Is there anything Bush touches that isn't a disaster?

As usual, everything about this debacle of a war in Iraq is dirty – from the American president who lied us into it, to the sectarian violence our troops are now caught in the middle of. And Saddam's execution is turning out to be no exception.

In fact, like the war itself, what at first seemed reasonable to many people has been exposed for the horror it is.

The right cheered - Saddam is dead now, the dictator got tried in an Iraqi court, was found guilty, sentenced to death and executed.

But as more is revealed about the scene at the hanging - the taunting of the condemned man, the religious overtones of one sect abusing another – it's clear now that the way it was handled was a disaster which will doubtless lead to more sectarian violence in that rapidly disintegrating country.

As I asked in this prescient post from the weekend, just after that grainy cell phone video surfaced: why are we, even indirectly, involved in acts as barbarous as the fanatical thugs who kidnap and kill Westerners in the Middle East?

And, as usual, the right misses the point: "Well, Hussein did the same or worse to countless thousands of Iraqi prisoners over the years," they say.

And that's absolutely correct - but shouldn't we be much, much better than that? Why should our standard be, “Well, he did it too.”

Now the Bush-backed Iraqi government, which presided over this gruesome act, has proudly announced it has arrested a suspect in the surreptitious cam-phone taping, a guard who was among the 20 or so people in that dank little room.

But the problem is not that the scene was taped. The problem is what happened there. It was an obscene parody of a nation putting a condemned man to death. Again (and although they were dressed like them, face masks and all) these were not terrorist thugs – these were agents of the state carrying out an act of the state. And the U.S., thanks to George Bush, is backing that state and keeping that government in power.

I don't give much credence to this guard's arrest or the "investigation" the Maliki government is supposedly going to carry out about what happened there. Its agents were presiding over the execution. (There are also reports it was a government “official” and not a guard who taped the scene. Some poor schlub is going to be made a scapegoat for letting the world see what the great new Iraqi democracy does).

We invaded that country, have watched it turn into a bloody mess of a society with less electricity and clean water than before the war, countless thousands of innocent Iraqis have died, thousands are fleeing the country in fear of their lives, more people hate us, Iran has clearly been strengthened - and more than 3,000 U.S. troops have been killed so far.

And, reportedly, Bush wants to send more troops to that hellhole.

Why isn't anyone seriously talking about impeaching this fuck?