It would be nice to think so wouldn't it? But in last Wednesdays speech he didn't quite go that far, maintaining that he and the Pope alone remain infallible on this earth.

He did admit that much of the pre-war intelligence on Iraq 'turned out to be wrong' but took sole responsibility for the invasion. What he failed to mention would have escaped the average American and that was that the intelligence was acutally bang on target. What happened was that the invalid intelligence was dismissed and hence ignored because it didn't fit in with the political goal of finding a reason to go to war in Iraq regardless of the facts.

Bush said that because of the mistakes it had been up to him to reform the intelligence gathering process, but he failed to mention that he sanctioned the reform of the intelligence gathering process to bypass the traditional methods of risk assesment in the first place. Rumsfeld oversaw the setting up of rival intelligence gathering departments, and made the other departments subordinate to his personal posse of cronies who's brief was simple - find me an excuse to invade Iraq. Anything that contradicted this directive was trashed no matter how valid. And anything that appeared to confirm the directive, no matter how flimsy, was promoted. As the Downing street memo observed in 2002, the intelligence was being fixed to make a case for war.

So a long way to go before Bush actually comes clean, but it's a step in the right direction nonetheless. But even as that grudging acknowledgement is freely given (and it is a very small nod) what do we hear? The invention of a new bogeyman to keep the petrified, gullible and largely ignorant American public cowering in their homes. What's the latest instrument of fear? None other than 'the caliphate is coming, the caliphate is coming!' The new fear word has been bandied around for the last few weeks even though it's nothing new and certainly nothing to be feared. But Bush tried and succeeded in cowing the Americans with Saddam's non-existent WMDs, and when evidence of their existence failed to materialise, he used the images of mushroom clouds (Rice) or spoonfuls of anthrax destroying millions of people (Powell). When the invasion was over and it was apparent that these bogeymen no longer worked, because they didn't exist, he latched onto terror alerts, and colour coded warnings to keep the American fools gibbering. After last years elections the colour coded warnings seemed to disappear largely because the people finally realised that they were nothing more than an instrument of fear and of little substance. Fighting the terrorists over there so we don't have to fight them over here was so dreadfully transparent that even most Americans saw straight through it and as an instrument of terror it didn't last long.

In desperate need to bolster plummetiong public support, suddenly the term 'caliphate' was coined as the new 'be afraid' word. We must prevent the terrorists establishing a Caliphate from Europe to Indonesia! The caliphate is coming! Quake in fear and trust Bush to come to the rescue, just as he rescued us from that despot Saddam poised to attack America with, well nothing at all, not even the legendary 'killer drone' planes.

It has always been Osama's ambition to create a caliphate, but what chance is there of this actually happening? What is the chance of Osama creating a caliphate under Sharia law stretching across a third of the world? As it happens, no chance at all. Only a tiny fraction of one percent of Muslims believe in or want a caliphate, there's as much chance of Osama or anyone else succeeding as there is there is the second coming. If the Americans by some miracle were wiped off the map tomorrow there would still be next to no chance of such a freak occurence. It is nothing more than a delusional fantasy, perhaps that's why Bush relates to it and nobody else does. And yet this is being wheeled out as the latest bete-noir. Why? To keep America afraid and compliant. When the facts are undermining your false claims, invent a new fantasy to terrorise the public, to keep them cowed, loyal and fearful.

It's ironic that the only thing that has been terrorising the US since 9/11 has been the Bush adminstration itself.

yechydda,