(Revised 9-16-2009)

I grant that George W. Bush may have actually believed he was doing the right thing. He may have even believed he was "doing God's will," as he claimed. He is probably a good husband and father, and a good friend to his friends. And I must say that during his last year as president, he seemed a bit less arrogant, and was even gracious in his last press conference and in his farewell address when he congratulated Barack Obama for winning the election to become the next president.

However, we should remember that during his presidency Bush falsely labeled Obama and all other dissenters and critics as "unpatriotic" and "un-American." And while some Republicans may dismiss that as merely "partisan political rhetoric," that is no excuse. There is no excuse for it, because it was extremely arrogant, pejorative, divisive, and dangerously damaging to freedom and democracy.

I must also say that as a partisan politician and president, Bush was not what he claimed, and not what he believes himself to be. In his self-serving farewell address, he tried to make it seem as if he was a great president and had served the best interests of all the people in the U.S. and in the world. But, in fact, he deluded himself, and in effect deceived most of those who believed in him. Granted, he did a few good things. But, in most cases he did not do the good or right or correct thing, and he certainly did not serve God or humanity. And now it is very important that we understand how and why, so we are not deceived again. That’s why I write this critique, and why I wrote the critique on Reagan’s Real Legacy.

It is my duty to say that Bush, like Reagan, served what the Christ Jesus called "Mammon," in that he sought and fought for worldly power, wealth and domain, for himself and his wealthiest supporters and their huge corporations, whose interests he served above all else.

Bush was extremely wrong in both his domestic and foreign policies. And, since he has not acknowledged the truth, and since he is still unrepentant and arrogantly stubborn and self-righteous even though he’s been proven to be misguided, deceptive and wrong, I am duty bound to tell you the truth as I know it.

I must say that Bush’s policies and initiatives were mostly for the benefit of the wealthiest one percent of Americans who provided 80 percent of the funding for his political campaigns. They were well rewarded and have reason to be grateful to him. But, while Bush did some good things out of politically expedient humanitarianism, very few people have reason to be grateful to him. In fact, there is good reason for 297 million Americans and most of the people in the world to be resentful, as you will see.

I will cover the major reasons why Bush was a wrong and harmful leader, and I will include facts regarding both his domestic and foreign policies, as well as the hidden agenda and folly of Bush's War. But I'll begin with the things that came first.

Consider Bush's original campaign promises to be a "compassionate conservative" and "put an end to partisanship." Those proved to be very false promises, since both his domestic and foreign policies and his initiatives and executive orders certainly were not compassionate toward all the people in America and in the world who have been harmed by them, and especially since he was proven to be an arrogant, hard-nosed right-wing ideologue and an extremely partisan and divisive president. He created more polarized and more bitter partisanship.

That was demonstrated in nearly everything Bush did from the beginning of his presidency, and it is the main reason he ignored so much good advice, made so many mistakes and came under so much criticism, not only in America, but in many other countries in the world. His impact on the whole world has been negative and even devastating, and it just kept getting worse, despite all his efforts to try to improve his image on television.

For example, let us consider Bush's Reaganite domestic economic record. After all, he followed the example of Ronald Reagan, and the initial result was a terrible recession right after he gained power. Ever since then the richest few got even more rich while everyone else became worse off, and we have been increasingly feeling and suffering from the consequences and impact of that.

The page titled The Real Legacy of Ronald Reagan explains how and why Bush followed Reagan's example with his first recession and his economic policies and tax cuts for the wealthy. Of course, Bush tried very hard to blame his first recession on his predecessor, President Clinton. However, the Clinton Administration balanced the budget and produced a booming economy. And, Bush's first recession didn't really start to get bad until Bush and Dick Cheney used gloom and doom language about the economy. In fact, they started to do that in 1999 even before they took office, and the more they claimed that the economy was or would be terrible, the worse it got, because the business community and the stock market reacted to their pessimistic and gloomy portrayal and predictions.

The horrendous result of Bush's recession was that unemployment increased 40 percent in 2001 alone, a year after he gained the power of the presidency, and 2.4 Million jobs were lost between 2001 and 2004 during Bush's first term. So, Bush managed to copy Reagan with the same results. He made workers fear losing their jobs, and be more content with unsatisfactory wages and decreasing benefits.

Despite false Republican claims to the contrary, the fact is that the Reaganite and Bushite economic policies greatly benefitted the wealthiest few, at the expense of the vast majority, the environment, the infrastructure, and especially the working poor and the poor.

For example, during fiscal years 2002-2004, Bush succeeded in getting his tax cuts enacted, and they delivered about $197.3 Billion ($197,300,000,000) in new tax breaks for the wealthiest one percent of Americans. But those wealthiest few certainly did not need "tax relief," as Bush called it. Even the least wealthy of that wealthiest one percent had incomes of at least $337,000 per year. Most of them had incomes in the multi-millions, and some even had incomes in the billions. Therefore, Bush's claim that they needed "tax relief" to relive their "tax burden" was a blatant lie designed to mislead and deceive 99 percent of the American people.

While Bush's tax cuts did give a few dollars to the majority of tax payers, they were actually designed and certainly served to make the rich much richer by allowing them to pay even far less taxes, when in all fairness they should have been paying and certainly can afford to pay much more, which would only be fair and equitable. Instead, Reaganite/Bushite policies and laws produced increasing subsidies, tax loopholes, tax shelters and government giveaways which amounted to "welfare for the rich," and consequently many of the wealthiest few have paid only about 7 percent of their income in taxes.

In Western Europe, by contrast, the wealthiest people pay about 50 percent of their income in taxes, which is only fair. And it works well. Most Europeans get from four to six weeks of paid vacation per year, free universal health care, free prenatal care, long maternity leaves, longer parental leave, free child care, and much longer sick leave than in America. Furthermore, such benefits are guaranteed by the government. They are not something that had to be fought for by labor unions, and the workers there don't even have to collectively bargain for a lot of worker benefits.

