During the run up to the Iraq war I was constantly reminded of this book. The Bush administration had obviously fixed on invading Iraq and then proceded to ignore all evidence or information they had about the country. It was almost as though if they thought it out the notion would fade away like a dream. Of course the initial mistake was made far earlier in the 90's when we didn't demobilize our cold war military did anyone really think we could just leave a giant army laying around without someone wanting to use it?

This article/review/book has the bottomless ring of perfect truth about it. Osama knew what he was doing, striking the U.S. when he did, during the stolen reign of Bush. BIn Laden's goal was simple, to launch the opening salvo of World War III. If he had done so during a Clinton or Gore presidency the response would have been far more measured. Now as I watch the results of Bin Laden's evil plans my heart breaks, seeing these two forces in deadly collision and feeling so helpless to stop the loss of lives and treasure. The future is truly a perilous unknown and we need leadership equal to the challenge. Bush seems so small.

Clifton Goodwin

I'm afraid I must agree with Phillips and Goldberg. I never imagined my country would decline so precipitously--on the way to becoming a fascist theocracy. How colossally stupid!

Actually, fool that I may be, I don't think most Americans are all that out of touch with what needs to be done, but the combination of post-reagan crazy republicanism, democratic fearfulness and a corporate-whore media make change all the less likely.

In 2001 when Bush lost the Senate majority, the polls said more Americans favored debt reduction than a tax break, but the taxcut rabid GOP held firm and the democratic senate buckled and gave junior what he wanted, and we started on the road to squandering the surplus he inherited. Democratic timorousness hasn't even paid off; in the case of Iraq, for example, the only senate democrats who've lost their reelection bids have been those that supported the Iraq resolution.

And I have to wonder, frankly, if Americans would've been so eager to support the war in March of '03 if the news outlets had been more critical and done their jobs correctly instead of rallying unthinkingly around Bush. I seem to recall that the Niger yellow-cake scandal was already beginning to be discussed in early '03 in the UK press. (Besides, US support for the war in 3.2003 was never that high. If we needed 2/3 of the public to support a war the way we're supposed to have 2/3 of both houses of congress vote for a formal declaration of war, I don't think we ever had that level of public support.)

But the bottom line, for me, is the gutlessness of the opposition party. I felt sad and angry at the same time in 2004, for all those voters who waited for hours to vote in democratic wards in Ohio when the controlling part deliberately shortchanged them on machines. I thought of the poor people in Cleveland, standing in line for hours, to vote for a man who hemmed and hawed about his support for the war, about whether or not he was a liberal, and couldn't be bothered to defend himself when he was attacked by the Swift Boaters.

Yeah, a trillion, that's how much Iraq is going to cost US taxpayers, enough, it is said, to have guaranteed Social Security for 75 years.

Bush might just as well have poured it down a rathole in the desert - oops - sorry, that's exactly what we have done.

It may not matter who th4e next President is - unless its SUperman, and he can reverse the earth's spin and take us back in time to correct each of Bush's considerable blunders.

So did the terrorists win? Is it all over?

No doubt things look bleak: huge debt, religious yahoos, energy sources drying up, a country of lawyers and financiers - but I see a brighter future! Finding new forms of energy might very well revitalize America's industrial bleed off, as American engineers and scientists get down to work again, and the industrial base - now sitting on their butts, cleaning pools or flipping burgers, get back to work in clean running plants that produce clean energy. It's true that the religious nutballs might want to teach that Darwin was just a racist nut, but how well will that ever sell on the coasts? (It would help, BTW, if the Left stopped cozying so close to the orthodox Muslims, more scared of perceived racism then a distrust of religion, but, methinks, that will change as well, particularly if the Muslims start aligning with the Christian right - their natural allies in the culture wars: they too don't believe in evolution, would love to kill all the fags, and would rather see (behind the burka, of course) women making babies then making money - and we can see how faith in God and not science has left their countries in an educational, social and scientific rutt.) The issue of debt is more murky, and I'll have to leave that to those with greater expertise, but on the issue of energy, it's not just America running out of oil, and I think that they drive cars in Europe and Asia as well as Africa and Latin America, so it looks like we're all going to have to put our heads together on this one - which could bring dividends far greater than an immediate reduction of oil dependency: imagine if we actually worked together to solve one of the great problems plaguing all of us! Pollyanna? Perhaps. But possible, as well.

My biggest fear, BTW, is the Democrats: if they stopped worrying about keeping their little fiefdoms in Washington and actually started looking out for America we might have a chance, but they're too lame and also bitten by this God bug and also addicted to corporate cash and oil money...