I was with him right up until point #5 (Dixie Chicks). Silly immature 'artists' who "succumbed naively to the pro-fascist hysteria" are among the last people who should be invited to the white house.

Franks is not qualified to judge these matters. Perhaps Mr. Lawler can find someone who is as the direction of some of these questions is good.

NOTE: I am a classical country music fan (native of Oklahoma, which is almost Texas) who refuses to listen to Saddam's Chicks today. NOT because they succumbed naively to hysteria, but because the Dixie Chicks are in fact liberal/fascist ideologues who wrote extensively about their philosophy in their next album. They basically blame everyone but themselves to this day. My favorite is when they sing about those who don't agree with them teaching "hate" to their children....

I understand your point, Christopher, but if President Bush had reached out to the Dixie Chicks early, I believe it would have changed their tone later. Now we'll never know.

The incident reminded me that Abraham Lincoln asked the military band to play "Dixie" in anticipation of Lee's surrender in April 1865. Playing "Dixie" was in some ways claiming the spoils of victory, but it also was a conciliatory gesture.

The Dixie Chicks episode ultimately has little significance. If President Bush doesn't answer that question, I won't care too much. But I want the other 13 answers.

I found the questions question-begging, telegraphing pro-Bush answers even before he answers them. But that is the way the game is played with this guy - the questions he gets asked are sort of pre-asked and pre-answered by focus groups and the sleepwalking white house press corps, and now a new set by apologists. The dixie chicks are liberal-fascist ideologues? I guess that is why "Earl had to die."

Why did you bring such second- and third-rate people with you from Texas and give them such important positions?

One may be impressed with the Obama cabinet roll-out. But will it be loyal? That is what rightly worried Bush. But he slighted the other great qualities.

Aristotle speaks in the Politics, Book V, I think, of the three requisites of political office: loyalty (to the regime), skill, and virtue.

Ren, it's more accurate to say that my questions are not asked from a Democratic Party point of view. They are from my own point of view, which I happen to believe is based on a liberal dedication to open-mindedness and freeing the oppressed.

The 14 questions might shock Democratic partisans who have been ignoring the facts for eight years. Too cynical to recognize the obvious, Democratic zealots would not allow themselves to ask such things. And that's the main reason our major news agencies have never asked Bush even one of these 14 questions.

I was going to say that those are a slightly odd selection of question, but I see that Frank believes in a "liberal dedication to open-mindedness and freeing the oppressed", so I guess that explains it.

A lot of the problems with Bush stem from the fact that he honestly seems to believe that everyone in the world is, deep down, functionally the same as a Connecticut WASP. That answers a lot of questions about him. It's also dangerously naive, especially in a POTUS. If he thought that about the Sunni in Sadr City, it's no surprise that he was consistently blindsided by the Democrats in America.

In some significant respects Bush was the most liberal President since Wilson. Maybe more so. Wilson at least seems to have been on board with the notion of different peoples living in their own nation states. Bush clearly reagrds that as a relic from the past.

John, the 14 points and league of nations? I agree that Bush was the most liberal/fascist leaning president. Socialism and Fascism are the same thing, if you are a slave to the people or the state your still a slave. I have some answers though.

1. War in the Middle East is big bussiness.

2. Read you patriot act buddy, liberation is not one of my concerns.

3. I did not feel the need to beg to the proles.

4. Firing Cheney is above my pay grade.

5. That move could be seen as a way of aproving of dissent. What we want is group think and witch hunts. Not a culture of free thinkers arguing their cause.

6. We let the proles think its a grand cause. Do you expect us to run army adds and talk about getting blown up by a IED on your first day?

7. We already got what we wanted.

8. Ask the people in Crawford: There were WMD's in Iraq.

9. E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy where unavailible to plumb the white house.

10. The Cia is great. Whisper ( you hear what they did to the last guy who crossed them?)

11. If there was no catastrophy then how do we expand FEMA. You see, by doing a bad job they got more funding and power. We utalized this opportunity to beta test gun compinscation.

12. I thoughy he was pandering to ignorant masses...just like me.

13. We leaders of both major parties are all rothschild agents anyhow so there was no need to for such a small organization as fannie or freddie to buy us off.

14. global warming is a complete scam. it works better in some instances than terrorism to instill fear and break down the barriers to global tyrrany. A global carbon tax, cap and trade, these are simple levels in the pyramid to world government. Plus, i'm a pagan so i do value earth worship. 322, Im out.

More question-begging questions for Bush: a) was it your own towering incompetence, or blankness of soul and intellect that allowed you to be manipulated by Cheney and Rumsfeld all those years? b) What does it feel like to have as the only meaningful question asked in your last miserable days in office be that of whether or not you were the worst president in history or just really bad? c) Looking back, was it smart to pack Justice with party hacks? d) When will you learn that your simplistic bifurcated born-again world view was hopelessly inadequate to the task at hand? e)Was it actually your plan to ruin government so as to prove some ideological point about the virtues of less government? f) Do you regret the terror-rhetoric and the legacy of the unitary executive you have left the country? g) Do you swell with pride at leaving a poison-pill of such scope so as to pre-ruin an Obama presidency?

Now I have a couple for Ren. a) How much has Al Quaeda been paying you to run down our country and attack our leaders? b) Are you as much of a homo as you sound?

despite the fact that bush is the worst president in history, one must give him credit for finally proving the old adage, ignorance is bliss.

