On April 13, 2008, Republican presidential candidate John McCain told an MSNBC reporter that he believed George W. Bush was a fine leader. If McCain truly believes that then that alone should disqualify him as a candidate for the presidency of the United States. Let us take a look at where exactly Bush’s ‘fine’ leadership has taken the nation during the last seven and a half years.

Let’s start with the war in Iraq. Mr. Bush led the nation to this war under false pretense. He claimed that there were weapons of mass destruction when there were none. He also claimed that Saddam Hussein was connected to the September 11 attacks. He wasn’t. He told the American people he could bring democracy to Iraq and five and a half years later he hasn’t. George W. Bush started the wrong war with the wrong country by misleading the nation.

The truth is that Bush’s invasion created a power vacuum in the Middle East that has led Iraq into a civil war. Shiites and Sunnis are at each other’s throats and American forces are caught in the middle of that whole bloody mess. The stress on American soldiers is such that in 2007 alone 131 soldiers took their own lives. A private e-mail on the subject made public by MSNBC is very disturbing. It was written by Dr. Ira Katz, a high ranking officer of the Veteran’s Administration, and it states that about one thousand soldiers attempt suicide every month, one thousand soldiers every single month! Think of that.

Such is the stress and emotional burden that this war has put upon the shoulders of tens of thousands of America’s bravest men and women.

Bush also claims, to this day, that the war has made America safer than it was before the invasion of Baghdad. It hasn’t. The resentment that Bush’s irresponsible leadership has created in the Middle East has polarized a whole generation of young Muslims against America. For example, in Afghanistan and Pakistan the number of madrasahs, ultra-conservative, fundamentalist Islamic schools, has gone from 900 in 1970 to more than 27 thousand in 2007.

Back in 1993, one Osama bin Laden (remember him?) preached that the U.S. wanted to invade an oil rich Muslim nation to take control of its resources. George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq turned the terrorist into a prophet in the eyes of millions of Muslims.

Thanks to Bush’s policies in the region, it is now easier than ever for the most hardcore, Anti-American ideologies to recruit new members for their causes. A recent internationally sponsored poll in Iraq revealed that at least 70% of Iraqi civilians want the U.S. to leave the country.

It is any wonder most Iraqis want the American military out? When the U.S. invaded the country it unwittingly set up the ground work for an all out civil war when it even failed to secure literally tons of weapons and ammo from Hussein’s brutal dictatorship. Evan Thomas and John Barry of US New and World Report published the following in a recent article: When Saddam fell the American invaders failed to secure his arsenals, insurgents could and did avail themselves of about 500 million tons of bombs, artillery shells and ammo, basically left lying around. (See August 20^th-27^th, 2007 issue.)

To make matters worse, if such a thing were possible, Bush’s forces in Iraq didn’t even keep their own weapons under control. The U.S. Government Accountability Office found that there are some 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols missing. These were paid for by the American tax-payers and they are no longer in American hands. The study done by the GAO found that there are at least 13,180 Glock pistols missing. It is estimated that they are worth as much as $46 million in the black market. The real number may be as high as 80,000 missing pistols. Isn’t the first rule of war that you do not give your enemy guns so they can shoot at you? This, amazingly, is the war John McCain openly supports and seeks to continue.

Now let’s look at the results of Bush’s ‘fine’ leadership with regard to the economy. The United State’s deficit is at least $250 billion, a historical high that is greater than the combined deficit of all previous presidencies combined since 1776!

The sub-prime foreclosure crisis has left tens of thousands of families without their homes. According to a CNN (Sunday, April 13^th, 2008) report by mid April, at least 13 thousand families a week were losing their homes. From March 2007 to March of 2008 the rate of foreclosures jumped by 57%. In Florida 30,257 homes were lost. In California 64,711 homes were taken over by the banks.