The Iraqi who threw his shoe at George Bush delivered this speech on his release from prison in Baghdad Sept. 15.

In the name of God, the most gracious and most merciful. Here I am, free. But my country is still a prisoner of war.

As Laura and George Bush see their belongings removed for transport to Texas, most of the world, except Albania, is breathing a collective sigh of "it couldn't be sooner." By Missy Beattie

Eight years ago, George W. Bush invaded and occupied the office of the presidency. Soon, he exploited the events of 9/11, destroying Afghanistan and Iraq and blackmailing and threatening Pakistan, while ravaging the US, breaking our military, killing and maiming thousands of US troops, and slaughtering more than a million Afghan and Iraqi civilians. No Afghan or Iraqi wedding party has been safe from the US war machine's not-so-smart bombs.

"Things didn't go to plan, let's put it that way" 

President Bush gives his final Presidential press conference, January 12, 2009.

It also leads into a need to exaggerate the importance of the occasion - exemplified by John Howard being given a 119 room mansion, Blair House, for his one night stand (with his wife) in Washington. John and Tony are willing to endorse George W's conceit that there is nothing else more important happening in Washington this week just as they were willing to endorse whatever George's unelected regime wanted to do in Iraq and willing to have their soldiers handover prisoners for the Americans to torture.

George W is obviously still in intense denial of the vast mess of dire problems he is leaving for Obama, thinking it's funny to put as many big and little obstacles as possible in his way - one of the games between administrations is to leave as many boobytraps as they can hide in the offices. So why would Obama need a mansion to gather his team and prepare when, in Bush's mind a good president should do nothing but give contracts to his business buddies or money to big banks. Bush's done all that. These other plans Obama is working on are just ‘left wing' evil ideas that have no place in the West Wing and George, with Howard's help, will slow Obama down as much as he can.

There is a relentless internal consistency to Bush's anti-thinking blindness and with Blair and Howard's willingness to play along. With all the evidence against such self-delusion there must be a deep vanity and desperation in all three men, hoping for their version of reality to be written into the history books. They have already lost. The scale of their failure has submerged them and left them with an empty ritual - Medals of Vanity - only equaled by the Presidential Pardons for George's criminal buddies.

Meanwhile the person that has to clean up all of George's nasty, dangerous messes is told to go and find a hotel room, like John should have done. The legacy - vanity.