23/01/2013 00:00
TW
0

by RAY FLEMING
MY “Bush Timer” - a gift from an anonymous reader eight months ago that shows the time remaining before George W Bush leaves the White House - now reads, at the time of writing, 0 Days, 11 hours, 2 minutes and 15 seconds.

Only 11 hours left! Surely there's no more harm he can do in that brief spell - although he may still have a few presidential executive orders and last minute pardons to issue.

My first thought yesterday had been to try to find something nice to write about Mr Bush in this last Viewpoint of his presidency. But then I saw an article entitled History Will Vindicate George Bush and I realised that his cause is hopeless. This article by one of his supporters, claimed that “As he has set great events in motion, it will be impossible to judge his presidency for many years.” Reading on, I discovered that these “great events” were principally the Iraq war and the “war on terror”. Even in these two cases the author of the article had to apologise for the lack of weapons of mass destruction (”should we have waited for the certainty of a mushroom cloud?”), the lamentable post-war administration of Iraq (“If mistakes had not been made Bush's ratings would have been much higher”) and Guantanamo Bay (”at the time, it seemed a good idea”).

Clearly, if this is the best case to be made for W's legacy there is no point in my even trying. Sorry!