By contrast, due to Reaganism and Bushism, American businesses and corporations have been enabled to rake in record high profits while they cut workers benefits, health insurance, and even pensions. Reagan and Bush caused America to go way backwards, while many other countries in the world are going forward because they realize that the better workers are treated, the better off everyone is. And yet, in spite of that, George W. Bush berated the European models, and said that America "doesn't want to be like Europe." Certainly he and his wealthy cohorts did not.

Now Americans really need to understand how divisive, harmful and unfair the absurdly huge income disparity and disproportionate distribution of wealth is, and we also need to understand how much worse Bush made it by serving the interests of the wealthiest people who invested in him. They certainly received their reward, but the rest of us were betrayed.

That fact has become very evident in a variety of ways. Even the Comptroller General of the United States and head of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) revealed that the Bush Regime is ultimately going to cost the American taxpayers 32 Trillion Dollars. The whole Reaganite/Reaganomics unfairness, inequity and disproportionate distribution of wealth was continued and made even worse by the Bushites, and it enabled and rewarded greed and selfishness more than it ever has. It allowed, enabled and ensured the unfair and inequitable accumulation of excessive surplus wealth, and enabled employers to pay average employees far less than they deserve, and to pay low income employees less than a living wage.

Under Reaganism and Bushism, money ruled. However, George W. Bush would not have been able to gain the power of the presidency with just the power of the money that he got in campaign contributions from the richest one percent of the population. That money was certainly part of the reason he was able to get people to vote for him, but money alone was not enough. The only way Bush was able to gain the power of the presidential throne was by hook and by crook.

Bush used the "hook" of his original campaign promises, which, as I said, were to unify the country, put an end to partisanship, and serve as a so-called "compassionate conservative." Of course, his using that misleading term was actually an unwitting acknowledgment that conservatives had proven themselves rather heartless and selfish in the 1980s and 1990s. (In fact, Bush's father did something similar when he campaigned for the presidency, saying that he wanted a "kinder and gentler nation," subtly acknowledging that his predecessor Ronald Reagan had not been very kind or gentle.) But the fact is that George W. Bush's campaign promises were proven to be very empty and false, because he did quite the opposite. He caused greater division and more bitter partisanship, and showed little compassion in his actual initiatives, actions and policies, the impact of which belied his desperate efforts to try to defend and justify himself and improve his image on television.

Bush also won the presidency by crook, because he actually stole the 2000 presidential election. Of course, Bush and the Republicans deny the facts about that. But the facts fly in their face, and should make them ashamed. For example, it's a fact that Democratic candidate Al Gore won the popular vote by at least 400,000 votes in 2000, and he surely would have won the electoral vote (and even more of the popular votes) if all the ballots in Florida had been hand-counted as the law called for. All indications but one showed very clearly that Gore had won, and that one single indication to the contrary was due to the faulty machine count that rejected 179,914 Florida ballots, most of which were undoubtedly in Gore's favor because they were in heavily Democratic regions. Therefore, if Bush were an honorable man and truly meant what he had said during the campaign about putting an end to partisanship, he would have either conceded the election to Gore on the day after the election, or, if he really thought he had won, he too would have insisted on a hand-count of ballots to try to prove he was the winner.

It should be obvious that Bush did not do that because he knew Gore had actually won. That is why, instead of doing the honorable and fair thing, Bush and the Republicans fought to stop the hand vote count in Florida, and they managed to do that. They actually stole that election by "legal" partisan maneuvers and a lot of skulduggery and misleading street theater, thereby dividing and polarizing the American people even more, along even harder and more bitter partisan lines. Those are the facts that right-wing conservative Republicans don't want to face. (And it is poetic justice that Bush left office in disgrace while the man he stole the presidency from, Al Gore, has received an Academy Award and a Nobel Peace Prize for his good works.)

In Bush's second term it became even more obvious that his attitude came not only from arrogance and self-righteousness, but also from defensiveness and denial. After all, for him to have actually believed that he deserved to be president, and believed what he said, would require extraordinary indulgence in rationalization and blatant denial of a lot of widely known facts that were increasingly pointed out by critics. And I’m not speaking only of his words, policies and actions as president. In the book, Witness to a Crime: A Citizen’s Audit of an American Election, Richard Hayes Phillips has concluded, after amassing an irrefutable body of evidence, that the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections were essentially rigged by means of voter suppression, ballot tampering, ballot box stuffing, failure to count all the votes, and wholesale alteration of the vote count. Thus the winner lost and the loser won those two presidential elections.

I think Bush refused to face facts, though, because they are contradictory to his staunch right-wing imperialistic view of the world. He tried very hard to create the impression that he was right and the facts are somehow not factual but wrong. He even tried to mislead people with his contrived view of the world, which was based not on facts but on a hidden agenda to rule and control the world by military force in the name of Christian "divine right," just like many kings, popes and emperors have done during the last sixteen centuries. After all, in his self-delusion he believed he was "doing God's will" and fulfilling prophecies. That is extremely ironic, because while he was certainly not doing God's will, he WAS fulfilling prophecies as the "beast-king of Babylon" who lives by the "sword" (gun and bomb) trying to rule the world in the name of God and Country.

Unfortunately, hypocritical, inappropriate and improper imposition of "religion" into official governmental affairs was not the only thing Bush did that was and is damaging to democracy. Equally damaging to democracy was Bush's right-wing conservative political ideology which, as I will show you, requires a hidden agenda and a false front. As I've said, the only way Bush could have gained power was by hook and by crook. That is why the reality and the actual purpose behind Bush's deceptive words and actions must be exposed, because Bush was wrong and deceptive in both his foreign policy and domestic policy.

