With the bodies piling up in several different cities in Iraq, one begins to realize that George W. Bush never had any understanding of what it might have taken to successfully stabilize that country. No wonder. Neither he nor his vice president has ever faced anything more threatening to their livelihoods than a mosquito bite. His Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, never served in the military, or even wanted to, and his only experience in Iraq has been as a Big Oil businessman. Bush's National Security Advisor, Condi Rice, had an oil tanker named after her, but that's about it.

The president's approval ratings have taken a sharp turn downward, as they bloody well should, with the news that keeps pouring in from the occupied territories. Even now, Bush cannot fathom the mess into which he has embroiled the United States. As the fighting rages and young men die, he's off at the ranch in good old Crawford, Texas. Something tells me there won't be any Easter Sunday photo ops with the troops overseas, a la his Thanksgiving stunt last November.

The most overt signs of administrative ineptitude come from the White House itself. Official mouthpiece Scott McClellan states the president's privileged view of war in a way that certifies American dissatisfaction better than any liberal editorial could manage: "The president mourns the life of each of the fallen. We are forever grateful to those who are serving and sacrificing."

That's funny; most people who are in mourning will attend the funerals of those to whom they are forever grateful. Bush hasn't bothered to do that, although he has had well over 600 fresh opportunities in the last year plus three weeks. Comprehension of grief is really asking a bit much of our silver-spoon president - he doesn't even know why our troops are being killed on his watch, so why would he care? The latest wave of violence, McClellan tiredly explains, can be attributed to "thugs, terrorists and Saddam loyalists" who want to see the U.S. fail in Iraq.

That's being less than naïve. Such a view is ignorant, so we can all expect Bush to wear a blissful expression on his face in his upcoming bid for re-election, which is all that occupies the vacuum of his mind at this moment. The fact is that our mismanagement of Iraq has created an alliance among Sunnis and Shiites that would have been impossible to forge under Saddam Hussein's regime. The problem is that we wanted to unite them in pursuit of "democracy". Instead, they are finding common cause in an attempt to rid their country of those who have occupied it for a year now.

But don't tell George. In El Dorado, Arkansas, at yet another fund-raiser, he did a little bit of his legendary speechifyin'. "We've got tough work there because, you see, there are terrorists there who would rather kill innocent people than allow for the advance of freedom," Bush said. "That's what you're seeing going on. These people hate freedom. And we love freedom. And that's where the clash occurs."

Ah, yes, freedom. Americans do love that. We've been spoiled, perhaps, by our liberty. We've never known what it feels like to wait in line at a checkpoint just to get in or out of the towns in which we live. We've never had to deal with a band of armed soldiers kicking in our doors and ordering our families to huddle in one room, being told to not ask any questions of those soldiers unless our hands were raised high above our heads. These are the conditions of "freedom" that one man has imposed upon the 25 million inhabitants of Iraq. And we wonder why they hate it.

As these events continue to unfold at a newsworthy rate, expect Bush's approval ratings to further plummet. When folks like me spent all that time and energy opposing the war before it started, we were assailed as "appeasers" and such. We were told that we had to stop Saddam before he did something that would get Americans killed.

Well, we stopped Saddam all right, but now that turns out to be the something that is getting Americans killed, and we would do well for ourselves at this point to stop Bush before he further runs up that morbid tally. The truth is that if we had never invaded and occupied Iraq, not one drop of American blood would have been spilled in that land. And Saddam would be no more of a threat today than he had been since the first Gulf War, surrounded as he was by moderate Arab states that boast impressive arsenals of military equipment, stamped "Made in the U.S.A.".

Since George W. Bush isn't exactly the most forthcoming president in our illustrious history, we may never know what motivated him to propel us into this quagmire. And the families of those lost in combat will never know what this president's face looks like when he is in "mourning".