"On the other hand, lame ducks seldom start new wars because doing so would create a dark chapter in the history of their Presidentdom (if that word doesn’t exist in the American language, then keep it)."

Never underestimate the the power of the isolation bubble that President Bush keeps himself in.

Besides, it doesn't even need to be the US that starts it, Israel could easily start it now, while they have a friendly cowboy in the US presidency and the US will probably back them up. And voila, we're in a yet another war, destabilizing the Middle East even more. Maybe we'll even shoot for regime change again, that worked so well in Iraq.

Dear Miklos Vamos:

For your information, I am NOT a "lame duck." I am THE DECIDER, and I will decide what I am going to do with Iran when I get good and ready, which will be well before January 20, in the year of our Lord and all the other Lords, 2009. Like, who are you to "fall into" the marble-losing group? I could make the argument that I am far more marble-losing than you, for I have lost around Four Trillion American Tax-payers' Hard-earned Marbles in seven years. Top that!

Unfortunately, Mr. George W. Bush knows very little of libraries beyond children's books. And his advisors have been laboring decades to act out their dreams of massive-advanced-weapons political philosophy. Bush is convinced that his legacy will be that he was the one man brave enough and tough enough to pull the trigger and topple the evil regimes for ever and ever.

100% he's already conducting covert, military and provocative attacks against Iran (against the advice of his military and military intelligence.)
70/30 he'll attack or support an attack (probably aerial bombing but maybe ground troops too)before the inauguration, especially if it could help a McCain candidacy prior to the election.
100% there'll be an expansion of the war into Iran if McCain wins.

ZZIM, I don't understand what you are trying to achieve with your post.

During his term, the President has an unassailable right to classify documents, especially during, for example, a war or a national catastrophe (i.e. 9-11). Granted, Mr. Bush has had to deal with both of these scenarios.

Nonetheless, Mr. Bush has not only taken his personal liberty in classifying many documents that do not concern either of these issues, but has also classified many documents that would have otherwise elucidated the public's and more importantly, his peers' in Washington understanding of what actually happened in the run up to said catastrophe or war. I do not respect Mr. Bush's authority to maintain such documents classified.

Classifying documents for the security reasons is one thing, classifying documents to enshroud a lie is another. Whether the president himself lied is not for me to decide, but, regardless, important facts were hidden from the public and Congress in an attempt to expedite the start of the war.

Henceforth, I believe most of the internal discussions between a President and his advisors should be made public after his presidency, save any immediate national security concerns that carry over to the next president.

It is also the president's obligation to unclassify documents from previous administrations. Mr. Bush has failed to move forward on those grounds as well.

Also, to be fair and respond to several of your misleading assumptions, I do not hate George W. Bush. I dislike many of his policies, but, then again, I am not the only one in that camp. And I am not part of the "Left Wing Attack Machine," I am a college student.

Thank you.

Wow Becquer, you've given this a lot of thought. I gather from your tone that you believe that the internal discussions of Presidents and their advisors should be public documentation. However, it seems to me that you also do not like GWB. And I gather the general impression that you oppose his policies.

So - you have vast knowledge regarding how many documents are being kept from you, you hate him (admit it you do), and you oppose his policies. You don't sound like the sort of person he would want to know his secrets. Going out on a limb here, one might even say you probably work for the "Left Wing Attack Machine".

Being a failure is frustrating isn't it? If that's a secret, you're not hiding it very well.

Why?

Oh and Miklos, I really don't like you very much but at least you're witty. I appreciate that.

Regarding a Bush presidential library:

President George W. Bush does not deserve a presidential library. But we should nevertheless give him one.

For the first time back in March, he spoke in some—but not much—detail about his plans for erecting a library at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas—Laura Bush’s alma mater—that would bear his name on its façade.

“We just announced the deal, and I, frankly, have been focused elsewhere, like on gasoline prices and, you know, my trip to Africa, and haven’t seen the fundraising strategy yet,” Bush said during a humdrum White House press conference we don’t even hear about on the six o’clock news anymore. Like I said, he didn’t give us much.

Though Bush does not, by any means, deserve to have his name attributed to a library that is paid for and maintained, in part, by our tax dollars, he owes the American people a degree of transparency that he did not provide during his presidency.