For example, most of his domestic initiatives are deceptively named and not what they were touted to be. Consider the very deceptively named "Clear Skies" initiative. It rejects the Kyoto Protocol (which deals with global warming by reducing greenhouse gasses), because Bush chose to serve the interests of corporate polluters. Bush's business-friendly plan does not regulate carbon emissions, and allows far more sulfur and mercury emissions. Bush's plan was designed to help big business and corporate polluters, and consequently it jeopardizes the environment and the lives of many Americans. Moreover, it ignores and denies the fact that global warming is an extremely serious problem that we must address immediately! We must do everything possible to sharply reduce and prevent the future production of "greenhouse" gases that produce global warming, because the polar ice caps are melting and shrinking, glaciers are melting and shrinking, oceans are warming, which makes hurricanes much worse, etc. And if we foolishly continue to ignore this problem, it will be to our peril.

Another example is Bush's deceptively named "Healthy Forest" initiative, which actually allows lumber companies greater access and freedom to further decimate our vanishing natural forests in order to rake in greater corporate profits and avoid greater development of alternative building materials. According to the great and laudable Sierra Club, Bush's initiative gives free rein to the timber industry to cut down trees in all National Forests under the phoney guise of "forest fire fuel reduction." But it will do little or nothing to protect communities and homes from forest fires. Instead, it is designed to decrease public involvement, reduce environmental protection, and increase timber company access to our National Forests and other federal lands. Even worse, Bush initiated a series of new National Forest management proposals to limit the analysis of environmental impacts, repeal the ability of the public to appeal bad projects, and increase the degradation of wild forests. In other words, Bush's proposals will increase harm to forests and forest habitat and wildlife, and will turn scientific forest management back 40 years!

Another example of Bush's deceptive initiatives is his so-called "No Child Left Behind" education "reform" initiative. It was predicated and modeled on a fraudulently touted Texas school program, and I suspect it was secretly designed to gradually undermine public education and make way for a privatized, profit-making education system. I suspect that is the hidden agenda of right-wing conservatives regarding education. I think that is why they push for "school choice" and the voucher program (which, by the way, takes money away from public schools). I believe that is why Bush cut $8 Billion from the promised funds for public education, and then imposed an education law and unfunded mandate that has created more bureaucracy and more paper work for public schools. It wastes their precious time and money, and it endangers many public schools and sets them up for failure. It threatens loss of funding if they do not meet standardized testing requirements that most educators find unrealistic, counterproductive and detract from real teaching and learning. It ostensibly creates "greater accountability," but it actually forces attention on very narrowly defined academic achievement. Like "merit pay," it forces teachers to "teach to the test" and focus on test results, which is usually at the cost of wider and more comprehensive learning, and also at the cost of social and emotional character development. After all, we should be motivating and inspiring our students and instilling in them a desire for comprehensive liberal arts education, rather than coaching them to be able to regurgitate a narrow, given set of answers to predetermined questions. "No Child Left Behind" forces schools to do the latter.

Yet another deceptive, misleading and harmful Bush/Republican initiative is to repeal the federal estate tax. Bush and the Republicans deceptively call it the "Death Tax" and falsely claim it must be repealed to "save family businesses and small farms from being liquidated in order to pay estate taxes," and to "save you from paying half of your net worth in taxes when you die, so that your beneficiaries can receive all that you bequeath to them." But those claims are deliberately misleading, blatantly dishonest, and false! The Bush/Republican call for repeal of the so-called "death tax" is a deceptive ruse designed to create a huge windfall for the wealthiest few. It is very costly to the rest of us, because it reduces revenues even further for both the federal and state governments.

The fact is that only a small fraction of the estate tax has ever been paid on small family businesses and farms, and an estate of any size could be bequeathed to a surviving spouse free of estate tax. Almost all estate taxes come only from the very wealthiest people. Only about two percent of all Americans have estates that are subject to estate tax when they die, and 98 percent of Americans who die face no estate tax whatsoever! So we must save the estate tax because it is actually fair and just. It ensures that about half of the largest fortunes that were produced in the country are returned to the country and thereby to the people who actually generated the wealth. It's the only way we can ensure that at least some of the wealth generated by the people of this country is rightfully returned to the people.

Now, Bush's so-called "Faith-based-Charitable Choice" initiative is not quite as deceptive, but it's just as wrong, and Barack Obama was wrong to endorse it. It disregards the clear intent of the founding fathers and the ideal of separation of church and state. It provides taxpayer funds directly to religious institutions that provide social services, and it allows the churches of the Christian Right to use those public funds to proselytize and attempt to recruit and convert people to their brand of religion. It would even allow them to discriminate in certain ways on the basis of religious belief. The results would actually harm both government and religion.

We should realize that in the past and until now, religiously affiliated organizations have been able to participate as grantees or contractors in federal charitable programs. That idea is not new. Catholic Family Services and Lutheran Family Services are traditional examples of that, and they have done a wonderful job. However, they have not been able to try to proselytize or "sell" their religious beliefs to those who come to them for help. They have acted more or less like secular organizations, even though they were mostly staffed by people with private religious conviction. Until now, government has been barred from providing direct assistance to religious organizations that are "pervasively sectarian" and that openly proselytize. Bush's "faith-based" initiative changed that, specifically for the benefit of partisan sectarian churches like those on the Christian Right.

Bush’s initiative puts government in the position of choosing which religions and which of their denominations should receive grants. This makes it impossible to make any fair decisions, and any decisions that are made would be harmful to both religion and government. Even worse, it would actually decrease funding for needed social service programs across the board. Additionally, because of Bush's huge tax cuts for the wealthy, it is very likely that federal social service spending will ultimately be cut even further, causing an even greater decrease in funding for needed social service programs.

In that respect, Bush merely followed the lead of Reagan, ignoring the fact that most Americans really don't mind pooling their money so that the common wealth can be used for the common good. Most people like to help those who need help. Just look at how many of us give freely to food drives to help the food banks try to relieve some of the hunger in the land. Look at how many of us give freely to the toy drives to give a Christmas present to some of the children of poor families. And look at how many of us give freely to all the relief drives for victims of natural disasters such as tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, etc. That willingness to help those who need help is built in us, innately, to ensure the survival of the species. We want to use the common wealth for the common good. But, we should be doing that collectively, fairly and equitably through our taxes and public service agencies, so that needed assistance and relief is fair and steady and certain, not dependent on the whim of individuals and on temporary, sporadic and sometimes less than successful efforts to collect voluntary private charitable donations and contributions from individuals.

