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I was supportive of any move to eradicate Al Qaeda from the face of the earth, and a move into Afghanistan was a good start. (I personally would have preferred to turn the entire place into a lifeless cinderblock and then move on to Pakistan, but that's me.)

But one thing Dubya always said right at the outset made me feel very uneasy. He never called it a war against Islam. It was a "war on terror," which is the dumbest thing I have ever heard said. Emotions didn't murder our citizens; murderous, craven animals did. And they did it because their belief system demanded it be done.

Now, I don't know about you. But speaking for myself, when a mob of depraved ragheads makes it very clear that they want to kill my family and me because islam decrees it, then my first instinct is not to declare war on an emotion. No; my first instinct is to pick up anything not nailed down and whatever I can pry up, and to declare war on those depraved ragheads, with the unwavering purpose of killing them all and utterly destroying the belief system that breeds them.

But given everything that Dubya said and did- including some very public ass-kissing of terrorist-sponsor nations (in the middle of a freakin' war!)- I think Iraq had nothing to do with the overall prosecution of the war. It didn't make any sense to shift our focus from the cradle of Al Qaeda to a relatively stable region. The timing was off. It did not fit into any 'continuum' of the prosecution of the larger war.

It is like deciding, right as the Normandy invasion is gaining momentum, to funnel off a ton of resources to invade Turkey. