.
The First Rough Draft of History“BERLIN (Reuters) — Editorial writers around the world have been taking their final printed whacks at George W. Bush, accusing the president of tarnishing America’s standing with what many saw as arrogant and incompetent leadership. . . .
“‘A weak leader, Bush was just overwhelmed in the job,’ said Germany’s
Sueddeutsche Zeitung under a headline: ‘The Failure.’ ‘He confused stubbornness with principles. America has become intolerant and it will take a long time to repair that damage.’” . . .
• The Sunday
Times in London: “Bush leaves a country and an economy in tatters.”
•
The Daily Mail: “How will history judge George W.? Have we, perhaps, to quote his own mangled malapropisms, ‘misunderestimated’ him? On the plus side, after 9/11 he achieved what became his number one priority: to prevent his country suffering further attack on its own soil. Al Qaeda has been hugely weakened.”
•
The Scottish Daily Record: “America is now hated in many parts of the world. Bush leaves a legacy of wars and the world economy in meltdown. He has been dismissed as a buffoon and a war-monger, a man who made the world a more dangerous place while sending it to the brink of economic collapse.”
• Germany’s
Die Zeit: “Bush brought great misery to the world with his ‘friend-or-foe’ mentality.”
•
Stern magazine: “Bush led the world’s most powerful nation to ruin. He lied to the world, tortured in the name of freedom and caused lasting damage to America's standing.”
• The Pan-Arab
al-Hayat's headline: “We cried a lot and the joke was on us.”
• Austria’s
Wiener Zeitung: “The United States was once the symbol of justice in the world but that has been damaged by Bush. A web of manipulation has cost America $900 billion and the lives of 4,000 soldiers—along with at least 500,000 Iraqis.”
• Warsaw’s daily
Dziennik: The Bush presidency: “It was empty rhetoric.”
(Thanks to alert WORDster Tony Seton.)
Public Service Announcement:
Dear World:
We, the United States of America, your top quality supplier of ideals of democracy, would like to apologize for our 2001-2008 interruption in service.
The technical fault that led to this eight-year service outage has been located, and the software responsible was replaced November 4.
Early tests of the newly installed program indicate that we are now operating correctly, and we expect it to be fully functional on January 20.
We apologize for any inconvenience caused by the outage. We look forward to resuming full service and hope to improve in years to come. We thank you for your patience and understanding.
Sincerely,
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
(Thanks to various alert WORDsters)
Today in History
2004: Salvation Army announces $1.5 billion gift from McDonald’s Ray and Joan Kroc; 1996: Yassir Arafat elected Palestinian leader; 1981: As Ronald Reagan is inaugurated the 40th president, 52 U.S. hostages are released in Teheran; 1961: Robert Frost reads at JFK inauguration; 1942: Nazi Wannsee Conference comes to “final solution” for Jews; 1841: Hong Kong becomes British; 1801: John Marshall becomes chief justice of the Supreme Court
