Turd Polishing For Dummies

The fiction writing contest that is the unbridled lying at the heart of the World Dubya Hagiography Tour continues with British historian Andrew Roberts, declaring Bush to be merely misunderstood by so many idiotic Americans who refused to appreciate the greatness of the man, including erudite and positively eloquent delusions such as:

At the time of 9/11, which will forever rightly be regarded as the defining moment of the presidency, history will look in vain for anyone predicting that the Americans murdered that day would be the very last ones to die at the hands of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists in the US from that day to this.

Boy that sure feels good, no additional Americans on US soil murdered by Islamists! It almost makes up for the nearly 4,500 US troops murdered by Islamists in Islamist countries, and the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans we murdered over there!

There are Americans alive today who would not be if it had not been for the passing of the Patriot Act. There are 3,000 people who would have died in the August 2005 airline conspiracy if it had not been for the superb inter-agency co-operation demanded by Bush
after 9/11.

There are 4,000+ troops dead because we invaded the wrong country, but that's besides the point.

Similarly, the cold light of history will absolve Bush of the worst conspiracy-theory accusation: that he knew there were no WMDs in Iraq. History will show that, in common with the rest of his administration, the British Government, Saddam's own generals, the French, Chinese, Israeli and Russian intelligence agencies, and of course SIS and the CIA, everyone assumed that a murderous dictator does not voluntarily destroy the WMD arsenal he has used against his own people. And if he does, he does not then expel the UN weapons inspectorate looking for proof of it, as he did in 1998 and again in 2001.

Mr Bush assumed that the Coalition forces would find mass graves, torture chambers, evidence for the gross abuse of the UN's food-for-oil programme, but also WMDs. He was right about each but the last, and history will place him in the mainstream of Western, Eastern and Arab thinking on the matter.

Because like the US, France, China, Israel, and Russia came to the same exact conclusions we did about Saddam's hideous evil terrible nasty lies about WMD then invaded Iraq like we did and are still stuck there after almost six years. Wait, they didn't invade? They're not stuck there with hundreds of thousands of troops in a quagmire?

Instead of Al Franken, history will listen to Bob Geldof praising Mr Bush's efforts over Aids and malaria in Africa; or to Manmohan Singh, the prime minister of India, who told him last week: "The people of India deeply love you." And certainly to the women of Afghanistan thanking him for saving them from Taliban abuse, degradation and tyranny.

Yes, the people of Afghanistan continue to thank us daily.

When Abu Ghraib is mentioned, history will remind us that it was the Bush Administration that imprisoned those responsible for the horrors. When water-boarding is brought up, we will see that it was only used on three suspects, one of whom was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, al-Qaeda's chief of operational planning, who divulged vast amounts of information that saved hundreds of innocent lives. When extraordinary renditions are queried, historians will ask how else the world's most dangerous terrorists should have been transported. On scheduled flights?

And when those same historians ask "When did the American Empire become truly morally bankrupt on its way into collapse," they'll be too busy laughing at articles like this to respond. But here's my favorite line:

The credit crunch, brought on by the Democrats in Congress insisting upon home ownership for credit-unworthy people, will initially be blamed on Bush, but the perspective of time will show that the problems at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac started with the deregulation of the Clinton era. Instead Bush's very un-ideological but vast rescue package of $700 billion (£480 billion) might well be seen as lessening the impact of the squeeze, and putting America in position to be the first country out of recession, helped along by his huge tax-cut packages since 2000.

Got that? It's all Clinton's fault. Bush's massive tax cuts, $3 trillion wars, massive deregulation at the executive branch level, and Alan Greenspan's artificially inflated housing mega-bubble to get us out of the post-9/11 doldrums had nothing to do with our current economic crisis. It's all Democrats forcing poor people to take mortgages and the media's fault. Why, Bernie Madoff would be fine right now if it wasn't for those goddamn poor minorities.

Yes, Clinton was responsible for the end of Glass-Stegall. He opened the door for Bush, who promptly burned the door down, urinated on it, and then sold the ashes back to us for a profit.

Iraq has been a victory for the US-led coalition, a fact that the Bush-haters will have to deal with when perspective finally – perhaps years from now – lends objectivity to this fine man's record.

Yay we have won in Iraq. Bush is a genius! Pay no attention to stuff like this, we've won!

So, after the last eight years...was it good for you? Do you think Bush is one of the greatest Presidents we've ever had and a guy who just had bad luck on stuff like Katrina and 9/11 and Iraq and the economy? After all, Bush's only problem was that he was too humble.

I leave you with this.

With his characteristic openness and at times almost self-defeating honesty, Mr Bush has been the first to acknowledge his mistakes – for example, tardiness over Hurricane Katrina – but there are some he made not because he was a ranting Right-winger, but because he was too keen to win bipartisan support. The invasion of Iraq should probably have taken place months earlier, but was held up by the attempt to find support from UN security council members, such as Jacques Chirac's France, that had ties to Iraq and hostility towards the Anglo-Americans.

If that paragraph didn't cause you to throw anything at the monitor...congratulations. You've either stopped giving a damn or the Bushies will be contacting you to write a similar piece. Either way, you're doing better than I am after reading this.