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Could anyone be "worse" than George W?

"The day I was in Palmyra the Emperor Bush II gave his speech in the Knesset, a slab of rhetoric so exuberant in its homage to Israel that the New York Times had to reprimand him editorially for bad taste. In its immediate aftermath I had an opportunity to ask a member of the Syrian cabinet, Dr Bouthaina Shaaban, whether she thought the installation of a new U.S. president next January would diminish the forebodings which she had just been outlining with great passion, from the continuing human catastrophe in Iraq, to the horrors of Israel’s siege of Gaza, to the U.S.’s obvious intent to provoke another terrible civil war in Lebanon. (For the record, Dr Shaaban does not think a war with Iran was likely.) She didn’t hesitate to answer me by saying she envisaged no change, if a candidate such as Barack Obama settles into the Oval Office next January.

The continuous policy of the United States is to divide and rule, she exclaimed, has been and will be for the foreseeable futuree, to fan schism and internecine bloodletting in the region, to set Arab against Arab, whether it be the communities of Lebanon or the Shia and Sunni in Iraq."

So writes Alexander Cockburn in a piece on CounterPunch. He raises a critical question whether anyone could be "worse" than George Bush - for the consequences are far-reaching and potentially devastating for many countries and peoples. Read the full piece here.

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