Never in the history of television - or the presidency, for that matter! - has a White House occupant made more of a show of doing nothing than George the Idiot Prince. Unless of course, you count Socks or Buddy.

The war in Iraq, which has trashed an entire country and ruined thousands of lives while failing to turn up a single believable piece of WMD evidence has been a rotten bust and everyone knows it. The Iraqis know it. The Brits know it. The Aussies know it. The Americans who have not had their heads fattened on a steady diet of rightwing talk radio junk know it. Hell, even the 200 Poles who were loaned to the cause know it! So what is the G. W. Bush answer to this clear disaster? Will he take a page from his hero Richard Nixon, admit he has made a miserable mess of the presidency and step down to spare the nation the pain of an impeachment trial? Har har. Not the Idiot Prince.

As his solution, he plans to take a page each from P. T. Barnum, Phillip Morris and Saddam Hussein himself. From Barnum, we will get a three-ring PR circus to rival anything under the Big Top. From Phillip Morris, we will get a scripted touchy-feely show of doing something meaningful (I'm sure you've seen at least one of those ads exhorting teens not to smoke) while continuing to cash in on death and suffering to the max From Saddam Hussein, we will get a rousing show of strutting before the troops, who all appear to be wildly supportive (it wouldn't surprise me if G.W. fired off a shotgun from his shoulder just like Saddam on that endlessly run clip, or ordered any non-cheering dissenter to be keel-hauled).

So, rolled all together, here's what the world will be treated to tonight: Bush will fly across the Pacific today in a cool Navy jet wearing a cool helmet, and make a cool tailhook landing on a Navy carrier that just happens to be named the USS Abraham Lincoln. Get it? Lincoln...as in the Great Emancipator? As in the "Great Liberator" ? To get the name and to avoid any real danger himself, Bush won't be going anywhere near the Persian Gulf. Instead, his audience will be homeward bound captives aboard a floating stage surrounded by thousands of miles of Pacific Ocean! In classic "commandant" style, Bush will strut up and down the decks reviewing the troops saying things like "I'm proud of ya..."(like he has claim to any credit for their performance!) or (if unchecked by his handlers) "Wow, so you got to bomb some Iraqis. Cool!"

Then in a special flag drenched podium painstakingly designed and set up for this "spontaneous event", he will deliver a truly meaningless speech just as everyone in America is settling down to watch CSI. There's no coincidence here - having lost out in ratings last week to a dog in a tutu performing on America's Funniest Home Videos" the night his interview with Tom "the GOP's Shoeshine Boy" Brokaw aired, Bush wanted to target the slot occupied by the most popular show on TV. (Did he really think no one would notice that he was not Gil Grissom?). I bet the Nielson folks plan to take a ratings reading in the first 30 seconds of the 9:00 slot - those 30 seconds before a dismayed public figures out that CSI has been hijacked and retreats to MTV or a good game of Tomb Raider. That way, it will LOOK as if the "G.W Bush Live with Lincoln!!" show had 'em riveted to their armchairs by the tens of millions. As if.

The whole point of this performance is, besides giving Bush a chance to dress up like a real commander-in-chief and prance about amongst real soldiers unable to make a peep of dissent, is to announce that the war in Iraq is not really over. Huh? Yep, that's it. "Major combat" is over, he will announce. But not the war (despite what the Bush mouthpieces such as AOL are falsely - and intentionally - trumpeting today as lead stories).

So, what exactly does this mean? It means that shooting kids at elementary schools is still cool. But bombing stuff is now out. Terrorizing civilians, confiscating records that might have damning info on Bush and pals for "indefinite safekeeping," and hunting down and arresting anyone you feel like hunting down and arresting is OK. Releasing POWs so they can get a decent meal and see their families is not. What's even niftier for the corporazis under this "war but not really war" scam is that they can start "reconstruction" without having to adhere to any of the rules the US insists the rest of the world adheres to in a post-war landscape. This means they don't have to pay workers or get Iraqi input into reviving the oil industry. Halliburton (er, Kellogg, Brown and Root), Bechtel, et al. can set commerical operations in motion precisely to their own specifications and in their own good time. This means there is no real Iraqi government, which means that Iraqi government workers, though pressed into service to clean up the mess the US has left, don't have to get paid - at least not really. After being pressured by angry IRaqis, the interim government of Jay Garner and Baghdad Mayor Barbara Bodine (that IS her role, though they hastily slapped another title on the door as soon as too many questions about Bodine's past were asked) handed several hundred overworked Iraqi government officials each a $20-dollar bill, no doubt accompanied by a lecture on not spending it all in one place.

How does Bush think he can get away with such a spectacularly shallow and totally meaningless gesture? Because Bush, being an idiot, thinks everyone else on Earth is also an Idiot. In fact, instead of "you are with us or against us," his slogan should be "You are either an idiot or not an idiot." It works out to the same thing.