London's Independent summarises the last eight years in 400 memorable words from the George Bush presidency
Hanging chads; brother Jeb and Florida; Dick and Donald and Condi; Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice; "Yo Blair!"; lethal pretzels; Pootie-Poot; misunderestimated; reading to children with books held upside down; Karl Rove; bumping chests with marines; no to Kyoto; Congressional Medals of Honour for British Prime Ministers that are
never collected; Hurricane Katrina ("Heck of a job, Brownie!"); Axis of Evil; "Stuff happens"; the ranch in Crawford, Texas; faith-based initiatives; stemming stem-cell research; Mark Foley; "I'm the decider"; foot-tapping Larry Craig; Swiftboat Veterans for Truth; Halliburton; Coalition of the Willing; "A cake walk"; the internets; "I'm the comman-der guy"; "Greeted as liberators"; Freedom Fries; America loathed worldwide; reporters with flag pins but no scepticism; nucular; Green Zone; troop surge; Fallujah; air strikes at wedding parties; Private Jessica Lynch; "known unknowns and unknown unknowns"; Patriot Act; Texas Air National Guard (possibly); neocons, theocons, and all the other bloody cons; Paul Bremer; Johns Ashcroft and Bolton; waterboarding; "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."; Tom DeLay; Guantanamo Bay; Scott McClellan; Lynndie England; tax cuts for those who have so much they can't even count it; Jack Abramoff and a thousand points of lobbying; sub-prime; "Rarely is the questioned asked: is our children learning?"; rendition flights; friendly fire; Operation Enduring Freedom; Operation Iron Fist; Operation Red Dawn; Pretzelgate, Plamegate, Memogate, Troopergate, Iraqgate, backgate, gardengate and every other bloody gate; shock and awe; sorryeverybody.com, where Americans apologised for their President; Scooter Libby; "I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family"; opening up national parks to logging; 466 days at the ranch rather than the White House; using the Homeland Security Department to investigate union organisers; sending 4,192 troops to die in a war fought for a lie; "No disregard for human life"; weapons of mass destruction; Abu Ghraib; bank bailouts; "We cannot let terrorists and rogue nations hold this nation hostile or hold our allies hostile"; Enron, below, and "Kenny Boy" Lay; compassionate conservatism; yellow ribbons on trees; coffins with flags; Sarah Palin; moose-shooting hockey moms in $150,000 spend-ups; "mission accomplished"; the Rev Jeremiah Wright; a pit bull with lipstick; "You can see Russia from my house!"; Todd, Track, Trig, and all the crazy gang of the Palin family; regime change; and "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter".
- INDEPENDENT