Another Bush initiative is equally wrong, but he didn't talk about it much. It involves his plans for a nuclear weapons revival with new weapons development, and it is a part of his overall plan designed to "further ensure U.S. global nuclear dominance in the future." But he didn't talk about it much because he knew it would not be accepted by the American people. And rightly so. It's not only an insanely foolish idea, but it has been proven scientifically to be unreasonable and inadvisable. Despite that, Bush proceeded with it. A report by the Natural Resources Defense Council revealed that the DOE spent $6.5 Billion on nuclear weapons in 2004. Bush requested $6.8 Billion more for 2005 and a total of $30 Billion over the following four years, and those amounts don't even include his anti-missile program costs.

Bush's folly pushed us backwards into more danger, more conflict, more competition for global power, and more waste of taxpayer's money, putting us in greater jeopardy of another nuclear arms race. In fact, Bush's arrogance and folly spurred the Russians to start asserting their military power in the world again, which led us into another cold war with Russia. (See the page on The Third Cold War.) So, rather than follow the insane, backward, foolish path Bush was on, we must show leadership forward, in the opposite direction. The U.S. and all other nations must simply destroy all nuclear weapons, put an end to the nuclear weapons era, and an end to military imperialism.

Another example of misleading and deceptive tactics of the Bush Regime was their use and reliance on avoidance/diversion tactics with regard to the news media, and the tragic thing about it is that reporters did not even bother to press issues or follow up or investigate. Most of the time reporters simply allowed the Bush Administration to dictate the news and ignore or dismiss criticism, rather than be held accountable for mistakes, offenses, transgressions, and abuses of power. Fortunately, that didn't work all the time, but it worked far too often.

This has become a very dangerous trend and it is very damaging to democracy. In fact, it has already damaged our democracy. It's one of the reasons George W. Bush and the spokespersons for his administration were able to ignore the international community and make false claims to mislead the American people so he could launch his preemptive and mostly unilateral war against Iraq. Journalists simply did not do their job as they should have, and that enabled and allowed the Bush Regime to get away with it. That has become clear to all those who have recognized it, and it was inevitable that the truth would come out eventually.

The truth is that if American journalists had been doing their job correctly, the American people would have known about most of the intelligence, reports and evidence that the Bush Administration simply ignored because it didn't support their opinions and justify their war plan for Iraq. After all, they ignored all the reports and evidence that: 1) Saddam Hussein did not have a relationship with al Queda; 2) Iraq was not trying to buy materials from Niger for an Iraqi nuclear weapons program; 3) Saddam Hussein was not planning an attack on the U.S.; and 4) Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). The Bush Regime ignored all the intelligence, reports and evidence. Instead, they claimed otherwise, and the mainstream American news media failed to investigate or report the real truth about it.

Other facts are that on October 1, 2002, Bush received a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) representing all federal intelligence sources, stating that there was no imminent danger to the United States from Iraq. In spite of that, on October 4, 2002, Bush released a concocted, distorted summary of the NIE to Congress referred to as a White Paper, and simply left out the NIE analysis, qualifying language and critical information. The report was converted to false assertions to make it seem that the case for war was authorized and advised by the intelligence community. The NIE was withheld from Congress, which was left with only Bush’s White Paper to go on. Then, on October 7, 2002, Bush made a public speech claiming that Saddam Hussein was an imminent danger to the United states with his "unmanned aerial vehicles" with "Weapons of Mass Destruction" "for missions targeting the United States."

More importantly, if the news media had done their job, we all would have known the real reason why Bush insisted on invading Iraq, because it was unwittingly and brazenly revealed two years before the war in a document entitled Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century, written in September 2000 by a right-wing conservative think-tank called Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

According to the PNAC web site when I read it in 2002, it was the brain child of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Lewis Libby, William Kristol, and Jeb Bush. Others who are associated with the PNAC and probably had a hand in developing the ideas expressed in the document were Richard Perle, Elliot Abrams, Gary Bauer, William J. Bennet, Dan Quayle, Ellen Bork, and other lesser-known, like-minded right-wing conservative ideologues - and it's difficult not to assume that George W. Bush was a major player even though his name was left off the list for some reason.

As I wrote in a couple of my books, the "Rebuilding America's Defenses" document reveals their shameless and blatant plan for world domination and imperialism. It reveals that even before they gained the power of the presidency, the leaders of the Bush Administration apparently planned to invade and occupy Iraq regardless of whether Saddam Hussein was still in power, so they could gain a better and more permanent foothold in that oil-rich region. It discusses "American global leadership" that will "shape a new century favorable to American principles and interests," and it calls for a "dominant American role in the Mid-East." It describes American armed forces abroad as "the cavalry on the new American frontier." And, as incredible and amazing as this is, the imperialistic PNAC blueprint supports and expands an earlier document written by Wolfowitz and Libby that says the U.S. must "discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role."

Considering that, it is apparent that Bush’s agenda was to gain and keep control in Iraq. And, because he "privatized" his war, he was serving the interests of American corporate profiteers like Blackwater, now called Xe, the controversial American "security" company or private military operating in Iraq. And by the way, we’ve now learned that more than one former member of Blackwater’s management team alleges that Erik Prince, the founder, former CEO and still owner of Blackwater, "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe." That’s why he and/or his staff have repeatedly been accused of murder, and are under suspicion again now. And you should know that George W. Bush knew Prince well. Prince worked for Bush Sr., and Prince's father co-founded the Family Research Council with Gary Bauer. Erik Prince has given more that a million dollars to Bauer’s Family Research Council and James Dobson’s Focus on the Family. So he is a member in "good standing" of the Christian Right, and obviously believes they should rule the world even if it means committing murder.

