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# Posted 2:15 AM by Ariel David Adesnik

HELP ME! I'M TRYING VERY HARD TO CRITICIZE THE PRESIDENT! In a column entitled "Reality Check for the Neo-Wilsonians", David Ignatius reports the following:

Bush's idealism astonishes even [Georgian President Mikheil] Saakashvili. The Georgian leader recalls a meeting at the White House last year in which he tried to engage Bush by telling him of Georgia's strategic importance because of its proximity to Caspian Sea oil. The president didn't seem interested. It was only when Saakashvili began talking about freedom and liberty, he says, that Bush got excited.

Saakashvili also praises Bush for resisting the normal pragmatic trade-offs. He remembers urging Bush to back another peaceful revolution in the former Soviet Union by supporting demands for a rerun of the fraudulent Ukrainian election. But he expected that Bush would cave when Ukraine's then-president, Leonid Kuchma, threatened to withdraw his country's troops from Iraq. After all, America badly needed the few allies it had in the Iraq coalition. But Bush didn't let his pragmatic need for Ukrainian troops temper his support for Ukrainian democracy.

Say it ain't so! A Texas prospector not interested in oil? A refusal to compromise with dictators for the sake of military expediency? Who the hell does Bush think he is, Jimmy Carter? (Actually, Carter was pretty good at compromising with dictators for the sake of military expediency. Think Chun Do Hwan and Ferdinand Marcos)

For some more effective criticism of the President, try Anne Applebaum, who wants to know what Bush is doing about reports of Iraqi security personnel abusing Iraqi prisoners, a la Abu Ghraib.

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