The Sum of Bush's Two White House Terms OR A Bird in the Hand is Worth More than Two Bushes

Bush's incredibly innovative two terms in the White House can be summed up in one statement that Bush himself made in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 5, 2004. "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."

There are many innovations President Bush has introduced to America during his two terms in office. Here are just a few precious gems of innovation with which he has left us, in no particular order:
-No Child Left Behind, left unfunded, yet mandated.
-The Iraq War (read the Downing Street Memo, as published in the London Times, yet left remarkably unpublished in US media http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article387374.ece)
-No-Bid, Cost-Plus Contracts awarded to friends and buddies to the tune of billions of dollars of taxpayer money, with legalized prevention of oversight on how these monies were and are being spent.
-The current state of our economy and its impact on the world economy.
-Rampant deregulation and increased corporate freedom in relation to finance, mortgages, the EPA, and the FDA.
-Lack of accountability and recusal when corporate bigwigs are appointed to public office. I call this a new type of job-sharing, where corporate officers are appointed to public office in order to wield undue influence on lawmaking and the development of public policy in favor of their "former" corporate employer, usually at the expense of the health and safety of American citizens. After they've done the job for which they were sent, they are "rehired" by that same corporate entity. If you're not familiar with this practice, as a start, look into the work of Dick Cheney's son-in-law Philip Perry at this link http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2007/0703.levine.html-Due to job-sharing and deregulation discussed above, our country is still not secure. Companies don't want to spend the extra money to make their sites secure, as it will impact their profits. Reporter Carl Prine exposed a complete lack of security, even walking into a chemical site control room. Search various articles by him, as well as the Think Like a Terrorist episodes on the PBS Expose series. Here're 2 links:
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/images/video/multimedia.php?res=hi&v=369&1=1
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/expose/expose_2007/episode201/
-Increased corporate protection and power over the people.
-GMO's still in our food supply, now expanded to include pharma crops.
-Cloned foods and drink now allowed into our food supply without any adequate, INDEPENDENT, long-term studies on their health affects on humans. This was rammed through in the manner as were gmo products, which are also still not required to be labeled.
-Per CNN, as of 2/2/09, there have been 4,221 Americans killed in Iraq and 30,920 US troops wounded in that war. Iraqi casualty counts vary, as of 2006 and 2007 from 151,000 (Iraqi Health Ministry survey) to 601,027 (Lancet survey) to 1,033,000 (Opinion Research Business survey) depending upon which survey you trust.
-Purposeful inactivity on Global Warming.
-Abu Ghraib, extraordinary rendition, admission to torture of prisoners.
-Refusal to abide by International Law and the Geneva Convention.
-Withdrawing the United States from the UN Human Rights Council (of course, how can we even sit as an observer on this council when it wanted to investigate our human rights abuses). This gives me an increased sense of foreboding that echoes the lack of respect, by our country, for human rights here in our own country, as well as abroad. When there is a culture of power, greed and corruption that favors corporations with financial power larger than that of our own country, of course the American citizen and all other world citizens lose. Our government kow-tows to corporations. These corporations have no obligation or desire to worry about the safety and health of their consumers, nor the human rights they and our government consistently trample in their quest for more money and power; their only obligation is to their bottom line. Shame on us, however, for allowing them to become so powerful.
-The largest private army in the world was allowed to grow and expand on American soil, and was granted full rights to shoot and detain American citizens in New Orleans during and immediately following Hurricane Katrina.
-The mismanagement of Hurricane Katrina and the well-documented, inexplicable and purposeful lack of maintenance, repair and reinforcement of levees known to be inadequate long before the Hurricane ever hit.
-Reduction in freedoms once guaranteed to citizens by the US Constitution and Bill of Rights.
-Arrests of US Journalists on their own soil.
-Excessive force consistently used against peaceful protesters in the United States by police and government forces.
-A climate of fear purposefully instilled through the overuse of terror alerts and threats of arrest if outspoken.
-The reduced prestige of and concomitant lack of respect for the United States of America around the world.

Honestly, I believe he and Cheney should have been impeached. However, at the end of his second, infamous term in office, I am left only with the hope that he will be arrested and held to stand trial for crimes against humanity in the International Criminal Court at The Hague. President Bush, don't let the door hit you on your way out!