But Bush especially served the interests of Cheney's crooked company, Halliburton, and its subsidiaries like Brown & Root and KBR. Clearly the long-term plan was to the benefit of Halliburton and other American corporations and oil companies. Most people know that. Even Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, when he was safely out of office, confessed in his memoir, "Everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil."

You see, it was not just coincidence or by accident that during the initial U.S. Military invasion of Iraq, U.S. military guards were posted around the Iraq oil ministry and its oil wells, while they did nothing while the Baghdad Museum was looted of priceless artifacts and antiquities. And, speaking of that, you should know that many of Iraq's archaeological sites have been bulldozed and paved over by U.S. forces since then. Iraq's ancient heritage had been proudly displayed in its ancient archeological sites and its museum. Now, however, as a result of U.S. actions, most of the artifacts have been lost and many of those sites have been damaged or destroyed. I’ve heard that part of the ancient city or Ur now lies underneath a U.S. Air Force base runway, and ancient Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar's palace now lies underneath a parking lot built by American personnel. If that's true, I suspect Bush’s agenda was about "religious" bigotry as well, even though it was mostly about oil.

In fact, that's why Halliburton and its subsidiaries were given a no- bid contract, not only to control Iraq's oil, but to also profiteer by providing other services formerly done by the military. It was Bush's new privatization of war, which is highly beneficial to American corporate war profiteers and highly expensive for American taxpayers. It's just another part of their "globalism" movement, which is designed to enable American mega-corporations to virtually dominate business in the whole world in the name of God and Country.

That's really what it's all about. After all, it's extremely difficult to believe Bush has any love for Arabs or Muslims. If he did, as Commander in Chief, he would not allow U.S. forces the "collateral damage" levels he did. After all, he allowed his armed forces to kill 30 Iraqi or Afghani civilians just to try to kill one targeted Jihadist enemy. That is outrageous, because he would certainly not allow American police forces to kill 30 innocent Americans in order to kill just one criminal. Besides that, Bush’s closest "religious" advisors were actually right-wing bigots and hypocrites who claim to be Christian authorities while they erroneously judge and condemn Islam as an "evil, wicked religion." That's one of the reasons most Muslims know very well what Bush's real motivation was, and it's one of the reasons so many of them wanted to kill Bush's occupying American forces. Of course, the main reason is because they knew the Bush Regime indulged in torturing Muslim prisoners (or "suspected combatants"), but they also know about Bush's hidden agenda regarding Iraqi oil, and his hidden agenda about "fulfilling prophecy."

You see, Bush's hidden agenda was not only about the U.S. becoming a dominant, controlling force in that oil rich region. That was a big part of it, but I suspect Bush also persisted in the occupation of Iraq because his "religious" advisors probably convinced him that his war in Iraq is "God's Will" and fulfills the prophecy of the warring "sixth angel" who "poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates..." (Revelation 16:12) That’s one of the reason’s Bush claimed he was "doing God’ will," and that has recently been confirmed. In early 2003, in a top-secret phone call to the president of France, Bush asked for French troops to join American soldiers in attacking Iraq as a "mission from God." Bush stated that Iraq must be conquered to deal with "Gog and Magog," the symbolic evil forces also mentioned in the book of Revelation.

While the book of Revelation is mostly symbolic prophecy, the phrase referring to the Euphrates River may have meant some killing in Iraq was foreseen and foretold. However, that does not mean that Bush’s war must continue, and it certainly does not mean that God caused it or would sanction it. John's symbolism in the Book of Revelation was mainly designed to portray that those who "blaspheme" against God suffer in many ways. But it's not because God is not merciful and loving. In fact, God loves us all and does not want anyone to be killed. It's because those who judge, hate and curse their enemy actually curse or "blaspheme against" God, because they do not realize what God really is. In hating and cursing their enemies they unwittingly hate and curse God and themselves, and they are at war with God and their own spirit-soul. That's why Jesus said we should not judge, and if we are tempted to judge we should resist not evil but love good, overcome evil with good, and love even our enemy, because our enemy is usually just a reflection of our self.

Unfortunately, George W. Bush did not see that, and that’s why yet other examples of Bush's folly and arrogance were in his willingness to ignore national and international laws and resort to torturing prisoners and indulge in illegal wiretapping. After all, the so-called "Patriot Act" has deprived many Americans of long-standing civil liberties and rights. That’s largely because there has been no official oversight of surveillance activities. That was clearly revealed in December 2005 when Bush was forced to admit that he had ordered government agents in the National Security Agency (NSA) to tap the phones of American citizens without necessary legislated court approval.

You see, Bush was very well aware that there was a FISA law that was established before Bush became president, and it requires court approval for wiretapping to spy on people suspected of being terrorists. However, even though he knew the FISA law has a provision that in the case of dire emergencies a wiretap could be performed and the court could be notified afterward to provide a proper check to ensure compliance with laws; and even though Bush had even gotten the FISA law amended to allow him wait 72 hours after a wiretap to notify the court, rather than the 24 hours that the law originally stipulated, Bush still had ordered his security forces to wiretap and eavesdrop on whoever they wanted at any time, without any court oversight whatsoever.

Even worse, Bush then falsely claimed that those who criticized him for it were simply against surveillance activities and were obstructing his ability to wage the war on terror. He deceptively tried to avoid the real issue, which is that his regime illegally, without required court oversight, assumed unchecked power to covertly spy and wiretap, just like dictatorial regimes do.

In January 2008 the story thickened, because in order to do this, Bush and his NSA had enlisted the help of telecommunications companies. So it has been with the collusion of large telecoms that Bush spied on American citizens without the FISA required warrants, violating the 4th Amendment and the right to privacy. In August 2007, Congress had betrayed the people and given the telecom companies temporary immunity until February 2008 for their complicity in breaking the law. And then Bush and his loyalists in Congress wanted to give the telecom companies permanent immunity from prosecution, knowing that otherwise they could be prosecuted for breaking the law. They pushed a bill that would protect the telecommunications companies, and also indirectly protect them.

