In the waning days of Decider George’s grip on reality, events and disclosures reveal just how bad the past nearly-eight years have been — an ugly, multi-generational inheritance.

If one is heartless and puts aside the shredding of the US Constitution, the legislative disaster for global warming and environmental issues, the political Karl Rove bullshit, and on-and-on-and-on, only two words dominate Decider George’s time as leader of the free world: Katrina and Iraq.

While Decider George and Jackboot John McCain caked-it-up on a tarmac faraway, New Orleans was slammed with the greatest calamity in US history; now getting-close-to-three-years later there’s no relief in sight:

• “It’s just the sickness. I can’t get rid of it. It just keeps coming back,” said Bouffanie, 27, who was pregnant with her now 15-month-old daughter, Lexi, while living in the trailer. “I’m just like, `Oh God, I wish like this would stop.’ If I had known it would get her sick, I wouldn’t have stayed in the trailer for so long.”
  The girl, diagnosed with severe asthma, must inhale medicine from a breathing device.
  Doctors cannot conclusively link her asthma to the trailer. But they fear she is among tens of thousands of youngsters who may face lifelong health problems because the temporary housing supplied by the Federal Emergency Management Agency contained formaldehyde fumes up to five times the safe level.
  …
  Arch Carson, professor of occupational medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston, said preliminary exams alone for trailer residents could cost more than the trade center bill. But he said class-action lawsuits over the formaldehyde — at least one has been filed — could be even more expensive, costing many billions of dollars.
  “It would be best for the government to get its act together now,” Carson said.
  More than 22,000 FEMA trailers and mobile homes are still being used in Mississippi and Louisiana.
  — John Moreno Gonzales, Associated Press, (5/27/08)

Katrina is a blight on recent US history. Jackboot John toured New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward earlier this year during one of his shit-for-brains tours, and couldn’t blubber-up a decent answer to a when/if/and why not question about what to do with the destroyed neighborhood.
The US government has been screwed.
The Department of Homeland Security is a cruel, ironic joke.

And Iraq:

• WASHINGTON – The number of troops with new cases of post-traumatic stress disorder jumped by roughly 50 percent in 2007 amid the military buildup in Iraq and increased violence there and in Afghanistan.
  Records show roughly 40,000 troops have been diagnosed with the illness, also known as PTSD, since 2003. Officials believe that many more are likely keeping their illness a secret.
  …
  The Veterans Affairs Department said recently it has seen some 120,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who have received at least a preliminary mental health diagnosis, with PTSD being the most common diagnosis at nearly 60,000.
  — Pauline Jelinek, AP, (5/27/08)

Since the Iraqi war started 4,084 US GIs have died with 30,329 wounded. Total cases of PTSD could top 300,00: PTSD to medical experts is considered in the same as a physical injury, such as loss of a limb.
What a military-medical horror for so many years to come.

And this:

• A full-fledged cottage industry is already focused on those who eagerly await the end of the Bush administration, offering calendars, magnets, and T-shirts for sale, as well as counters and graphics to download onto blogs and Web sites. But when the countdown ends and George W. Bush vacates the Oval Office, he will leave a legacy to contend with. Certainly, he wills to his successor a world marred by war and battered by deprivation, but perhaps his most enduring legacy is now deeply embedded in Washington-area politics – a Pentagon metastasized almost beyond recognition.
  The Pentagon’s massive bulk-up these last seven years will not be easily unbuilt, no matter who dons the presidential mantle on January 19, 2009. “The Pentagon” is now so much more than a five-sided building across the Potomac from Washington or even the seat of the Department of Defense. In many ways, it defies description or labeling.
  …
  The Pentagon’s core budget – already a staggering $300 billion when George W. Bush took the presidency – has almost doubled while he’s been parked behind the big desk in the Oval Office. For fiscal year 2009, the regular Pentagon budget will total roughly $541 billion (including work on nuclear warheads and naval reactors at the Department of Energy).
  The Bush administration has presided over one of the largest military buildups in the history of the United States. And that’s before we even count “war spending.” If the direct costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the Global War on Terror, are factored in, “defense” spending has essentially tripled.
  — Frida Berrigan, tomdispatch.com, (5/28/08)

And yesterday, it was reported one of Decider George’s former press people, Scott McClellan, has written a nasty book about the current leader of the free world, aptly-titled, we guess, ‘What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception.’
McClellan claims is former boss is a liar, though, he still “like and admires’ the sonofabitch.

An excerpt from politico.com:

• “One of the worst disasters in our nation’s history became one of the biggest disasters in Bush’s presidency. Katrina and the botched federal response to it would largely come to define Bush’s second term,” he writes. “And the perception of this catastrophe was made worse by previous decisions President Bush had made, including, first and foremost, the failure to be open and forthright on Iraq and rushing to war with inadequate planning and preparation for its aftermath.”

Duh!
What else can be said?

• WASHINGTON — At the same time the Bush administration has been pushing for deep cuts in a popular crime-fighting program for states and cities, the White House has been fighting for approval of $603 million for the Iraqi police.
  The White House earlier this year proposed slashing the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant program, which helps local law enforcement officials deal with violent crime and serious offenders, to $200 million in the next fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1 .
  In 2002, the year before the Iraq war, the program received $900 million.
  — David Lightman, McClatchy Newspapers, (5/27/08)

A frightful future for US peoples.