Dear Dubya: Take Your Legacy & Shove It

A hallmark of George Bush has been that he lies even when he doesn't even have to, and so it is with his oft-stated claim that he has no concerns about how history will judge his presidency.

He is, in fact, so concerned that Karl Rove and Karen Hughes have been enlisted to work on a Bush Legacy Project that has been underway for some time. The project's key goal, of course, is to rewrite history and otherwise try to sanitize the record of a man who has a decent chance of being judged the worst president ever for all of these indecent things that he allowed to happen on his watch.

When you consider Bush's record, this is indeed a daunting task. How to get around the fact that he :

* Inherited a thriving economy and healthy budget surplus and then presided over an economic collapse that probably will not eclipse the Great Depression, but is nevertheless catastrophically broad and deep, with over 2 million job losses this year alone.

* Used 9/11 as a pretext for invading Iraq, embracing the use of torture, ignoring treaties and conventions that it was inconvenient to obey, contravening the rule of law and spying on his own citizens.

* Blew the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, shortchanged the middle class at every turn and avidly participated in the culture wars.

* Transformed the Justice Department into an arm of the Republican Party.

* Was a deeply cynical chief executive who questioned the patriotism of those who did not agree with his policies.

And that's just for starters.

Photograph by Reuters