Waterboarding

That is a euphemism for a torture technique, employed by American forces in Iraq, to extract information from prisoners regarding possible terrorist attacks. President George W. Bush, writing in his memoirs, feels that the use of this technique is fully justified, as it prevented more terrorist outrages in the aftermath of 9/11.

Torture, Mr Bush, is never acceptable. You, as the former leader of the Land of the Free, should be the very last to condone such barbarity. The fact that the likes of Al Qa'eda see fit to descend to the depths of depravity in their acts does not justify you doing the same. Torture, Mr Bush, also elicits the responses the torturer wants to hear, which is not necessarily the truth. And your use of torture just lends power to the arguments of your political and military adversaries who say you are a barbarian, and gives them the justification for their actions.

Mr Bush was so blinkered by the fact that his daddy did not finish off Saddam Hussein in 1991 that he had, come hell or high water, finish it for him. Saddam Hussein was a clever dictator, who, seeing he was militarily hamstrung, got rid of his weapons of mass destruction, which he did possess. But they turned into a Weapon of Mass Delusion for George W. Bush. Everybody else joined in, including former British prime minister Tony Blair. Yes, they got rid of a monster, but they got landed with a Medusa instead, in the shape of Al Qa'eda. Not necessarily in Iraq, where they got booted out. But elsewhere, they certainly got plenty of followers on account of George Bush and his boundless stupidity.