this morning I’m left with the disquieting feeling that in several years it will be clear to everyone that the current administration in the US made a series of huge, obvious strategic and tactical political errors during this escalation of the Iraq question. Already, it’s clear that the administration has totally blown it. The new push against Iraq should have been a slam dunk! No one in the world – not the French, not the Germans, not the peaceniks worldwide – supports Saddam Hussein. No one thinks Iraq is a peaceful, misunderstood country that should just be left alone. No one (pretty much) disagrees that something had to be done or that the status quo was sustainable.

Nonetheless, here we are, a day after millions of people worldwide demonstrated against the current administrations’s actions. How has this come to pass? How did this go from a slam-dunk, an obvious “must-do” to a situation that risks the destruction of the UN, the end of NATO, and a comprehensible trashing of the United States’ reputation as a legitimate world leader?

How can it be anything less than a massive public relations AND policy failure on the part of the Bush administration? They have lied, they have shamefully disrespected almost everyone other than Britain on the world stage, they have insulted friends and foes alike, and paid nothing but lip service to anyone and everyone who might frame their paranoid rantings in a structure that can legitimately take action that would meet with wide approval.

That, barring the unforeseen horrors that may still confront us, will be the legacy of George W Bush.