thanks for this Joan, and can I say, what a difference between your post and the recent Paglia one. Yours is to the point, concise and expertly parsed. I found it hard to look at him, much less listen to what came out of his mouth. I'm happy that I won't see that smirk any longer. I do regret however that he will be living exactly 4.2 miles from my own home and will begin the revision at his now combined library and think tank at SMU.

thx again

Bravo

I tried to watch ... had to turn the sound off. He looked like such a little kid and he never wrote I'm sure a single word himself ... a switch from "My Pet Goat" to "My Pet President" ... very surreal

Very well stated.

I am sorry you had to watch.

bbd, I am so sorry about that! I hope he keeps to himself.

rnostbakken and something stinks...well, I was just doing my job! But thank you, because it was painful.

..I'd like to thank you. You were not perfect and you certainly had a heavy load, but I appreciate your commitment to the safety of this country. And although you lack the eloquence of a Winston Churchill, I definitely preferred your manner of speech to the popular manner of politicians speaking like lawyers. In the end, I just hope that this war was not in vain, as I am sure you do as well. No President truly knows how history will treat them. For all our sake, and for the sake of future generations, I hope it is kind.

Four and a half more days, everyone. Four and a half more days. And then we're free.

Just before sunset decades ago before the Navy went green. Trash that had accumulated during the day was bagged and piled on the ship's fantail. From there it was tossed into the ship's wake.

In these last minutes of light many of us in the crew would sit on the mounts and bollards while smoking a last cigarette and watch the bags drift back into the wake and then sink over the horizon. It was a release of the day, an end at sunset.

The trash bags although appeared to have moved away were in fact standing still there in the middle of a broad ocean. The ship and its crew were moving on to other destinations or maybe with luck home port.

This evening I watched George and heard his voice but in my mind he appeared to have joined those bags drifting in to the horizon. Our ship of state was sailing onward.

It was the awaited release of a very long bad day.

It's important to note the utter lack of stature of this harmful, clueless man - before, during and (can we just put the lid on it now?) after. Extremely well put Ms. Walsh.

That's all.

what did you expect?

He is a complete idiot and moron and has ruined everything he touched. However, our invasion probably has not made things worse for women. Unlike pre-broken Iraq (where women held professional positions), Taliban controlled Afghanistan was a hellish place for women. I remember reports that women were dying because they did not have an available man to take them to the hospital. Life may still be horrific on most accounts, but for women, it may be a wash.

Now Bush can enjoy a quiet, restful retirement at his new home. There, he can put the finishing touches on that wet brain he so obviously has.

It was for the delusional faithful, to empower the myths that sustain them, many of whom have lots of money.

Expect some wingnut site to link to this and a whole slew of posters sent over to defend Bush's honor by pointing to the fact that we didn't have another terrorist attack and site that as proof that he was the greatest president ever. This man's legacy will be with us for the next 30 to 40 years as my generation will fight about it the same way my parents generation fought (and continues to fight) about Vietnam. I don't look forward to the next couple decades of this.

I didn't watch, I didn't see a reason to. Unless he admits the war in Iraq was based on outright lies and turns himself in for it, I see no reason to give this man the time of day. The best we can do is defend president Obama everytime he comes under fire and point out that he didn't start wars based on lies to those sore loser dead enders who still want to see Bush as some sort of literal divine being.

13 minutes to summarize 8 years and the speechwriter cannot come up with enough neutral material to fill the time. What to do? What to do? I know, let's run a variation on Joe the Plumber and list off a random batch of everyday heroes. This was one last bird flip to the nation: Even the worst president in history has the power to pre-empt "My name is Earl" Deal with it America, he's going AWOL after one final one finger salute.

The same Hell that you have dragged this country through the past eight years.

Tonight's performance was pathetic, but I do not feel sorry for Bush. He only wanted to make himself feel better and try to convince us that he had done a good job making those hard decisions. He does not deserve to feel better.

Some things WE CAN fix. An enhanced SCHIP is on its way to the new president's desk. We can reinstate habeas corpus. We can work on this economy. We can do anything we have the collective will to do to fix what has been broken.

But we cannot bring back the hundreds of thousands of lives, principally Iraqi and American, that were needlessly ended because of the "firm resolve" and "willingness to make the hard decisions" of President Bush.

Joan, I would tweak one of your "for the record" items. Even if Sadam Hussein had had weapons of mass destruction (and there was enough expert opinion prior to the invasion to say he did not), attacking would have been inappropriate. I just wanted to state that into this record. I agree, though, that it is sickening and telling that Bush's regret is that there weren't WMD to back up his decision (already made) to attack Iraq.

In the last eight years, the biggest dangers this nation has faced have not been from abroad, but from within.