A Sinking Ship

Today comes news of more shocking failures by the Bush administration. It seems we didn’t even protect WMD sites during our invasion of Iraq:

Seven nuclear facilities in Iraq have been damaged or effectively destroyed by the looting that began in the first days of April, when U.S. ground forces thrust into Baghdad, according to U.S. investigators and others with detailed knowledge of their work. The Bush administration fears that technical documents, sensitive equipment and possibly radiation sources have been scattered.

Hello? Isn’t securing the WMD the reason we went to war? How could we invade the country and subsequently allow the sites to be even less secure than they were under Saddam Hussein?

Now, as a Friday bonus, consider the fact that the administration is now acknowledging it can’t stop North Korea from developing nukes. I nearly spat out my drink when I saw that headline. This is, of course, the same North Korea whose actions the administration downplayed in the months leading up to war with Iraq. So much for protecting the American people.

I’ve always viewed George W. Bush as incompetent, stupid and, most importantly, a failed (accidental) leader.

But as I look at the panorama of destruction that will be left in the wake of this administration, from the fiscal destruction of the tax cuts to its ruinous foreign policy, I realize the country’s problems go well beyond the vexing idiocy of one man.

The problem is an ADD-stricken American populace that ignores that stories that matter. Anarchy in Iraq and Afghanistan. Insecure borders at home. Eroding civil liberties. Deficits as far as the eye can see.

Rather than being cast as a doomed lightweight, the president is getting high marks and high-fives on aircraft carriers. Saddam and Osama run free, but Americans breath a sigh of relief at news that the fearsome United States military has finally captured the elusive eight of spades.

America has become an intellectually lazy giant, drugged to sleep by tax cuts and smart bombs, raped in the night by a cabal of disengenuous idologues.

Forgive me for mixing analogies.

The country is being looted and run aground as we sleep. It began the day George W. Bush took office. It accelerated after 9/11. And now, after the war, it proceeds full steam ahead.