Bush obviously thought he was above the law -- above U.S. law and above international law -- because he thought he was "doing God’s Will." And he arrogantly and falsely claimed or believed that his American critics were merely "godless, unpatriotic and un-American." He even hand-picked his audiences in speaking engagements, so it would appear on television that everyone approved of him and his policies. He even went so far as to say, "I'm the Decider," which means he believed he must be a dictator. That is also because he believed he was doing God's Will, and that is very convenient because it enabled him to believe he was absolutely right and could do no wrong.

Granted, Bush was nowhere near as bad as the terribly wicked and murderous Osama bin Laden, even though Bush had much more destructive power at his command and wielded it wrongly. However, they are both just as deluded with self-importance, and just as deluded in the false belief that they are doing God's Will. Nothing, but nothing, could be further from the truth.

I tell you the truth knowing that it will be devastating to the families who have lost a loved one in Bush's war, and it will be particularly devastating to the American veterans who have lost limbs or been maimed permanently by their wounds. My heart goes out to them, and my heart aches for them. But, they can take comfort in the fact that removing Saddam Hussein was a good thing. And they can take comfort in the fact that U.S. forces have done other good things in Iraq, such as beginning to restore infrastructure that was destroyed, and trying to rid Iraq of murderous, power-hungry zealots who claim to be "Muslim Jihadists" (who showed up after the American invasion claiming they just wanted to stop the American occupation of Iraq).

However, even though U.S. forces have certainly done some good and should be proud of that, I must tell you that America must stop the occupation of Iraq and let the United Nations take over with a truly international force that includes Arabs and both Sunnis and Shiites. Then no "insurgents" will be able to claim they are fighting Western imperialistic forces.

It is impossible to accomplish what Bush wanted to do in Iraq. In the first place, his hidden agenda was wrong (to establish a firm foothold there, and maintain American control of Iraqi oil). Secondly, continuing to try to control Iraq by military force would only mean the killing or maiming of many more tens of thousands of Iraqi and American military and police forces, along with many innocent civilian men, women and children. The American occupation only provides radical Muslims justification for the insurgency "to drive out the American occupiers and infidels."

Bush was so invested in his beliefs that he could not see that. In spite of the facts, Bush was blatantly arrogant, insolent and stubborn because he wanted to stick to his plan for the U.S. to be a dominant force in the region, and he pretended and acted as if he was a "holy warrior who will conquer evil." But he was wrong. Ultimately, the solutions to the problems in Iraq can only be political and diplomatic, conditional upon the complete end to American occupation, an end to American corporate control of Iraqi oil, and sufficient involvement of United Nations peace-keeping forces made up of truly international forces that include Arabs and all Muslim sects of Islam. The insurgency against the American occupation will stop as soon as the American occupation stops.

That fact has been confirmed by three studies by very different authors who reached the same conclusion about modern terrorism against Americans and Europeans. One study is a book, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, by Robert Pape. Another study is by the Global Research in International Affairs Center, and another study was done by the conservative Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. All three studies reveal that the anti-American insurgency in Iraq is actually not motivated by a desire to preemptively attack the West. It is motivated by a fervent desire to retaliate for and fight against foreign occupation of Arab/Muslim lands. All these studies and the facts show that the main motivation of militant Muslims in the Mid- East is to remove foreign occupiers of Muslim lands. And, significantly, the research also shows that the vast majority of Arab insurgents killed in Iraq have never taken part in any terrorist activities prior to their arrival in Iraq.

It is also noteworthy that the facts reveal that al Queda did NOT operate in Iraq prior to Bush's occupation of that country. Al Queda began operations there only after the American occupation began to drag on. So the Bush regime's claim that Saddam Hussein and al Queda were in cahoots is simply not true, and it is also not true that the insurgents in Iraq would attack the U.S. after a U.S. pullout. They just want the U.S. out of Iraq and out of the Mid-East.

It is also not true that Muslims are upset with the West (Americans and British) because they are just "jealous" of our way of life. That is a very simplistic and misleading idea concocted by rich Republican Americans. The truth is that Muslims have very legitimate grievances against the British, Americans, Russians, and Israelis. Muslims are fighting for their land, their rights, and their independence, and against imperialism and occupation of their lands by foreign forces.

By the way, I can’t help mentioning that when, out of desperation, Bush later resorted to claiming that Americans against his war in Iraq are like the Americans who were against the war in Vietnam, and claimed that it just "aids and comforts the enemy," it was very typical of Reaganites like Bush. After all, they still claim that the only reason the U.S. lost the war in Vietnam was because of a so-called "lack of resolve on the part of the American People," and they blame anti-war demonstrators for the defeat. They even still claim that "if America had really tried to win, we would certainly have won."

That is absolutely not true. The U.S. military leaders tried their damnedest to win the war in Vietnam, but they lost for a couple of very basic reasons. They ignored or did not understand the desire and the will of the vast majority of the Vietnamese people. Instead, they served the interests of the relatively few Vietnamese who had become part of the French colonial establishment based in Saigon. U.S. leadership also demonstrated ignorance, carelessness and disregard for the majority of Vietnamese (as well as Cambodians and Laotians), and grossly underestimated the tenacity and ingenuity of the Vietnamese people who were simply continuing a very long and hard fight for independence from any foreign influence -- first Chinese, then French, then American.

The Vietnam situation is relevant with regard to Iraq, because U.S. leadership had been warned against such folly in Vietnam by experts on the Far East but ignored the warnings. Bush's folly in Iraq is somewhat similar to the U.S. folly in Vietnam, especially in that Bush was also warned against it. Experts on Iraq and the Mid-East clearly warned the Bush administration well before the war about the folly of invading and occupying Iraq, and they predicted what would happen and did happen. Unfortunately, Bush went ahead with his war plan anyway, in spite of those warnings, and he waged his preemptive war even in spite of all the reports and intelligence that were contrary to the false claims he made to try to justify it.

