Hubris is an interesting word. We here at Compatible Creatures have a dour longing for words which look weird and are rarely used in general-public discourse. However, hubris have been used a lot the last five or six years, mainly to describe on the horrifying achievements of Decider George and his bunch.
Greek in orgin, hubris has come to mean exaggerated self-pride, or self confidence (overbearing pride), often resulting in fatal retribution and was considered the most heinous, greatest sin in classical Greece — from Wikipedia.

This week Decider George is mucking about the Holy Land. This morning he met with Palestinian leaders in the West Bank and babbled that a Middle East peace treaty would be signed by the time he leaves office next year. Yesterday he met with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and today Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Decider George looked into their souls (he has that power — he did it with Valdimar Putin) and could envision peace exploding all over the war-scared place.

• “In order for there to be lasting peace, President Abbas and Prime Minister Olmert have to come together and make tough choices and I’m convinced they will. Is it going to be hard work? You bet.”
  — Speaking at a joint news conference with Abbas, cnn.com (1/10/08)

You betcha! Abbas is pretty-much disliked among Palestinians and Olmert is hanging by a thread in Israel while Decider George throws some hubris on the classical fire.
After all that wonderful camaraderie, Decider George played tourist.

• “Not only was my soul uplifted, but my knowledge of history was enriched.”
  — Bush in Bethlehem after a visit to the Church of the Nativity, cnn.com (1/10/08)

Decider George’s historical knowledge can never, never be enriched. He’s slaughtered history, from Vietnam to Iraq, and lied about anything else. But he can rattle that saber with the best of them, but really, that’s all the little arrogant sonofabitch is worth — run the mouth.

• “We have made it very clear, and they know our position, and that is: There will be serious consequences if they attack our ships, pure and simple. My advice to them is: Don’t do it.”
  — Remarks about Iran and the recent incident on the Strait of Homuz in the Persian Gulf, Associated Press (1/9/08)

Indeed, the incident sure sounded serious. Five boats supposedly manned by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Navy “maneuvered aggressively in close proximity” of US Navy ships in the Strait of Homuz last week. According to published reports an actual confrontation was avoided at the last minute.
On a four-minute, 20-second videotape released Tuesday by the Pentagon, a deep, thick-accented voice could be heard over the radio saying, “I am coming to you,” and later to explain, “You will explode in a few minutes.”
No one knows if the voice came from the five ships circling around, or from somewhere else. A mysterious, strange and dangerous “incident.”

The Iranians denied there was any hostility.

• Iran’s state-run Press TV quoted a spokesman for Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Navy as saying Wednesday that the video “had been compiled using file pictures and the audio had been fabricated.” An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman downplayed the incident, calling it “normal,” state-run news agency IRNA reported. “The case … was similar to the past ones and it was a regular and natural issue,” Mohammad-Ali Hosseini said, according to the news agency.
  —cnn.com (1/9/08)

“Incident” in quotes since we’re dealing with Decider George. One must also keep in mind the infamous 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which led to the horror of Vietnam — a resolution based on another pack of lies. (US Senate passes Iraq Resolution 77-23, Oct. 11, 2002).

And while Decider George gets his soul uplifted, US troops are still dying in Iraq.

• BAGHDAD – Nine American soldiers were killed in the first two days of a new American drive against al-Qaida in Iraq, U.S. military said Wednesday.
  Six soldiers were killed and four were wounded Wednesday in a booby-trapped house in Diyala province, where joint U.S.-Iraqi forces were driving through a difficult web of lush palm and citrus groves, farmland and fertile river bottoms.
  The military also announced that three U.S. soldiers were killed and two were wounded Tuesday in an attack in Salahuddin province. The operation began Tuesday.
  — AP (1/09/08)

Despite great secrecy in launching the above-mention operation, most of the insurgents had disappeared before the US troops could get in position. The GIs are fighting an elusive enemy on their own turf.
And this:

• About 151,000 Iraqis died from violence in the three years after the United States invaded, concludes the best effort yet to count deaths — one that still may not settle the fierce debate over the war’s true toll on civilians and others. The estimate comes from projections by the World Health Organization and the Iraqi government, based on door-to-door surveys of nearly 10,000 households. Experts called it the largest and most scientific study of the Iraqi death toll since the war began.the British-based Iraq Body Count. The Body Count project bases its figures mostly on media reports — a method known to underestimate deaths because many go unreported. That group listed 47,668 civilian deaths from violence during the period studied in the WHO survey, and between 80,331 and 87,742 to date since the war began. The group’s numbers do not include deaths of fighters, but the WHO survey and an earlier one published in the journal Lancet in 2006 do. The Lancet study, by Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, drew wide criticism, partly because it came out just before the 2006 congressional elections. It surveyed 1,849 households and concluded that 600,000 Iraqis had died from violence, mostly gunfire, and roughly 50,000 more from other causes like heart disease and cancer.
  — AP (1/9/08)

Before he departed for the Middle East, Decider George held a video conference with Iraqi officials along with Vice President Dufus Dick Cheney, Condi Rice and Admiral Mike Mullen.
Speaking afterwards in the Rose Garden, Decider George babbled incoherently that Iraq last year “has become incredibly successful beyond anybody’s expectations.”

And shit like that needs rebuttal.

• “It is a failure of leadership when our president calls 2007 incredibly successful beyond anybody’s expectations when the Iraqi government has done so little to achieve stability and it has been the most lethal year yet for American troops.”
  — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a joint statement, AP (1/8/08)

Nice, but too much hubris as our soul was not lifted nearly enough.