Freedom marching to a different drummer

President Bush, according to Newsweek and other sources, plans to save his legacy with a shiny new slogan: 'The New Way Forward,' his latest plan to salvage the mission in Iraq. Expect to see the new way forward rolled out next week, right after Bush reads all the other other Iraq War reports.

If it's possible for a nation to collectively cringe, then it will happen next week when Bush looks into the camera, resists his frat boy smirk, and tells us one more time that we need to be more scared of al Qaeda that we are of the addle-pated dauphin in the Oval Office. And then he will substitute language for policy, and hope nobody notices.

Of course, that's been the problem during this entire fiasco – the substitution of rhetoric for policy – the belief, even at this late date, that reality can be changed simply by changing the language used to describe it. Bush makes a big show of his religious faith, but what's truly impressive is his incredible faith in the power of PR, and, accordingly, his lack of faith in the American people.

Reality got a big boost last week from the Iraq Study Group report, that 150-page term paper from the adults in President Bush's life. From his vantage point at the children's table, Dubya probably feels like my golden retriever when I give her a bath.

Much ink has been spilled probing Dubya's personality, from his spoiled WASP upbringing, his need to upstage an accomplished father, and his alcohol-fueled co-dependency on others to do the heavy lifting. But not every blue blood turns into a sadistic little prick, and a man Dubya's age should have made peace with the Daddy issues by now. So that leaves John Barleycorn as the most likely culprit for America's impending decline and fall.

So forget "New Way Forward", "Merge Right on Freedom Highway" or whatever Rove comes up with next. If we can't rely on the President to lead us through these awful times, then we'll just have to rely on ourselves. What Americans really need is a 12-step program to free us from from the Neo-Con agenda. Just substitute "George Bush" for "alcohol", and we have our plan.

Step One: We admitted we were powerless over George Bush - that our nation's life had become unmanageable.

Step Two: Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity - constitutional democracy and respect for the rule of law.

Step Three: Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of the Constitution as interpreted by the judicial branch of government over the past 230 years.

Step Four: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of our leadership.

Step Five: Hold our free press accountable for exposing the exact nature of our leadership's wrongs.

Step Six: Were entirely ready to have Congress investigate and remedy the Bush Administration's defects of character.

Step Seven: Humbly asked Congress to remove Bush from power.

Step Eight: Made a list of all persons Bush has harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

Step Nine: Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

Step Ten: Continued to take personal inventory of whatever party is in power, and when they are wrong, send the bastards packing.

Step Eleven: Sought though science and reason to improve our society, to respect the rights of others, and grant power only to those with the willingness to carry that out.

Step Twelve: Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to neo-conservatives, greed-heads, and other political extremists to practice these principles in all our affairs.