Last week Bush suffered one of his worst periods in office. Libby was indicted on five charges of obstructing justice and lying to grand juries. Miers, his supreme court nomination stood down. The US Iraqi death count soared past 2000. And so on.

The ducks have finally come home to roost.

For the basis of the Bush administration is based on cynicism, dishonesty and incompetence. The truth will out. The Libby indictment is the tip of the ice-berg, but for those unfamiliar with the background a brief summary:

Former US ambassador Jospeh Wilson was despatched to Niger to investigate what turned out to be fraudulent claims that Saddam has been seeking to by Uranium from that country. He published his findings that there was no evidence whatsoever for these claims. Several weeks later, the Bush administration was still peddling this lie in public speehces despite his in-depth report. Incensed, he wrote an article in the NYT criticising the Bush administration for its refusal to acknowledge the truth - that Saddam had no nuclear weapons program and had not sought to purchase uranium from Niger.

From that moment on, the Rove-Geobbels propaganda machine swung into action - how dare anyone tell the truth, especially if critical of the Bush administration's policy of waging war on Iraq whether there was reason to or not. Time to assinate Wilson's character.

I'll stop there because the point I'm trying to make is that the Bush administration since 9/11 has sought to cultivate an atmosphere of slavish devotion to its president - with us or against us. Dissent was not allowed as witness the Wilson incident. The administration operated in a propagandist atmosphere of cronyism, pique and sheer spite. But far worse than all of this was the Bush administation's willingness to warp and poison the backbone of American society - respect for the law.

Bush adopted a 'how can we bend the law to suit our purposes' posture. Technically he probably didn't lie about Saddam and his non-existent WMDs. Technically the war waged on Iraq isn't strictly illegal. He declared detainees as exempt from the Genevea convention, shoved them in legal limbo land such as Guantanamo, approved of torture of detainees the world over from Bhagram to Abu Ghraib to Gauntanamo. And in doing so, this so called christian Bush has dragged America into a moral sewer as the world looks on in horror.

'The law is the safeguard of liberty, but only as long as it is not twisted beyond all recognition...our founders looked to law as a constraint, not as license; as a check on power, not authorisation. The difference is a matter of honour, of values, of identity itself. [A.SLaughter].'

Nobody has been brought to book for Bush's ineptitude. The lack of post war planning in Iraq. The missing billions of money shoveled into the maws of no-bid companies such as Haliburton. The lack of senior accountability of world-wide US practice of torture and abuse. The failed or deliberately ignored intelligence that argued against the need of an Iraqi war in the first place. The posionous myth that to question let alone oppose the Bush administration was unpatriotic.

Which brings us neatly back to Wilson. Whether illegal or not, officials close to Bush and Cheney leaked the identity of an undercover operative for political reasons. And that is unpatriotic.

Once again, what matters here is not the letter of the law but of the spirit of the law. Those that seek to corrrupt the spirit by twisting the letter for their own political ends are no better than those that twist the Koran into a poisonous creed for suicide terrorism.

America once had a moral superiority that it could call upon to justify its actions. No longer. For Bush has aptly demonstrated that morality is expedient to convenience, that twisting truth is preferable to honesty, that superstition and delusion are preferable to knowledge and experience.

When Bush nominated Meirs to the supreme court, he asked America to trust him. He was laughed out of court, even by republicans, when she couldn't even fill out the application form adequately.

Trust is a currency that Bush abused and is now utterly lacking. He will, saving a miracle, stutter on for the next three years, not just a lame, but a very dead duck.

Quack quack Bush - you're dead.

yechydda,