Democrats also claimed that Abraham Lincoln was a fool for leading the fight against the Confederacy and slavery.

Here’s what the Allentown (Pa.) Democrat newspaper, a publication of Northern Democrats, said in early 1863, after Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation:

“It is a wicked, unconstitutional and, at the same time, ridiculous act which will draw down upon the President at once the condemnation and laughter of the world.”

“The glories of the past will become dimmed as the historian writes in future that thirty-three millions of white men lost their own liberties for the sake of four millions of negroes who asked no interference in their behalf.”

About 600,000 Americans, including 360,000 in the Union forces, died in the Civil War, which saved the union and produced the emancipation of 4 million slaves.

Lincoln’s most important cause was ridiculous to those who were willing to tolerate slavery forever. Bush’s liberation of 50 million people in Iraq and Afghanistan must appear equally ridiculous to those willing to tolerate endless repression.

Only problem with the Lincoln thing: the war was going on for years before emancipation. It was a very pragmatic move to keep the british from coming in to seperate the United States, something they had been wanting so they could play the two halfs off against one another.

Liberation is a just and noble cause. Is that why we are there? Do the planners own documents say that? Do they say its a good place to set up jumping off point for even more wars? In the history of the world has liberation from one's own government by outsiders ever worked? Are the men we send there angels? I don't blame them for not being that, they are facing a horrible reality. If Liberation is the end, what about China? We get along so well with them when their government has killed and enslaved 100 times what Saddam ever did. The run to use Lincoln seems like a hail mary pass. I just hope it is, that means the game is over and we can all wake up.

Hal Host: if alCIAda is paying ren then its your money and you should know about it. Terrorism is funded largely by Western Intelligence.

Brutus, you spend far too much time thinking of excuses to leave tyrants alone.

I once again agree with Brutus, while your questions are good warner it must be noted that 1) Lincoln and bush are not alike at all. 2) bush has tried hard at doing what he felt was right history will probably show this to be one of the largest experiments for seperation of powers theory as well As a host of predictions by the federalists. I saw a show on cspan recently that suggested bush was the worst president in history? Rove claimed that is bush is the worT hen Obama will be the second worse becuas he won't change bush policy. As the zen master says... Will see.

The Frank Warners out there are good at the Lincoln-y quotes. They know they can find one to justify any expansionist american action. We could have dropped thermo-nuclear weapons on Iraq and killed 5 million people, and the Frank Warners would have the Lincoln quote at the ready to 'justify' that such an act would appear as "nonsense to those willing to tolerate slavery forever." True Bush-think. We saw that card played too often in the build up to the war, painting any opposition as 'willing to tolerate endless oppression.' I guess Bush's failure to oust Mugabe or Shwe also equals toleration of endless oppression. To the old saying "Fighting oppression anywhere is to fight it everywhere" can be turned on its head to read: Opposing america's (selective) fighting oppression anywhere is to tolerate oppression everywhere!

Brutus, you spend far too much time thinking of excuses to leave tyrants alone.

Thats it? name calling? How many tyrants has the CIA displaced over the last 50 years? Its a large number, however, damndest thing is they ussually put another tyrant in his place. I don't support any tyrant. I don't believe all people want freedom, this has nothing to do with national, cultural, religious or racial concerns. Some would rather taddle and get their way than be free and have to live beside a neighbor doing something they dislike. I don't know what the majority of Iraqis want, but it is up to them to decide. A tyrant is a strange entity. One man above all others whose power is manifested by millions of minions who all seemingly have the power to simply snuff out his existence but choose not to out of fear of reprisal. Or is a tyrant a man who represents a large number of people's values who's power really comes from a shared ideology? Here is an interesting question: Why is it that so many learned people get drawn in by the promises of tyrants? Was Hitler really that much more radical than the intellectual class of his time? After all Eugenics and Racial hygine were all the rage back then and 26 states in this country passed forced sterilization laws targeting the feeble minded and other undisirables. If I really thought we were going to go after all tyrants and wage an armagedon of sorts I would support it no matter what the odds. No response as to why we do bussiness with China and attack Iraq? It seems to me that the difference is, at least on the surface, that Iraq was an unstable tyranny who attacked its neighbors and did not keep some of its people under control. A good tyrany is one where control is nearly absolute. The kind of place you could go see a massive specticle and think, hey mabye this just works for them. Its funny that so many dignitaries left Nazi Germany's olympics saying the same things that were recently said about China. This was not even the reasoning given to the public for the war at first anyhow. Why speak of good intentions when you can capitalize on fear. Why argue a point when you can call me friend of tyrants.

"Why argue a point when you call me a friend of tyrants."--good point Brutus, and that is also my general point to Ren, and perhaps explains a lot of this post. Asking a question of someone, like argueing a point with them, is in some sense asking a favor or showing them respect that you would care what the answer would be. I think Bush shied away from the media to an extent, but the media also shied away from asking hostile questions. In some sense I don't know how some questions can be asked without hostility, but maybe it would repay efforts to ask why we bother to ask questions in the first place. Without a doubt Bush knows things I do not.... I suppose I would ask him his opinion on destiny, the unforseen, hindsight and how much september 11th changed his planned course...but then again I might ask him if he knows of any good fishing spots.