Serious Brass

I swore I was going to leave the guy alone for awhile, what with his low poll numbers and having to take a few on the chin for the team in an election year and all (though I pessimistically suspect that if there was a presidential election today the same group of wackos and lemmings would sweep him back into the Oval Office). But W (or "Commander Cuckoo Bananas" as Homer Simpson referred to him) rose to yet another new height of chutzpah and hypocrisy today in a speech to the National Newspaper Association in DC. With a perfectly straight faced he expressed a profound concern about the message sent to the Arab Middle East by broad US opposition to the Dubai ports deal. This, from the guy more disliked globally than any president of the last 100 years. This, from the guy who presided over:

• The unprovoked invasion and occupation of a sovereign Arab nation, causing the deaths of over 100,000 innocent civilians
• The imprisonment of over 1,000 Arabs (and others) without due process, representation, or any glimmer of hope of justice (until the Supreme Court shot him down in 2004, at least for Gitmo)
• The systematic abuse and torture of hundreds of Arab prisoners, including sexual and religious humiliation and insults
• The rendition of at least dozens of Arabs to repressive regimes for "questioning"

Yeah, this guy's a freakin' hero in that part of the world, and the pile-on over the ports deal is going to jeopardize all his good work. Wonder how he'd feel about visiting Iraq protected by a security force owned and operated by the Dubai government.
WaPo