Decider George is like a rotten, aching and throbbing tooth, one of the them backside, big-old molars, one that can’t be worked on or even pulled, sitting there in the headcase, making life even more miserable with each countdown-passing second.

Yesterday, the outgoing commander-in-chief told a crowd of people most-likely destined again for the Islamic front on the Global War on Terror, tiny foreign mishaps the past near-eight years has been nothing-less than glorious — No regrets about invading and destroying occupying Iraq.

In the wake of Barack Obama, Decider George really, really sucks.

(Illustration found here).

The New York Times yesterday:

• Mr. Bush said that success in Iraq — achieved by the 101st Airborne and other units based here (Fort Campbell, Ky.) — would resonate far beyond that country’s borders.
  “Success will frustrate Iran’s ambitions to dominate the region,” he said. “Success will show millions across the Middle East that a future of liberty and democracy is possible. Success will deny Al Qaeda a safe haven for launching new attacks. Success in Iraq will mean that the American people are more secure at home.”
  Mr. Bush said the removal of Saddam Hussein had begun a new era for Iraq.
  “Because we acted, the dictator, his sons and their regime are no more,” Mr. Bush said. “More than 25 million Iraqis are free. And a young democracy has taken root where a tyrant once ruled.
  Removing Saddam Hussein was the right decision then, and it is the right decision today.”

A certain legacy, a profound historical achievement achieved: A willingness, full-hearted willingness, to blubber in extreme-delusional verbiage about reality.
The perplexities of Iraq is beyond the immense — beyond military flesh and hardware, the original financial drain-hole in an era of nothing-but financial drain-holes, and even the perpetual political cauldron created by the illegal, immoral invasion of Iraq, there’s the innocent peoples.
Plain, ordinary, regular-life peoples living plain, ordinary, regular-lives.

Estimates of Iraqi civilian causalities since the invasion have ranged from about 80,000 to 100,000 upwards to 650,000 or more.
A good, overall view of the accounted can be found here.

Another aspect raised this morning by Juan Cole concerned those ordinary folks, based on a recent survey of families across Iraq.
The results ain’t successful:

• About 40% of these households were headed by women, an unusual finding for a patriarchal Arab society.
  About two-thirds of these female heads of household are widows, bespeaking the horrific loss of life among Iraqi males during the past five and a half years.
  Some 15% of female heads of household are divorced. Given the shortage of men produced by the war, divorcees may not easily be able to find a new mate.
  And then there is this odd statistic of 7.5% of female heads of household being single.
  The authors of the study interpret them as spinsters.
  It is not clear if they are both orphans and spinsters, so that they are living alone, or if they are heading a household of unemployed parents or siblings.
  The authors think they are having trouble finding a husband because of all the males killed in the war.
  In the US, households headed by women are disproportionately poverty-stricken and it is likely this is true of Iraq in spades.
  Nearly half of these families have 6-10 members, while 43% have 1-5.
  Two-thirds of these families live on less than $210 per month, but given the size of the families, the average per capita income in this group is $420 per year.
  The international poverty line is set at $500 a year, so two-thirds of Iraqis are living in poverty.
  The population of the poorest country in the New World, Haiti, has an annual per capita income of $550.
  Over two-thirds of families receive no aid from the Iraqi government, even though their needs are clear, and 50% get no aid from NGOs.
  Among displaced families, 13% would not return home even if they could, so great is their fear.

Tangle all that with a knowledge the near-or-far future is pretty-much the same, or even worse.

From the Times story:

• The president recalled that a day before Thanksgiving in 2001, he visited Fort Campbell while the nation was still reeling from the shock of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
  “That November day, I said, ‘Once again, you have a rendezvous with destiny,’ ” Mr. Bush recalled.
  “Over the past seven years,” the president said, “folks from this base have done exactly what they were trained to do,” attacking “killers and thugs” in the global fight against terrorism, which he described as “the great ideological struggle of our time.”
  Mr. Bush’s upbeat assessment of the two wars made hardly any reference to the problems he will leave to President-elect Barack Obama.

Decider George’s one great success is arrogance-laced bullshitting, which he has no peer.