Shame: synonyms — humiliate, ridicule, insult, demean, disrespect, soul-murder; see Bush, George W.

Not only do the US peoples have to put up with Decider George’s arrogant incompetence in everything he touches, now they have to bear the shame of the man as he blunders from one spot in the Middle East to another.
As someone who represents America to the world, we are screwed!

Yesterday Decider George was forced to travel by car to meet Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, in the West Bank after his helicopter was grounded by bad weather.

• “You’ll be happy to know, my whole motorcade of a mere 45 cars was able to make it through without being stopped,” Bush said after being asked about the 30-minute journey from Jerusalem and Ramallah.
  “I’m not so exactly sure that’s what happens to the average person.”
  — Al Jazeera, (1/10/08)

The car drive took him through an Israeli security checkpoint within sight of the separation barrier. Decider George’s words were insensitive at best, an example of his continuous arrogant, don’t-give-shit attitude at worse. The remarks were extraordinary given the pain and humiliation caused at the checkpoints.

• “I remember once in Hawara, one of the checkpoints outside Nablus, and I was doing the story of a family who lost their main loved one … he was a cancer patient and he was told to get out of his car and walk across the checkpoint, and that killed him.
  That’s the experience that most Palestinians have of these humiliating checkpoints … it was very much in bad taste and was a joke that will not have gone down well with anyone in Gaza or the occupied West Bank.”
  — Al Jazeera‘s David Chater in West Jerusalem, (1/10/08)

And despite the red carpet treatment provided Decider George by Abbas, ordinary Palestinians loath him.

• RAMALLAH, West Bank (AFP) — Angry demonstrators in the West Bank town of Ramallah branded US President George W. Bush a “war criminal” on Thursday as locals said he would do nothing for the plight of the Palestinians.
  Security forces, out in force to ensure the security of the American leader on his first trip to the occupied Palestinian territory, used batons and tear gas as they charged around 200 demonstrators who were chanting “Bush, war criminal!” and “Bush out!”.
  Rasha Qawas, 36, who lives near the Muqata, chose to leave her home and stay with her brother during Bush’s visit and said she felt the US president had showed contempt for Palestinian tradition.
  “The Americans are proud of their history and their symbols. By ignoring the mausoleum set up as our monument to historic leader Yasser Arafat, Bush is showing contempt for all our sacrifices,” she said.
  — Agence France-Presse, (1/10/08)

And this morning, during a tour with Condi Rice of Israel’s Holocaust memorial, the Yad Vashem memorial, Decider George responded in the only way he could.

• At one point, Bush viewed aerial photos of the Auschwitz camp taken during the war by U.S. forces and called Rice over to discuss why the American government had decided against bombing the site, according to Avner Shalev, Yad Vashem’s chairman.
  The Allies had detailed reports about Auschwitz during the war from Polish partisans and escaped prisoners. But they chose not to bomb the camp, the rail lines leading to it, or any of the other Nazi death camps, preferring instead to focus all resources on the broader military effort, a decision that became the subject of intense controversy years later.
  “We should have bombed it,” Bush said, according to Shalev.
  — Associated Press, (1/11/08)

And while Decider George is tripping across the Holy Land, the problems he created in Iraq continues to boil over.

• A new movement to oust Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is gathering force in Baghdad. And although the United States is counseling against this change of government, a senior U.S. official in the Iraqi capital says it’s a moment of “breakthrough or breakdown” for Maliki’s regime.
  The new push against Maliki comes from Kurdish leaders, who, U.S. and Iraqi sources told me, sent him an ultimatum in late December.
  “The letter was clear in saying we are concerned about the direction of policies in Baghdad,” said a senior Kurdish official. He described the Dec. 21 letter as “a sincere effort from the Kurdish parties to help the government reform — or else.”
  — David Ignatius, The Washington Post, (1/9/08)

And the business at home as seen by the Brits:

• Voters in the United States may have switched their attention to the contest to find his successor, but George Bush will embark on an ambitious nine-day tour of the Middle East tomorrow in a last desperate effort to salvage a legacy from two terms in office overshadowed by a catastrophic foreign policy that has earned him the distinction of being one of the worst presidents in the country’s history.
  The Bush legacy will not be peace in the Middle East nor an end to conflict in Iraq, but it could be a political earthquake among voters so dismayed by the mess he has made of America’s foreign policy and fearful of economic recession that they are deserting his party in droves.
  — Leonard Doyle and Andrew Buncombe, The Independent, (1/7/08)

And this:

• He’s a poll cellar-dweller whom even GOP presidential candidates sneer at, but George W. Bush and some congressional backers see happy days for the prez this year. His fans have dubbed it his “legacy year,” when they hope to lock in his achievements on the domestic front. Among the items Bush’s GOP congressional allies want to work on this month: continuing his tax cuts and extending the controversial No Child Left Behind Act. As for the war, they say, the news has been good, and Bushies believe that their guy will eventually get credit for opening the war on terrorism. But more immediately, they are predicting a remarkable poll shift to about 45 percent favorable by the time he leaves office next year.
  — US News & World Report, ‘Washington Whispers,’ (1/10/08)

Should we laugh, should we cry? Should we cower in shame?