very, very good progress" -- less than 48 hours before the U.S ambassador warned of a possible civil war breaking out. And Bush yesterday said his optimism flows in part from success in Tall Afar, a city in northern Iraq, though local residents there said sectarian violence is spreading.

Other statements were proved wrong. The weapons of mass destruction the administration said Saddam Hussein possessed before the war have never been found -- and many experts believe never existed. White House officials hammered then-chief economic adviser Lawrence B. Lindsey for claiming the war could cost as little as $100 billion, saying the estimate was too high. The actual tally is fast approaching four times that amount, according to the Congressional Research Service, which estimates a $360 billion price tag to date.

Perhaps the most famous rosy statement came nearly three years ago when Bush proclaimed: "We have seen the turning of the tide" under a banner that read "Mission Accomplished." Since then, more than 2,300 Americans have died in Iraq.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...&referrer=email

I used to think Bush was a really bad politician who didn't mind being the hand puppet for more powerful men who used Incurious George as a useful idiot to place an amiable face on some truly unsavory, venal and vicious domestic and international plans. Now I think he's not even that. He's just a really bad politician who is a hand puppet and is generally clueless as to why he's so vastly disliked.

Bush is the Republican version of Jimmy Carter. A man who personally may be a very nice fellow, but otherwise has proven totally incapable of mustering the gravitas necessary to be even a competent Chief Executive.

I try to listen to the President. I watch him on the news and he sure sounds sincere. He really seems to think we're winning the war in Iraq. He sure seems convinced that if we keep pumping blood and money into this little piece of Hell in the desert that something worthwhile is going to come out of it. But then again, I don't live in the Alternate Reality of George W. Bush so I'm not seeing the blue skies over Iraq that he does.

Looking at how opinions have changed on Iraq over time should be sobering even to the most ardent Bush backer. The numbers don't lie. Bush has lost the confidence of the American people over Iraq.

http://www.pollingreport.com/iraq2.htm

I thumbed through Friedrich Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil and in Chapter Four's "Epigrams and Interludes" I found the quote that summed up how I relate to President Bush's fanciful flirtations in a separate reality.

“Not that you lied to me but that I no longer believe you—that is what has distressed me.” —

I don't believe George W. Bush. That's not because I think he's some kind of pathological liar or I curse the ground the man walks on. I'm sure in his own way he loves his parents, his family and his country. It's just that unlike Bill Clinton, who you could tell when he was lying his butt off, Bush seems to believe his lies are true.

The Question for Debate is:

Do you believe what President Bush says is the truth or that HE believes what he says is the truth?

Is it possible for this debate to avoid being shut down for being too inflammatory? Let's give it a try.

Is the President a liar? One who deliberately misleads, to a greater extent than we all do? I think not.

Is he over his head? Perhaps. I must admit to a growing fear that nobody can do this job; that filling the requirements of the Presidency of the United States is simply beyond human ability.

Before he became President, I genuinely thought that George W. Bush was pretty much what he presented himself to be; a typical, moderately conservative Republican. I thought the second Bush Presidency would be more-or-less a re-run of the first one. I was wrong.

I had no idea that the current Administration would combine the assertive foreign policy of the neo-conservative movement with the conservative social policy of the religious right.

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I don't think George W. Bush is a liar. I think he genuinely sees himself as having been called to office by Fate. I think he genuinely sees himself as one who has been given the task of doing Great Things.

Frankly, I'd rather have a liar.