The strange, sad death of the American way:

"Would Americans ordinarily tolerate a president who lies and exaggerates? A leader who uses fear to manipulate his people to his own ends? A president whose staff blow the deep cover of a CIA agent as political payback? A president whose Administration channels billions of dollars to crony corporations on false pretexts? A president who deems torture acceptable?
Would they accept a president who seems to agree with his advisers that he is above the law?

The commentator William Rivers Pitt poses them all before concluding: 'The time has come, bluntly, to get over September 11; to move beyond it; to extract ourselves from this bunker mentality which blinds us while placing us in moral peril. It happened and it will never be forgotten, but we have reached a place where fear and obeisance can no longer be tolerated.'

... In less than two weeks the US-led occupation of Iraq gives way to the saddest little "sovereign" government the world has seen in a while.

Its legitimacy is in doubt and, therefore its viability, as much because of the false-pretence by Washington, London and Canberra to justify war as by Iraqi suspicion of the democratic fundamentals of interim government by appointment, by the continued occupation of their country and by a firm foreign grip on their treasury purse-strings.

And while some will dismiss all of that, arguing that time will tell, the greater reality on the ground in Iraq is that the chaos and death from a mismanaged foreign occupation is a product of all the lies."