Granted, Saddam Hussein should have been removed from power in Iraq, because he was a murderous tyrant. However, as I said, United Nations forces comprised of international troops including Arabs and Muslim Sunnis and Shiites should have done it in the first place. And as soon as U.S. forces pull out, such U.N. forces should step in to prevent violence and keep the peace until the people of Iraq are stabilized and unified by reasonable leadership.

Preventing violence and keeping the peace in Iraq will be considerably less of a problem when the insurgents can no longer claim that they are fighting American imperialism and defending Islam against imperialistic Christian Crusaders. In fact, radical Muslim insurgency and "Jihadism" in the whole region will also be far less of a problem when we enlist the help of moderate and progressive Muslims in a concerted strategy to emphasize the teachings of the Qur’an (Koran) that are resonant and compatible with the true teachings of the Bible. For as I stated on the home page, the prophet Muhammad knew and respected the teachings of Jesus. Muhammad stated that killing is always evil, and that indiscriminate killing is especially evil. Moreover, like Jesus, he advised against retaliation and against force or coercion in religious matters, and he commanded Muslims to "be very courteous to Jews and Christians because we all believe in the same God."

Even the most radical and militant Muslims will find it difficult to deny the truth when they are faced with it on local television by loving, peaceful, understanding, humble, sympathetic Muslim peacemakers. For truth and love will ultimately overcome false beliefs and hate, and it’s the only thing that will. And if the Americans, British and Israelis demonstrate a willingness to establish fairness and justice, and make amends for the injustices the Palestinians and other Arabs and Muslims have suffered at their hands, we can indeed make peace.

Aggressive American occupation of Iraq would only fuel more violent opposition to it, because in the eyes of many Muslims, under Bush’s leadership it amounted to a modern "Christian Crusade." And that is confirmed by how many fundamentalists and evangelicals from the American "Christian Right" have become members of the U.S. armed forces. They are indeed crusaders. (See the page on The Crusades for Jerusalem, which explains Muslim resentment of aggressive, military imperialist Christian Crusaders ever since 1099 A.D.) And George W. Bush was just as misguided as the earliest ones were.

This is not just my opinion. Most Europeans believe the United States under the Bush regime was among the worst contributors to world instability, along with Israel, according to a poll and survey conducted by Gallup in Europe. In addition, according to an annual survey of global attitudes conducted by the Pew Research Center, which covered people in 15 European, Asian, and African countries, the continued U.S. presence in Iraq is seen as a great threat to world peace, and favorable opinions of the U.S. fell again in 2008. The Pew survey was carried out annually since 1999, and has shown a continued decline in support for the U.S. because of Bush foreign policy. In fact, America's global image has been severely damaged, and support for the war on terrorism has declined even among close U.S. allies like Japan. The war in Iraq continually lowered opinions of the United States, not only in predominantly Muslim countries but in Europe and Asia as well. And the U.S. presence in Iraq was cited as a great obstacle to world peace.

Of course, the Bush Regime originally created the problem by denigrating and virtually usurping the power of the United Nations in 2001, 2002 and 2003. But the problem in Iraq since then has been Bush's War and the American occupation. The problem was not and never has been the conscientious critics of Bush's occupation of Iraq, because his critics were and are correct. It was wrong from the start, and his hidden agenda was utterly wrong and imperialistic.

In fact, Bush, through his arrogant, misguided folly, made a terrible situation ten times worse with regard to Muslims since 2001. Because he believed he was fighting a "holy war" against radical Muslim extremists, he was nearly as deluded as the Muslim extremists, and he was far more dangerous because he had much more military power at his disposal.

But all of the Bush Regime’s foreign policies were foolish, counterproductive, and damaging. For example, in December 2007 Bush said something so hypocritical I must comment on it. He was speaking in response to a question about what he thought of Vladimer Putin’s strategy to cling to power in Russia, and Bush’s response was that he hoped Russia in the future would "realize they need checks and balances." That, in my view, was ironic and extremely hypocritical, because Bush scorned all efforts to provide checks and balances on his power. He called any and all efforts to rein him in and curtail his abuses of power as "unpatriotic" political posturing. That was not only arrogance, but insolence. And his remarks against Putin were among many opening salvos in the Third Cold War with Russia (see the page on The Third Cold War).

You see, because of the Bush Regime’s nationalistic, imperialistic, militaristic world view, Vladimer Putin’s Russia has been becoming more and more nationalistic and has been deliberately developing world-wide ambitions in its young people. Growing numbers of Russians have put freedom of speech very low on their list of priorities, while one of the highest priorities is establishing Russia as a great world power once again. This is in large part in response to the imperialistic actions of the American Neo-Conservative Movement led by Dick Cheney and the Bush Regime. It is especially in response to the growth of American military bases in foreign countries, increase in U.S. military operations, expansion and growth of U.S. nuclear warfare capabilities, all of which has been used to justify Putin’s call for Russia to compete with and surpass America as a world military power. And they are already trying to do that.

In other words, George W. Bush did not make Americans safer. In fact, he worsened America’s status in the world, weakened the dollar, weakened America’s military, increased and strengthened its enemies, created new enemies, and put Americans in far greater jeopardy than they have been since 1941.

Bush sought the presidency to hold the most powerful position in the world to do what he believed is "God's will." That's what made him extremely self-righteous, divisive, dangerous and harmful, as he proved to be. After all, most misguided, power-hungry, egocentric, self-important people who seek, fight for and gain positions of personal power justify themselves by actually believing that they are doing the right thing, when they really serve themselves and the wealthy minority of people who support them. They choose the way that seems right to some men, but leads to conflict, division, and destruction. That’s the biggest reason why America is divided and in conflict. It’s also why so many other nations are divided and in conflict, and why there has been and is so much death and destruction. As Jesus put it, they are the blind leading the blind.

