Full-frontage failure

In today's San Francisco Chronicle, reader Robert Becker from Yolo County (about 150 km NE of San Francisco) writes about the breadth of the Bush administration's failures, not just in the Katrina response, but across the board. Click here and scroll about halfway down for the full text of the letter from the SFChron web site.

As this country awakens to the nightmare of Bush-think, don't we need an impartial, bipartisan debate that scrutinizes everything that has gone wrong in the last five years? What if we need prompt, strong steps to redeem America from enduring more failures "on all fronts"? ... This country is not unlike New Orleans — still taking water, listing and crying for effective emergency responses. — Robert Becker, letter to the editor, 2005-09-14

In what arenas has the Bush administration been an abject failure? Let's see:

• Iraq war justification
• Iraq war planning
• Iraq war aftermath
• Fiscal restraint
• Medicare drug benefit (intentionally lied to Congress, which fits under "high crimes and misdemeanors" in the sense of Article II, Section 4)
• Protection of the environment
• just about everything else he's done in office

It is time for not just Michael Brown, the unqualified, ineffective leader of FEMA, but also for George W. Bush, the unqualified, ineffective leader of the United States of America, to recognize his incapacity and mitigate the damage of his bungling by removing the source of the problem: himself. Of course, Cheney must also go, which means that we will have Dennis Hastert as President. What I am advocating is a wrenching change, but it is even more necessary today than it was necessary for Richard Nixon to leave on August 9, 1974. The pain of an unwarranted impeachment campaign against President Clinton pales in comparison to the pain of a justified impeachment of President Bush.

Mr. Bush, it is your patriotic duty to step down and let someone capable of handling the office of President take over. For the sake of the nation, resign! Do you really want your legacy to be that you were the first President impeached and removed from office? That is where "stay the course" will take you.