The magnificent obtuseness of the Washington pundits.

An article in the August 17 Washington Post, "If You Can't Say Something Nice" has the very best collection of Republican spin, obtuseness, deception, distortion and misstatements of fact that you're likely to ever find about the godawful Bush administration.

As the title suggests, the article quotes several Republican right-wing zealots in their futile attempt to find something good to say about Bush and his so-called legacy.

Calos Lozada: "How should history, not to mention Bush himself, feel about a legacy in which the ability - which implies need - to frequently self-correct ranks as a major selling point?"

Wait a minute. What self correcting? Bush, himself, said when asked about any mistakes he had ever made, that he couldn't think of any. No need for self-correction there. Nothing to correct. And, with power unlimited by a cowardly Congress and supported by an ideologically driven, brain-washed Republican populace, Bush has the ability to completely obliterate most of the people of the world with his hare-brained, first-strike, bring-em-on, juvenile attitude, at the first push of a button. There's no way to self-correct that. How does he correct the destruction of an entire country, the killing of a million innocent people for no reason other than he felt like it? Can't be done. There's no way to correct, as Lozada implies there is, the evil that George Bush has done. You have to get it right the first time, or it's too late. The legacy of self-correction doesn't apply to irremediable blunders and mistakes.

Farad Zakaria: "In many cases the next president should follow (the foreign policies in place now), rather than reverse them."

The foreign policy in place now is the continuation of the illegal, unconstitutional, violation of the Geneva Convention, violation of the UN Charter, violation of the rule of international law, war on Iraq. Zakaria says that should continue. He doesn't understand that as long as there are US troops occupying Iraq, it is an illegal foreign policy, yet he is all for it.

David Frum: "But you can be sure of this--the next Republican president can expect to hear from pundits and academics alike that he falls far short of the high standard set by the last one."

The most frightening part of that statement is that there is even the slightest possibility that we could ever have another Republican president. The "high standards" set by Bush are appalling ignorance, illiteracy, mock bravado, violation of the law of the land, invading foreign countries on a whim, killing 4000 US soldiers by sending them off to kill innocent people just for the fun of it, setting record deficits and record national debt, just to name a few. In the mind of a civilized person other than Frum, these are not standards of any kind, but are deficiencies of intellect by a person in need of being kept in an institution, mental or penal.

And finally, the worst attempt to spin the responsibility for the 9/11 attacks away from the Republicans by pretending that they didn't actually happen on George Bush's watch.

Robert Kagan: "Judged on its own terms, the war on terror has been by far Bush's greatest success."

Except that the only devastating foreign terrorist attack on the US just happened to happen during Bush's war on terror. Bush was responsible for protecting the US from such attacks, and he failed miserably. It happened, no matter how much Kagan refuses to admit it.

"No serious observer imagined after September 11 that seven years would go by without a single additional terrorist attack on U. S. soil."

It looks like I'm not a "serious observer" because I not only imagined but also figured that seven years would go by without a terrorist attack. Actually any serious observer observes that the whole 9/11 scenario as laid out for us by the Bush administration stinks to high heaven. Not possible to be repeated.

I also observed that for more than 200 years, under 42 previous presidents, not just 7 years after having one under George Bush, there has been no terrorist attack on US soil. Kagan conveniently ignores the fact that 9/11 happened on Bush's watch.

"The next administration will be fortunate to be able to say the same (protect America from another attack on the homeland) and will be contrasted quite unfavorably with the Bush administration if it cannot."

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