Of course, right-wing Neo-Conservative Republicans and the American Christian Right are not the only ones that must be exposed and rebuked. All religious bigots and hypocrites must be exposed and rebuked, especially the murderous zealots who claim to be Muslim Jihadists and Jewish Zionists. They don’t realize how little they understand their religious scriptures, and how much they simply ignore in them. They all must share the blame for the terrible situation we are in now. (See the pages on The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, and on Divided Islam vs True Islam), which exposes Muslim hypocrites.)

I need to add that it is not enough to expose the hypocrisy and error of hatemongers, warmongers and murderers who claim to serve God, and it is not even enough to bring them to justice. We must also recognize why young Arab Muslims are willing to die for their cause, and we must understand what their cause is. I have covered that in the books, and fully discussed the roots of conflict in the Mid-East, from 1917 to the present. (See the page on The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict.)

We must learn and understand that history, and then we must let it be known that we understand, and that we will do something about the injustices and offenses perpetrated against Arabs and Muslims by the British, the Americans, and the Israelis. The Bush Administration has utterly failed in that regard, because for the most part they have blindly and unfairly supported Israel. They have even ventured naively, blindly, arrogantly and offensively in their own ill-advised wars. And one of the worst consequences of Bush’s folly is that thousands of people have needlessly lost their lives, and tens of thousands have been wounded and maimed.

Still, as his reign drew to a close, Bush desperately tried to improve his legacy. His visit to Gaza and to Africa to claim credit for U.S. financial aid to help deal with disease there was another example of that. But, in his last State of the Union Address, Bush demanded that Congress make his tax cuts for the wealthy permanent. That would cost us taxpayers $4.3 trillion over ten years. The big recipients are multi-millionaires and billionaires, and their government giveaway and windfall would amount to $287,000 apiece.

The fact is that Bush’s un-Christian War in Iraq has been the second costliest war in the history of the world, financially, not even considering the cost in human lives and limbs. Only World War II was more expensive, and the main reason is Bush’s privatization of the war, with U.S. taxpayers money being bilked by corporate war profiteers that supported Bush. (Read the book by Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes in their book, The Three Trillion Dollar War, published on February 28, 2008. Stiglitz was chief economist at the World Bank and won the Nobel Memorial Prize for Economics in 2001. Bilmes is a lecturer in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.)

Now, I deliver this judgment because it was not only prophesied and foretold by Jesus and by preceding Jewish prophets and the prophets of other religions, it is totally called for and it must be delivered. The stone of truth must "shatter the image of the King of Babylon," which is what Bush represented (as is explained somewhat on the page titled The Fall of Babylon, and more comprehensively in Chapter 6 of Memoirs of a Prodigal Son of Man and previous books).

This "pen" can and in due time will prove mightier than Bush's "sword," and it will do so because the weapons of the Lord are not carnal or lethal, but they are mighty through God for pulling down strongholds of misused military power. The real weapons of the Lord are words of truth, and the truth is that despite what Bush claimed and may believe, he did not serve God.

As the Christ Jesus said, you cannot serve both God and Mammon. And Bush definitely served Mammon in that he fought for worldly power, wealth and domain, and served the interests of the wealthiest few and their giant corporations and monopolies. And he deserves at the very least to be exposed and rebuked for his arrogance, bigotry, and hypocrisy.

Bush also deserves to be exposed and rebuked for his stubbornness and self-righteousness, because even as late a November 22, 2008, he had the gall to say, in a speech before an international audience, "The greatest threat to freedom is not less government, but too much." It amazed me that he was still repeating that misleading Reaganite mantra. Fortunately, Barack Obama refuted and negated that in his inaugural address by saying: "The question is not whether government is too big or too small, but whether it works for the people." That’s the truth. But, Bush showed no sense of shame, contrition, repentance, or sorrow. In fact, he seemed defiant and disgusted that people didn’t see that he was "right," and he claimed that history will prove him right. But he was terribly wrong, as history has shown and will show.

During the 2008 presidential campaign Joe Biden promised that an Obama-Biden administration will go through Bush administration data with "a fine-toothed comb" and pursue criminal charges if necessary. Biden said: "If there has been a basis upon which you can pursue someone for a criminal violation, they will be pursued, not out of vengeance, not out of retribution, but out of the need to preserve the notion that no one, no one, no attorney general, no president, no one is above the law."

I agree, and I hope President Obama will agree. It is important that the American people hold the Bush Regime accountable for all their deceptions and violations of national and international laws, especially those involving illegal wiretapping and torture. And since that issue has been raised again, I need to say that we must expose and repudiate Dick Cheney’s latest claim that torture was needed because "it worked," obviously believing that the end justifies the means. He is simply wrong on both counts. Torture produces unreliable information. It rarely works because victims will saying anything to make it stop. Besides that, the point is not whether torture works or not. The point is that only cruel fascists, dictators and tyrants indulge in torture.

Furthermore, ever since it was first revealed that the Bush Regime did indulge in torture, many more Muslims have been willing to fight and even die in order to kill Americans. Consequently, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al are responsible for thousands of deaths that may otherwise never have happened. So shame on all of them, and may they all be held accountable for violating national and international laws.

I say that because I just read the CIA Special Report and the official "torture memos" that were released by President Obama in April, which reveal serious crimes by the Bush Regime. The documents reveal that top CIA officials solicited and obtained from Department of Justice lawyers handpicked by the Bush Regime to concoct "legal opinions" to claim that so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" did not amount to torture unless they caused "pain equivalent to organ failure or death." Thus the CIA was given free rein to use torture as long as they did not kill detainees (prisoners), and yet they did kill several and tortured many. That violates the Geneva Convention and U.S. Law, and those killings qualify as capital offenses under 18 U.S.C. 2441, the War Crimes Act passed into law in 1996 by a Republican-controlled Congress. Therefore, those responsible should be prosecuted, including George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, other Bush Regime members who were culpable, the attorneys who "justified" the torture, and those who actually committed the crimes.

May justice be served.