Opponents believe that the Bushies are the worst of both worlds: incompetent and corrupt. But I believe they are missing the point regarding incompetence, and understating the corruption aspect.

The Bushies are actually supremely competent, at achieving their agenda. The problem is that their agenda has little to do with the national interest, and often is very much at odds with it. And their very success can and has come back to hurt them also.

They are certainly competent at getting themselves and Republican Congressional members into office, by fair means or foul. They got most of their tax cuts and other welfare for the rich proposals, a drug for the elderly program that is a huge boon to the pharmaceutical and insurance industries, drastic reductions in welfare assistance and other measures adopted into law. They are certainly no slouches in garnering power for the president (or vice-president?) All of these measures have already or will adversely affect the nation at large.

But Iraq is the supreme example of their actual competence at work, to the detriment of the country -- and ultimately to themselves.

For whatever reason they were literally obsessed with this war, before even taking office, and were willing and able to do whatever it took to sell it to a skeptical public. That was their agenda, and they achieved it with absolute competence. They would worry about the aftermath when the time came.

They needed a rationale, and Saddam Hussein's supposed weapons of mass destruction were the most logical. But it went further than those lies. They also had to convince the public that it would be easy, quick and cheap. Hence the talk about it being a cakewalk, our troops welcomed with flowers and kisses, the costs to be paid out of Iraqi oil revenues.

General Shinseki warned that at least 300,000 troops would be required. But that could have raised doubts about the ease of the war, and he was ridiculed. As it was, the military pressured Dumbsfeld into sending in about 150,000 troops initially, versus the 30,000 he originally wanted.

The State Department had made elaborate preparations for post military operations in its Future of Iraq project; the military had been making detailed contingency plans for the same thing since the end of the Gulf War in 1991. Both were simply ignored by the administration; to even consider them might have raised doubts about the feasibility of the war.

The war was rushed into before the troops could be adequately trained and equipped. Even when Turkey upset plans for attacking from the north by refusing permission at the last minute for use of its territory, the war's start could not be delayed. But the Bushies were working with a small window of time; the anti-war movement was gaining momentum, and any delay could have jeopardized the war.

The point is these were deliberate actions, all absolutely necessary to achieve their obsessive goal: war with Iraq. In that they were supremely competent.

The end results, of course, were -- following an initial military success up to Mission Accomplished day -- an ever growing and still growing disaster for the country; once again we're bbogged down in a war we cannot win and cannot afford to lose. But that was never part of their agenda. Had they performed an honest and realistic assessment of the costs, risk and benefits of the war, they would probably have concluded that it was not feasible. Or at least not marketable.

If I am correct about all of the above, then even the apparent incompetence in failing to heed the prior warnings of 9-11 needs to be reexamined. That, after all, would have been the Pearl Harbor event the Bushies neocon supporters claimed would be necessary for public support of their military adventures.

Even the apparent incompetence following Katrina should be examined. Who is benefiting from it? How significant are those harmed by it to the agenda of the Bushies?

The term radical is too good a word for the likes of Bush, and is a very imprecise term anyway. Its primary meaning is one that gets to the root of the problem, hardly a description of Bush. Currently it means one with extremist political views, as in Radical Right-Wing Reactionaries. That fits Bush, but it can also apply to Radical Right-Wing Reactionaries. I suggest a more accurate term for the likes of Bush: Regressive, the antonym of Progressive.

The beauty of this term is that it can be described in degrees, as in: "I used to think that the Bushies wanted to regress to the early part of the last century, but I see they're looking back to far earlier times, when kings held absolute power and sold their tax collection, military and other function s to to private interests -- the ultimate Capitalism.