Even the Pentagon's latest report is one of gloom and doom, a picture of a failed occupation. It was supposed to be a cake walk. Some cake. Some walk. We've been at war longer than World War II. Cheered then, we are jeered now! We have achieved nothing but pointless death and destruction. Even our allies hate us. Enemies grow stronger as American citizens are bled by the very government that promised to "liberate" —not annihilate —Iraq! Seeing how precariously perched is the dollar, I wonder: just who is the enemy? Pogo knew. He said: "We have seen the enemy and he is us!" Likewise, I have seen the enemy who wages war daily on both the Iraqi people and the American people. The enemy is Bush.

Billions of people the world over have wisely concluded that Bush is the enemy of peace and humankind, if Americans have not. Billions, whose news is not filtered by a US corporate MSM, have Bush's sorry record to cite in their support. Even in America, the tide has turned. By December 13, 2005, fifty-eight percent of Americans told CNN that Bush had no clear plan for victory in Iraq. Fifty-nine percent of Americans disapproved of Bush's handling of Iraq. It's only gotten worse since then.

So Bush declared a great "war on terrorism" but failed to think past some several months of hysterical war fever. How is such a war won? More recently, influenced by the right wing blogs, Bush's definition of success consists of Republi-babble about Islamo-Fascism. In earlier statements, his promises to "smoke out" Bin Laden and bring him to justice were no more connected to reality. Equally vague, Bush said he would treat nations harboring terrorists as if they were terrorists themselves. Bush would, seemingly, wage war on any nation funding terrorists; Bush would wage war on the world. But applying that principle would necessitate attacks on the United States itself, then Saudi Arabia, possibly Great Britain, and most certainly Israel. Bush has never been able to think clearly about terrorism or the US role.

States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic.

—January 20, 2002, President George W. Bush, State of the Union Address

With regard to the "insurgency" in Iraq, it's time to stop calling it insurgency —a rebellion against legitimate, lawful authority. It's time to start calling it what it is: a guerilla war against an illegal force of occupation, Bush's occupation, Bush's war of aggression, Bush's war crime, Bush's capital crime. The vocabulary of this war is unlike that of any other war including Viet Nam where even the Viet Cong were recognized guerilla fighters. Bush-speak deliberately conceals the true nature of this conflict. Even the word "war" is suspect. Our illegal occupation of what had been a sovereign nation cannot be legitimately called war. Better words are heist, mass murder, plunder, occupation. Not war!

What Bush called the Axis of Evil —like Poland and Czechoslovakia who were similarly demonized by the Nazi Hitler —never had WMD. What they do have in common with one another is poverty and "third world" status —not unlike that of six other nations similarly threatened and/or attacked by the big bully on the block. Those nations are Grenada, Panama, Somalia, Sudan and now Afghanistan and Iraq! It is Bush, rather, who threatens world peace; it is Bush who has failed on five fronts.

Bush might not have intended to define victory in Afghanistan but in his previously cited State of the Union Address he said:

In Afghanistan, we helped liberate an oppressed people. And we will continue helping them secure their country, rebuild their society, and educate all their children -- boys and girls.

—January 20, 2002, President George W. Bush, State of the Union Address

"Liberation", it turns out, is another ex post facto rationale for war! Afghanistan was supposed to be a quick and easy victory. Bush fell for the Rumsfeld doctrine and attacked Afghanistan on the cheap. Bush had really wanted to attack Iraq but because Colin Powell insisted, Bush was momentarily diverted. Cheney and Rumsfeld persisted. The better targets, they said, were in Iraq. Eventually, Bush —advised by the Cheney/Rumsfeld axis of arrogance —would attack where the terrorists weren't.

An August New York Times article entitled "Losing Afghanistan" summed up rising concerns about the alarming state of the US occupation of Afghanistan quite aside from Bushco's first obvious failure there: smoking out Bin Laden. NYT concluded: "...there is no victory in the war for Afghanistan, due in significant measure to the Bush administration’s reckless haste to move on to Iraq and shortsighted stinting on economic reconstruction".

Some of the strong indicators of Bush's ignominious defeat in Afghanistan include the following developments:

• There are now some 40,000 guerillas fighting against the American occupation of Afghanistan.
• NATO forces in the southern provinces have met strong opposition resulting in fighting described as "...persistent, low-level dirty fighting" not seen by the British since the Korean War or World War II.
• In Kandahar, some 2,300 Canadian troops have reported heavy casualties this month alone.
• "Insurgents" —more properly called "resistance" to an aggressor — and the Taliban itself have benefited from outrage over "...routine searches, detention and killing[s]" of civilians.

It gets harder daily to give Bush the benefit of any doubt. It's impossible not to conclude that Bush has taken the bait, that Bin Laden outsmarted Bush with a wily and nuanced strategy:

Bin Laden's only way to reduce American influence in the Middle East is to make the cost of dominating the region outweigh the benefit. ... If he can gain access to enough US assets on [Al Qaeda] controlled turf he's confident he can prick us to death. Bin Laden knows he will have one shot at an attack on American soil sufficient to lure the US into a decisive military move in the Middle East.

—Bill Cusack: Osama Bin Laden is Kicking George Bush Ass