Unlike conventional municipal libraries, presidential libraries are repositories for all preserved presidential records of a particular president. And luckily for the American public, President Bush, according to the Presidential Records Act of 1978, must preserve and hand over all of his presidential documents at the end of his term for the public to openly view at their own leisure.

Ironically, in 2001, before his reckless abuse of executive power in getting us into the illegitimate foray that is the Iraq War, Bush issued an executive order to include in the Presidential Records Act the records of Vice Presidents. Thus, next year we will we get a 2-for-1 special on the disclosure of currently censured documents. Boy, doesn’t that just make you want to lick your attack-ready intellectual lips.

It is no secret that the Bush administration has been one of the most secretive administrations of the last 30 years. But what is a secret is why all the hijinks that have led to domestic eavesdropping and extraordinary rendition, among others, are being kept so tightly under wraps within the four walls of the White House.

Since the Reagan administration’s “when in doubt, classify” policy that led to the classification of roughly 15 million documents in 1985, only the Bush administration has come close to classifying that volume of documents. Not only did they come close, but in 2004 they matched and in 2006 they passed the 15 million mark and classified 20.6 million documents.

At the same time, they declassified only 37.6 million pages of documents. To provide some perspective, at the midpoint of the Clinton administration, some five million documents were classified and some 204 million pages of documents declassified. And the Clinton administration only briefly exceeded the 10-million-documents-classified mark during one year whereas the Bush administration has only not met the 10-million-documents-classified mark during one year.

Even his father came nowhere near to the degree of secrecy that he has. During Bush senior’s lone term, he classified an average of seven million documents per year and declassified an average of roughly 12 million pages of documents per year: a wholly appropriate amount by anyone’s standards, partisan or nonpartisan.

Come 2009, because of the predicted advent of a George W. Bush’s presidential library and the inauguration of a presidential administration that will probably churn out unclassified documents by the millions in order to reverse the over-classification trajectory we are following, we might find out why Bush was so secretive about what went on inside his White House.

There is but one problem, however, in the step between building a Bush Jr. Library and revealing the many secrets his documents have to offer. As opposed to all of the previously built presidential libraries leading back to Hoover’s, Bush’s library, so far as we know, will not be operated by the government-run National Archives and Records Administration but by a private consortium of investors unimaginatively called the George W. Bush Presidential Library Foundation. Thus, as S.M.U. correctly points out in a letter of concern, the library could either become “a neutral space for unbiased academic research conducted by scholars or a conservative think tank and policy institute that engages in legacy polishing and grooms young conservatives for public office.” We will see whether this becomes another of Bush’s many secrets.

We will probably unveil these secrets assuming that we do not pick John McCain in November, who along with Arlene Specter and Lindsay Graham passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 which authorizes military tribunals. It is one of the most devastating (and borderline unconstitutional) recent documents to undoing Bush’s over-classification mess. If he were to become president, we can only expect McCain to follow his authoritative martial psyche.

I hope that I’m wrong about McCain and that I’m right about Barack Obama. But moreover, I hope that the American people understand that opposing the building of a library for one of our worst presidents in history may, in fact, do much, much more harm than good.

Regarding the presidential library:

President George W. Bush does not deserve a presidential library. But we should nevertheless give him one.

For the first time back in March, he spoke in some—but not much—detail about his plans for erecting a library at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas—Laura Bush’s alma mater—that would bear his name on its façade.

“We just announced the deal, and I, frankly, have been focused elsewhere, like on gasoline prices and, you know, my trip to Africa, and haven’t seen the fundraising strategy yet,” Bush said during a humdrum White House press conference we don’t even hear about on the six o’clock news anymore. Like I said, he didn’t give us much.

Though Bush does not, by any means, deserve to have his name attributed to a library that is paid for and maintained, in part, by our tax dollars, he owes the American people a degree of transparency that he did not provide during his presidency.

Unlike conventional municipal libraries, presidential libraries are repositories for all preserved presidential records of a particular president. And luckily for the American public, President Bush, according to the Presidential Records Act of 1978, must preserve and hand over all of his presidential documents at the end of his term for the public to openly view at their own leisure.

