Our president: He's an educator-in-chief. And now he's a listener and a decider.

He's learned that if you add -er to a verb, you can claim an action without having to actually do it. So there's an obvious next choice: think.

But if he claims to be a thinker, will anyone have the guts to laugh?

I'm just wondering if maybe the president has given much thought as to what is good for the country, as opposed to what is good for "Don". Probably not.

When W. Bush says he hears "the voices," he's talking about some sort of religious vision. Rhetoric from this administration about "hearing" anyone outside the tiny cadre of loyalist advisors inside "the bubble" is positively galling.

I, for one, was sorry when the entire field of "Bushisms" was created, because it seemed to make it alright, or to justify, that we have an uneducated, inarticulate President.

These many demonstrations of our President's inability to speak are not cute or folksy. They are a constant reminder of the mess we are in.

People's reputations?!?!/

What about people's

lives

?

"You can understand why, because we've got people's reputations at stake," Bush said

With the Throw-Donald-From-The-Train Movement stalling, the possibility arises that Dick and Karl plan to stick to their script for getting Republicans elected in 2006. The question is, how much the global population will put up with six months of flooding the electromagnetic spectrum with high-alert crawls and bejeezus-purging pronouncements? Bombing in Iran? Further military mobilizations? Made-up allegations? Perhaps Rice will even attempt to match Powell's performance at the UN.

If there is any genius in all this, I can't see it. We know Iran has a huge natural gas resource, but that doesn't seem to have the immediacy of Iraqi oil. Instead, it seems US foreign policý is a slave to short-term political objectives.

It's like watching Carrie Fisher's head rotations in the Exorcist; you see it, but it violates all natural laws. We can only hope a quesioning Father Karras will emerge from the Republican ranks and administer the final rites that send these Satanic beasts back to Texas.

All this talk about Rumsfeld resigning is a diversion from the fact that Bush, himself, is directly and primarily responsible for Iraq - and everytbing else that has happened since Clinton.

Next November, unless Diebold rigs all the voting machines in the key Congressional races, the American people are going to be the "deciders." So keep Rummy on board. The longer he stays, the worse the Republican Party looks.

The Rumsfeld situation (especially the dissenting generals) illustrates how America has radically changed in forty years, yet in ways not so apparent to the public's eye. Back then, General Curtis LeMay - inspiration for "Dr. Stragelove" and "Seven Days in May" (about a coup directed by a general) - truly represented a rogue, hawkish element eager to whip ass and take no names. He set up SAC for nuclear strikes, recommended bombing 70 cities in 30 days with nukes, and then ran as a v.p. candidate with Wallace in '68. In part, he fueled the anarchists of their day who became overly paranoid about America in general and the military in particular.

Since then, the military has generally become more level headed, better educated in the ways of the world, and more subordinated to hawkish neocons who have, it seems, been emboldened by the example of LeMay's scope of strategic power. Now, instead of zoned out radicals chanting Attica or Kent State, the forces aiming to moderate the military consist of articulate retired generals who, it appears, are far more capable of running the country.

Since Kissinger recommended the use of nukes in Vietnam, the world has turned upside down so that the most hawkish general seems to be a far more reasonable soul than the civilans who are so eager to unleash the dogs of war. At least the generals understand the taste of blood in the field as opposed to the raw statistical data piling up on Rumsfeld's orderly desk.

Defenders of Rumsfeld say he's a hard worker, but since his efforts are progressively damaging America's good name and ruining countless peaceful opportunities, isn't it time he take a break? Hard work isn't necessarily good work. And believing in the ideology of rushing the pace of worldly development, of insisting that alien cultures be democratic overnight, are forcing volatile reactions that wouldn't otherwise form. Where are the benefits in feuling revolt, decimating civilian infrastructure, squandering billions of dollars that could shore up America's ailing society? To stabilize the Middle East? Where's all the stability? The sleeping dogs, particularly Iran, were awakened and now the animus compounds itself daily.

During the Iraqi war a revolution between religious sects was ignited that had been merely a latent dispute for centuries and, as a result, a new kind of Mujaheddin has formed - one that will look increasingly to the West for its scapegoat. How, they will ask themselves, did we get into this situation? No, the answer won't be - we bred this decline ourselves. The answer will be -the West and the Jews did this to us and we will not sit by any longer and take it. That is why one shouldn't throw dynamite into what appears to be on the surface a benign environment, but was nothing more than an inflammable arena that, once provoked, could potentially spark the next world war.

The stakes here are far greater than Rumsfeld's job. Regardless of when he departs, the insidious ideology animating America's foreign policy must go. The absurd mandate of democratizing the world, while compromising the full extent of free living at home, must be retired as well. And the courageous generals must go on speaking loud and often in order to restore the sense of trust Americans had for their country and their leaders back when LeMay was shaking his sabre and counting bombs. Because that trust - the bedrock of a true democracy - is rapdily eroding. After all, the radicals were screaming in the 60s because they believed it could be revitalized; today, we've got the generals and a few thousand bloggers.