Some days ago, I arrived in the (Persian) Gulf on the same day that President Bush did- and in the same city. It is a measure of the low esteem of Mr. Bush that, even in the country his father liberated from Iraqi Ba'athist occupation, he is at best met with skepticism. Many people who gratefully adored his father as a liberator now despise Bush Jr.- at best they think of him as an inept president leading a disastrous administration. When people in the Gulf consider a U.S administration is inept, well, this is not only a case of the pot calling the kettle black- it is a definite trough, what is called in Mathematics a minimum, an absolute not a local minimum.

People I talked to in the Gulf region see this twilight tour of the Gulf states as partly Iran-related, partly Israel-related, and, last but not least, partly setting up the stage for lucrative future contracts for his buddies and his aides. He arrived in the emotional week before the highly emotional Shi'a (Shi'ite) holy day of 'Ashura- someone ought to have told him to put off his trip to the Gulf for a couple of weeks. Apparently nobody did, not his Middle East experts, not even his hosts. He did not do himself, or his country, any good in the Gulf, even if he did the sword dance with the royalty.
I wonder if he made the rounds of some Shi'a Husseiniyyas, religious houses, while in the Gulf region during this particular period- that would have opened his eyes...maybe...maybe.

In the Gulf, on the same evening of my arrival, I watched Bush cheerfully hobnob with the incense-soaked potentates with dye-blackened facial hair, while I sat with my older brother who is being destroyed by advancing Parkinson's. That is the same disease that Mr. Bush would rather not help eradicate if the research used is unacceptable to Christian Jihadists back in the United States.

Now we know that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is actually naked. The man who pooh poohed the financial crisis and the potential for a recession has been forced to eat crow, having been caught far behind the curve trying to catch up.
Cheers
Mohammed