Ironically, in 2001, before his reckless abuse of executive power in getting us into the illegitimate foray that is the Iraq War, Bush issued an executive order to include in the Presidential Records Act the records of Vice Presidents. Thus, next year we will we get a 2-for-1 special on the disclosure of currently censured documents. Boy, doesn’t that just make you want to lick your attack-ready intellectual lips.

It is no secret that the Bush administration has been one of the most secretive administrations of the last 30 years. But what is a secret is why all the hijinks that have led to domestic eavesdropping and extraordinary rendition, among others, are being kept so tightly under wraps within the four walls of the White House.

Since the Reagan administration’s “when in doubt, classify” policy that led to the classification of roughly 15 million documents in 1985, only the Bush administration has come close to classifying that volume of documents. Not only did they come close, but in 2004 they matched and in 2006 they passed the 15 million mark and classified 20.6 million documents.

At the same time, they declassified only 37.6 million pages of documents. To provide some perspective, at the midpoint of the Clinton administration, some five million documents were classified and some 204 million pages of documents declassified. And the Clinton administration only briefly exceeded the 10-million-documents-classified mark during one year whereas the Bush administration has only not met the 10-million-documents-classified mark during one year.

Even his father came nowhere near to the degree of secrecy that he has. During Bush senior’s lone term, he classified an average of seven million documents per year and declassified an average of roughly 12 million pages of documents per year: a wholly appropriate amount by anyone’s standards, partisan or nonpartisan.

Come 2009, because of the predicted advent of a George W. Bush’s presidential library and the inauguration of a presidential administration that will probably churn out unclassified documents by the millions in order to reverse the over-classification trajectory we are following, we might find out why Bush was so secretive about what went on inside his White House.

There is but one problem, however, in the step between building a Bush Jr. Library and revealing the many secrets his documents have to offer. As opposed to all of the previously built presidential libraries leading back to Hoover’s, Bush’s library, so far as we know, will not be operated by the government-run National Archives and Records Administration but by a private consortium of investors unimaginatively called the George W. Bush Presidential Library Foundation. Thus, as S.M.U. correctly points out in a letter of concern, the library could either become “a neutral space for unbiased academic research conducted by scholars or a conservative think tank and policy institute that engages in legacy polishing and grooms young conservatives for public office.” We will see whether this becomes another of Bush’s many secrets.

We will probably unveil these secrets assuming that we do not pick John McCain in November, who along with Arlene Specter and Lindsay Graham passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 - the act that authorizes military tribunals. It is one of the most devastating (and borderline unconstitutional) recent documents to undoing Bush’s over-classification mess. If he were to become president, we can only expect McCain to follow his authoritative martial psyche.

I hope that I’m wrong about McCain and that I’m right about Barack Obama. But moreover, I hope that the American people understand that opposing the building of a library for one of our worst presidents in history may, in fact, do much, much more harm than good.

Bush's library will be characterised by the absence of books so why bother?

Bush does not clutter his empty mind with intellectual thoughts. His agenda comes from an unquestioning drive - much like a moth is attracted by a light.

As usual, America needs some bogey to hate. Its paranoia does not allow it to stop to think that its own mindset is dangerous. That is why Americans believe so readily that Iran is dangerous. Just remember that the US seeks to destabilise and invade other nations on a regular basis and yet it calls Iran dangerous.

The US financed Iraq (Saddam Hussein) and encouraged him to invade Iran. This war resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands. It was the US that gave Saddam the technology to wage biological warfare.

Why is it that the US cannot see that it is dangerous.

Maybe Congress should put the US on the world's list of terrorists and insist that it belongs to the Axis of Evil.

If you Americans think that my thoughts are crazy just ask yourselves how many nations you have invaded since WWII and then ask yourselves how the US has used its resources and dirty tricks to overthrow legitimately elected governments in South America.

Of course, if you don't think about your actions and their consequences I suppose you wont get past the idea of chanting: Let's invade/bomb Iran because it is justified.

Only Americans are so pathetically shallow to be unconcerned about the consequences of an invasion and the instabiility that will follow.

Remember this. If you invade Iran then oil prices will go through the roof and you will end up in a recession. If justice and fairness and the weakness of your silly thoughts does not impress you then you will end up poor and on the street. Of course, you might just try to spend your way out of the Depression by starting a really big war. Let us call it WWIII.