The Delusional Legacy Tour Continues

– A guest column by Denis Campbell, editor of the EU and Vadimus Post.

Since he truly cares not a whit, let’s plan a real tone deaf legacy tour for George and the team.

The only thing missing from the current trip is bomber tour jackets made by Bangladeshi school children earning $1 a week. Is it possible for one man to have such immense tone deafness that he cannot even know that displaying the heel of a shoe in an Arabic nation is the lowest of possible insults? Yet there was smiling George joking about shoe size (“All I can report is it is a size ten.”) just moments into a victory speech which a local Iraqi journalist found insulting to the max.

So as a public service, we at the UK Progressive/Vadimus Post wish to offer a victory tour itinerary Dubya can fly over and visit on his return trip to the White House for the last 36 days.

Mystery Destination 1 – The Supremes. While he would love Diana Ross and Co. to serenade him in the East Room, we’re talking a victory run up the steps of the Supreme Court building to thank the boys and girls there for giving him the seat in the first place. Where would we be without that historic decree on December 13, 2000 that stopped the Florida recount and awarded him the Presidency? Maybe they’ll even let him wear one of those funky ceremonial black robes? Take a spin in the Chief Justice’s chair? Play with the gavel?

Destination 2 – A trip to beautiful Guantanamo Bay. He can relax in a 17×17 cellbox overlooking the beautiful warm, crystal clear, waters of the Gulf. He can take in the torture tour where he’ll see the secret Gitmo waterboarding room, experience real sleep deprivation like those terrorist limo drivers and listen to non-stop head banging music for hours on end causing prisoners to literally go insane. It is the wildest ride on Planet W.

Destination 3 – Return Again to Baghdad. We’ve pimped out a special armoured tour bus just for you so you can visit the square where Saddam Hussein’s statue was toppled, check out the palaces where troops billet and spend a night in Abu Ghraib. That’s where US troops guarding Iraqi’s released dogs, stacked them like cordwood, defaced the Koran and electrocuted their genitalia. Your trip will resume in the morning with a visit to the ancient and famous oil ministry building your troops preserved while looters raided priceless artefacts from the museum. I know you think the earth is only 2,000 years old and was intelligently designed, but there are more than a few of us who believe Baghdad was the cradle of civilisation at the intersection of the Tigris and Euphrates, now dead and filled with nuclear and conventional arms waste.

Destination 4 – The Naval Observatory. You can spend a few hours in the residence of the most powerful man in government, Dick Cheney, your co-President. They used to say behind every great man stands a woman; in this case your shadow was Shotgun Dick. No one shredded the Constitution better and so easily cut the spine out of Congressional Democrats and Republicans alike. Then, you can pop over to Treasury Building steps with your sidekick Lurch – Hank Paulson – smiling for a photo op in front of the building you used to save bankers but not autoworkers or the economy.

Destination 5 – A Waziristan Fly-Over. Train your field glasses on the caves housing that noted criminal “wanted dead or alive” for seven years, Osama Bin Laden and his vast Al Qaeda network. You can tell us you never really wanted to catch him because that would mean you could no longer whip us into a fear frenzy and suspend civil liberties. So you owe him a debt of gratitude for staying in seclusion, finding an extension cord long enough to provide kidney dialysis and broadcasting satellite videos. How could you never pinpoint his location, despite owning the best equipment in the world for that sort of thing? Without him little things like the Patriot Act, wiretaps on US citizens and extraordinary renditions would never have been possible.

Destination 6 – Dubai and Riyadh. Touch down to receive that hero’s welcome you so want and need. US petrodollars have helped to re-shape the Dubai skyline and your special relationship with the Saudi Royal family goes back to your Dad. They love you and the consulting contracts awaiting you in 36-days will make Slick Willie’s post-Presidency $100 million look like the chump change it is.

Destination 7 – Fly-over The National Parks and Mountaintop Mining Sites. You can see first hand the effects of your last minute EPA regulation gutting. You can watch water run-off, see for yourself the increased arsenic levels in drinking water, even drive the first stake into the ground for mining next to Yellowstone, The Grand Canyon and Yosemite.

On arriving back at Andrews Air Force base, your motorcade will be held up by a deadly accident on the DC Beltway caused by an exhausted truck driver in his 11th hour of driving wiping out a bus filled with arriving dignitaries staying at Blair House who prevent President-elect Obama from moving in and starting his daughters off to a “normal” White House life at their new school.

Justice, poetic or otherwise, has always been in short supply under your Administration.

My last tour stop is an as yet unscheduled one you will probably have to wait a bit to see. It will be a lifelong stay at The Hague’s prison at Scheveningen, next to General Radic, as you await trial for war crimes and Geneva Convention violations against torture.

The only joy I feel about this tour is that you may never get to use your shiny diplomatic passport again as you will be a virtual prisoner inside the US for fear of arrest by governments not tying their hands behind their back to avenge the last seven years in Iraq and otherwise.

No, I take it back. There will be unbridled global joy at noon on January 20th. Make no mistake, those will not be cheers of congratulations, Sir, they will be cheers because your reign of terror and error has finally ended.

Denis Campbell publishes daily at www.vadimuspost.com.