It looks like foreign policy consisting of nothing but bluff and bluster (and bombs) is wearing thin with Arab countries in the Middle East. Darth Cheney's recent tough-talking trip through the region didn't have the desired effect. Juan Cole has some excerpts from the Jordanian papers. There's this:

"The US Administration under Bush and his Vice President Cheney has lost credibility and Cheney in particular is no longer taken seriously even in his country. Now he hopes to be taken seriously in the Middle East where he has committed the biggest mistake of attacking Iraq and destroying an independent country that had nothing to do with terrorism."

And this:

...under the headline " The Old Hawk and The Impotent Politician" saying that Dick Cheney landed in Baghdad in the midst of stringent security measures and wearing a bulletproof vest "to prove to the Americans that Iraq is secure and that the Iraqis bask under Bush's good deeds and enjoy freedom, democracy, and reconstruction. Cheney might lie to some segments of the US people who are not aware of what is actually taking place in Iraq" and the "old hawk can lie to the old impotent politician Al-Maliki but cannot lie to the Iraqis because they are aware of the truth and know the objectives the occupation armies have come to achieve." The article concludes: "Cheney has the right to repeat what he wants, deceive, and maneuver to cover up for the defeat of his party, army, and administration, conceal the objectives of the occupation, and defend the behavior and crimes of his forces, but what is surprising is that his acolytes in the green zone agree with him and support his lies and defend the virtues of the occupation, and consider Iraq as an independent and free country."

Ouch! And that's coming from a country that the preznit claims as an ally in his War on Terra. Of course the monarchy in Jordan probably only backs him so he won't get any bright ideas about expanding his democracy-spreading enterprise into their neck of the woods. And speaking of lying your ass off talking about spreading freedom and democracy while carefully ignoring the fact that your allies are dictators, it looks like Pakistan is about to explode. This is yet another consequence of dubya's failure to finish the job he started in Afghanistan/Pakistan before embarking on his Great Iraq Distraction.
So here we are in the fifth year of this grand adventure. Various groups of Iraqi insurgents are ambushing and kidnapping and killing our soldiers while the rest of the population continues to escalate the sectarian bloodbath. It's wholesale slaughter right in the face of The Surge and even though dubya talks about progress in every speech he bumbles his way through, I honestly can't think of a damn thing that could actually be labeled as such. The right-wing noise machine likes to say that removing Saddam from power made the world a safer place, but repeating it endlessly just doesn't make it so. I'd take a mulligan on this one in a heartbeat. In retrospect, Saddam seems pretty tame.