A few days ago President Bush, with President Karzai of Afghanistan in tow, spoke out about the recently leaked report concerning the effect the Iraq war has had on global terrorism.

Mr. Bush claimed the idea that the Iraq war had somehow made the terror threat worse was ‘naïve’. His only comment to back up that assertion was ”that, because of our successes against the leadership of al-Qaida, the enemy is becoming more diffuse and independent.” (!!!!)

Hmmm, correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that a bad thing? Let’s say, for a moment, that we were talking about the drug trade. If a police chief said that because of his department’s successes the drug trade was becoming more ‘diffuse and independent’, he would probably be sacked by the mayor for being incompetent.

I suppose the only ‘mayor’ in a position to sack Bush is the American public. The American people, however, seem to be enjoying the ‘big sleep’ and nothing looks like it can rouse them from it, not even war crimes such as the plunder of Iraq by the US and the destruction of Lebanon with the blessings of the US.

The US public seems to have become immune to the hypocrisy of its leaders. After all, in a democracy, if this is what the US can still be called, the people deserve the leaders they get, whether they voted for them, or not.

The problem though, is that people outside the US, the Iraqis for example, did not vote for Bush. Yet, they have borne the brunt of his decisions and policies. Perhaps they should put him on trial along with Hussein. Between those two, and let’s not forget Bush Sr., they account for perhaps a couple of million people killed since the early 80’s, including Iranians from the Iran-Iraq war…

Oh, did I mention the Iran-Iraq war? Well then, Mr. Rumsfeld should be on the stand as well, since he was a big Saddam Hussein fan back then, and very keen on providing weapons to him so he could fight the Iranian ‘terrorists’.

To return to the terrorism issue, one would have to not read newspapers, not watch news on TV (not that there are any news on TV, especially on North American TV), and not even discuss any of this with people on the street in order to not see that terrorism has in fact been exacerbated by the war in Iraq, among other things.

Of course, President Bush takes pride in not watching TV, in order not to be influenced. I suspect that for the same reason he probably avoids reading newspapers and discussions with everyone except his ‘yes-men and yes-women’. It is no wonder, then, that the president is so out of touch with reality that he considers everyone else naïve.