Personally, I would have lot more respect for Colin Powell had he resigned. Not only did he stay with this corrupt administration, but he went as their errand boy for that shamefull presentation to the UN. Now he's trying to salvage his reputation. He should have thought about his reputation before he hooked up with the likes of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld.

...where he singlehandedly defeated Saddam Hussein in an epic sword fight, after which Jesus came down from Heaven to thank him personally ... I'll never forget this day ....Obviously, Salon remembers it too.

to the flight deck of the Lincoln. He was an passenger in a clown suit on the military aircraft, making believe and playing grownup.

As far as we know - Bush is not permitted to fly; when he refused to show up for his last flight exam, his flight status was stripped from him. It's one of the ways he failed to perform the duties required of him by the Texas Air Guard.

I don't think Bush actually "piloted" the aircraft to the carrier.

The little coward didn't "pilot"the plane. He was a a passenger. Or, as he is in life, ballast.

Several readers have noted that Bush didn't actually "pilot" the plane to the deck of the Abraham Lincoln, as this post initially said. They're right. While the president flew in the co-pilot's seat and claims to have taken the controls for a bit, a Navy pilot made the landing on the deck. I've corrected the story to remove any suggestion that Bush was flying the plane when it caught the tailhook.

...that landing, you have to admit. I mean, even people with no love for George Bush and who know him for what he is apparently have, floating somewhere in their subconscious and generating Freudian slips, the idea that he piloted the plane onto the carrier, top-gun style. I wonder what proportion of the American public actually believes that ....

In the same vein, and in light of the Iraqi comments reported here, several recurring questions again come to mind: If the Iraqi government is TRULY sovereign, wouldn't they know BEFORE the visit of secretaries Rice and Rumsfeld that they were coming? Wouldn't they have the right to tell them "No, please stay home..."?

How absurd. OF COURSE this puppet regime is NOT sovereign. We still occupy Iraq, and still run everything; their new "government" would never be ALLOWED to make a major decision with which we disagree.

If Bush , even though his license has long expired, would habe piloted th3e Viking, he would have operr the landing deck and wound up in the drink. That may have been better allround.