Can-Do Bush hasn't done much but f*k things up BAD

[BurtWorm]

The right wing adores him as a man of action. To them it doesn't matter that the actions he's taken have been incredibly stupid and have led to disaster after disaster. The content of his actions is beside the point. Only his actions--the fact that he acts without thinking--matters.

But the rest of us really can't reward him or his party for the pitifully poor outcomes his "boldness" has wrought. We need to make them pay through the nose for their unending series of disasters for the country.

The Post's had some very good analysis of the wreckage Hamdan left behind:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/29/AR2006062902300_pf.html

For five years, President Bush waged war as he saw fit. If intelligence officers needed to eavesdrop on overseas telephone calls without warrants, he authorized it. If the military wanted to hold terrorism suspects without trial, he let it.

Now the Supreme Court has struck at the core of his presidency and dismissed the notion that the president alone can determine how to defend the country. In rejecting Bush's military tribunals for terrorism suspects, the high court ruled that even a wartime commander in chief must govern within constitutional confines significantly tighter than this president has believed appropriate.

For many in Washington, the decision echoed not simply as a matter of law but as a rebuke of a governing philosophy of a leader who at repeated turns has operated on the principle that it is better to act than to ask permission. This ethos is why many supporters find Bush an inspiring leader, and why many critics in this country and abroad react so viscerally against him.

At a political level, the decision carries immediate ramifications. It provides fodder to critics who turned Guantanamo Bay into a metaphor for an administration run amok. Now lawmakers may have to figure out how much due process is enough for suspected terrorists, hardly the sort of issue many would be eager to engage in during the months before an election.


...


"Rather than push so many extreme arguments about the president's commander-in-chief powers, the Bush administration would have been better served to work something out with Congress sooner rather than later -- I mean 2002, rather than 2006," said A. John Radsan, a former CIA lawyer who now teaches at William Mitchell College of Law.