A CZAR WON'T SAVE A COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF'S MIDDLE EAST POLICY MIRED IN IGNORANCE, HUBRIS AND AVARICE

I can't deny that I'm just about always ready to blame any catastrophe or disaster on Republicans in general and Bush in particular. If Grover Norquist really set out to make people hate and distrust the U.S. government, he could never have done better than helping install someone so utterly unprepared and so inherently unsuited for the job as George W. Bush. Bush still has a year and a half before we're free of him and it is already widely accepted conventional wisdom that he is by far the worst president in our nation's history. But the quote I want to start off with today isn't just about Republicans. It's about the bipartisan cluelessness of American elites and it was written by Michael Scheuer in his book, Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror.

And because our elites are so full of themselves, they think America is invulnerable; cannot imagine the rest of the world does not want to be like us; and believe an American empire in the twenty-first century not only is  our destiny, but our duty to mankind, especially to the unwashed, unlettered, undemocratic, unwhite, unshaved, and antifeminist Muslim masses. Arrogance (or is it racism?) because the elites cannot believe a ployglot bunch of Arabs wearing robes, sporting scraggily beards, and squatting around campfires in Afghan deserts and mountains could pose a mortal threat to the United States.

Bush and his amateur team of arrogant ideologues had it wrong from day one. Not to imply that they should have ever been permitted to steal the keys to the car in 2000, they certainly should have all been thrown behind bars after allowing the attack on New York and the Pentagon on 9/11. Instead, we allowed them to make a bad situation not just intolerable but close to insoluble. It's too late to imagine if there were some standards of education a potential president should be forced to demonstrate.

On my way home from lunch today I heard whichever silly liar Bush has speaking for him while the regular silly liar is in the hospital going on and on about how Chimpy is mulling over the idea of appointing a czar to run his wars and that no one has been offered the job yet, something the Washington Post had already put the lie to before it was even uttered.

The White House wants to appoint a high-powered czar to oversee the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with authority to issue directions to the Pentagon, the State Department and other agencies, but it has had trouble finding anyone able and willing to take the job, according to people close to the situation.

At least three retired four-star generals approached by the White House in recent weeks have declined to be considered for the position, the sources said, underscoring the administration's difficulty in enlisting its top recruits to join the team after five years of warfare that have taxed the United States and its military.

One thing you can always count on this regime to do-- no matter where or when-- is to lie and lie and lie. And, in the end, that's why they're falling apart at the seams. It all seems to be collapsing on their-- and our-- heads.

Bush shills who are less flummoxed and tongue-tied-- at least slightly less-- like Cheney and McCain, are still claiming they can win the war, trying to blame the Democrats and foment hatred and divisiveness inside America. They busy themselves slandering and smearing Nancy Pelosi. Turns out the orchestrated campaign against Speaker Pelosi's trip to Syria, a campaign of lies and calumny that never ends, was put together by convicted criminal and Bush aide Elliott Abrams and yet-to-be-convicted criminal Dick Cheney. And who financed it? Joe Lieberman's idea of a great American-- Sam Fox, the slimy swiftboat financier who Bush snuck into the Belgian ambassadorship while the Senate was adjourned for a week. As for Cheney? He can't even show his ugly mug at Brigham Young University without being protested... by Mormons!