At the time, my position was that there was a case to invade, and that was based on the need to put teeth to a decade’s worth of UN resolutions. I agreed that the UN was weak, and that Saddam was a bad dude. But that’s not the case the government made. We were played for fools, and I don’t need to reward the man who played us just because he went to the mat and never wavered in his claims, even in the face of international pressure. Refusing to stand down is not leadership when you are *wrong.*

And what of the other acts of our fearless leader? Is there anything else we can point to as evidence of his character one way or another? Can we maybe lay some stuff on the table and look for a trend? Let’s see…

Six years after the fact, after the original argument of WMDs has been cast into doubt because of its source; after Rove and Cheney were discovered to have not only “massaged” intelligence information, but also to have discredited those who dared called them on it (Valerie Plame, anyone?); after the blatant cronyism shown to Rumself (Abu Gharib), Michael Brown (Katrina), Chertoff (Katrina continues to be a mess, and he’s never been held accountable), Rove (the Plame investigation), and Gonzalez (US District Attorney scandal); after putting up a patsy for Supreme Court Justice (Harriett Myers); after chasing scientists out of NGO organizations and staffing them instead with politicians (NIH); after using Executive Orders to effectively nullify the law of the land while being able to claim he wouldn’t use his veto power (at least for his first term); after stealing the 2000 Rep nomination from McCain (S. Carolina); after chasing out the best people from his team early (Powell) and holding on cowards (McClellan); after nearly bankrupting school districts with unfunded mandates (No Child Left Behind); after antagonizing an enemy by backing him into a corner (Iran, who faces American troops on both its eastern and western borders); after setting up secret prisons (CIA planes; naval prison ships; Guantanamo); after warrantlessly tapping American’s phone conversations (FISA court circumvention); after restricting press access to the WH for printing unflattering articles; after failing to prepare to win in Iraq (where to begin?)… and the list goes on… after all this, I’d say, yes, there is a clear trend… and it’s not a good one.

In light of all this, I wouldn’t call standing up to Europe an act of leadership. I’d call it the first act of a power-hungry and under-qualified politician who should have been Commissioner of Baseball instead of ruler of the free world.