Letter: Bush lacks credibility with public, troops

Saturday, Feb. 17, 2007 | 7:16 a.m.

The Gulf Coast remains in shambles, his "War on Poverty" is going as well as his war in Iraq, health care cost increases are rampant, and more and more information comes to light that he and Darth Cheney engineered the Iraq debacle. The list of failures goes on and on.

Why won't George W. Bush just sit back and keep quiet for the next two years? Who's going to believe that Iran is an imminent threat to the United States if it's coming from him? His own aides have to debunk or tone down his rhetoric on a regular basis.

The president likes to imply that the current debate over how to proceed in Iraq emboldens the enemy and demoralizes the troops. Doesn't he remember how democracy works? I'll bet the troops' morale would increase greatly if they knew what their mission was, or that their commander in chief would stop extending their tours of duty just before they're due to come home.

Why should we believe a president who hired a defense secretary who thought it was a good idea to shrink the army while planning to start a war? What confidence can be extended to a president who promised that anyone in his administration who leaked information would be fired, and now won't even discuss why prominent aides who did leak information - at the direction of the vice president - suffer no consequences, not even a scolding?

As I write this letter there are 704 days, one hour, one minute, and 10 seconds remaining of this "unbelievable" administration. But who's counting?

Phil Ventura, Las Vegas