Bush and the Middle East

When I voted for Al Gore in 2000, it wasn't because I was particularly enamored of him. He simply seemed like a better prospect than George W. Bush. (So did Ralph Nader, for that matter.)

Despite the election results, though, Bush won. (I still understand neither the concept underlying the Electoral College nor the lack of an uproar to abolish it following the incredible comedy of errors which followed the 2000 election.)

Actually, Bush hasn't done as poorly in most areas as I would have expected him to. I think he's probably a decent guy who I wouldn't feel terribly uncomfortable around. I think he's done his best to implement Compassionate Conservatism as he sees it, and I know he's nowhere near as knee-jerk conservative as a lot of the GOP would like him to be.

I also feel that he was sandbagged by the 9/11 attacks. Any president would have had his hands full under such an assault, let alone one elected by less than an overwhelming margin.

But in invading Iraq, he put the nation in harm's way for the flimsiest of reasons . . . and that's something which the electorate cannot afford to tolerate.

When I finished reading James Fallows's "Bush's Lost Year," ( http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/200410/fallows) in the most recent Atlantic Monthly, my blood really boiled. (Okay, you're only going to see the first couple of hundred words of the piece unless you've got a subscription. But that's what libraries are for, folks. See--there is still a place for us!)