In the morning news.

A headline on Excite.com this morning had the immediate effect of my opening the link. It was a story about our Secretary of State, formerly known as the "Chevron Oil Tanker, CondoleezzaRice". In what sounded like a Sunday confessional overheard in the cathedral by someone spying without authorization, the headline read, "Rice Admits U.S. Underestimated Hamas Strength".

I guess I was hoping that our Oil Tanker admitting she underestimated Hamas strength, might also confess she overestimated pre-war Iraq's strength. I mean, c'mon, from pre-invasion "mushroom clouds over American cities", to post-invasion "No WMD's", none, nada, zero, zilch, is quite a credibility gap. But I guess we're gonna have to wait a while longer for that admission. Maybe at her war crimes trial?

In the same article, Martin Indyk, who was a top Middle Eastern negotiator for the Clinton administration criticized Bush's foresight of the Hamas victory by saying, "on the American side, the conceptual failure that contributed to disaster was the president's belief that democracy and elections solve everything."

I'm pretty sure Indyk's been misquoted there or that was a typo. Oh, I know Bush has been saying that publicly for the past 4 or 5 or 23 years. Long enough that "democracy" has become one of those hackneyed obligatory platitudes we must endure in every Bush speech.

But the facts just don't support it. If they did, why would the U.S. orchestrate the coup that ousted Haiti's popularly elected Jean-Bertrand Aristide or covertly support the sabotage of democratically elected Latin American leaders critical of the U.S.? And what of our support for any anti-democratic despot who provides us with oil or a strategic military air base?

Or what of our own little fledging democracy in Iraq? It's a great achievement to flaunt, so long as the wrong party doesn't gain too much popular support, of course.

But for the ultimate proof in the pudding of Bush's seeding and fertilizing democracies globally, one need look no further than our own USA to lay bare the contradictions of Bush sanctimoniousness where, to gain power, the Bush team orchestrated their own 2000 bloodless coup and, to retain their ill-gotten power, they stole another one in '04.

So "democracy" from the lips of Bush is hollow hypocrisy. But brace yourselves for yet another speech spiced with those charged words and hackneyed phrases tomorrow evening in the State of the Union speech. Sadly, about half the nation is still buying the spiel. If only the majority of us could get over Bush as a strong leader against terrorism instead of the strong leader that he is in creating terrorism. Undoubtedly, I'll have more to say about that soon.