4th of July weekend reading

Some good reading from last week that you might have missed.

A couple of good posts from the libertarian LewRockwell.com

• Bush the Melting, by Lew Rockwell

  Pride may goeth before the fall, but with politicians like George W. Bush, far too much time separates the pride part from the fall part. The damage that he has wrought in this country and the world goes beyond accurate enumeration – most of it made possible because he has been able to use 9-11 to pose as God's sword to smite his political enemies at home and abroad. He should have slunk away after 9-11, having failed miserably in his primary duty, but instead he used a crisis for personal and governmental aggrandizement. That's the pride part.
  
  Now, however, his fortunes have changed dramatically – with the fall part finally kicking in. Many of us remember that Clinton was highly unpopular – in fact, I recall sensing that he was the most hated president of my lifetime. Well, his highest disapproval rating in his two terms was 33 percent. I can recall feeling buoyed by the knowledge that fully one-third of the public hated the president.

  Read the Rest

• Bush's Iraq Speech Falls Flat by Jim Lobe

  Despite a strong delivery, solemn demeanor, and a respectful military audience, U.S. President George W. Bush's effort to rally the nation behind his Iraq strategy through a prime-time televised speech at Fort Bragg, North Carolina offered nothing new to reassure a restive public that the situation was coming under control.
  
  Rejecting increasingly bold calls by Democrats and some Republicans to at least establish specific benchmarks in Iraq that could offer the public some prospect for drawing down the 140,000-troop force that has been there for more than two years now, Bush insisted that he would stay the course and withdraw US soldiers only when Iraqi forces were fully capable of taking their place.
  
  Nor did he admit that the administration had made any mistakes in carrying out the war, least of all in its decision to invade. A new Washington Post/ABC poll found that 53 percent of respondents believe that the war did not justify the costs and that 52 percent now believe that Bush "intentionally misled" the public about the threat posed by Iraq before the invasion.

  More....

• Michael Reynolds at Center Line, Insert Fork, talks about Bush's Iraq failure.


• And Bilmon reminds us why he was missed during his hiatus with Democracy or Empire?. A must read on the Iraq debacle.

Enjoy the weekend but save some energy for the big battles ahead