Globe's Kuttner: Bush 'Lying Heir to the Lunatic Fringe'

Even for a Boston Globe columnist, Robert Kuttner's effort this morning has to go down in the annals of Bush-hatred at its most rabid. Consider these excerpts, annotated with my comments:

• 'The latest violence in the Middle East demonstrates the bankruptcy of the Bush administration's grand design for the region.' Stay with me - Bob's just clearing his throat.
• 'The quagmire has demonstrated the humiliating limits of US military power.' Crocodile tears?
• 'Saddam turned out to be telling the truth about nuclear weapons and Bush turned out to be lying,' Make your contribution today at SaddamDefenseFund@ramseyclark.org
• 'Bolton and the other radicals in the administration want Israel to keep pummeling Lebanon a while longer.' No, they want Israel to keep pummeling Hezbollah, which is based in Lebanon.
• 'The party of mutual Armageddon . . . the war party of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Israeli right, the Iranian ultras, Rumsfeld, and Cheney.' Moral equivalence strikes again. The terrorists, and those who would stop the terrorists - same difference.
• '[Neo-cons and Cheney want to] just have it out [with Iran]. Not a ground war or an Iraq-style regime change -- we blew that option-- but a war on the cheap, of missile strikes.' So a liberal laments a cheap war and pines for a full-scale invasion? I'm confused.
• 'There were some in the United States who wanted to have it out [with the Soviet Union], in World War III. Miraculously, they never attained power. Containment worked, communism fell.' Explaining the fall of the Soviet Union without naming Reagan is like describing a spiral staircase without using your hands. But Kuttner pulls it off.
• 'Today, the ideological heirs to that lunatic fringe are running the American government. Every arrogant miscalculation only leads them to more disastrous blunders.' Tell us how you really feel, Bob.
• 'Had Bush . . . worked as Bill Clinton did for a reduction of violence and a true peace process between Israelis and Palestinians, radical Islam would have far less appeal.' God bless Bill. Thanks to him, 9-11 was averted.
• 'With a mid-term election looming and the Mideast in flames, will voters finally recognize that this crowd is delusionally incompetent? Or will cynical fear-mongering lead anxious citizens yet again to rally 'round their president?' Ah, the hopes and fears of a liberal.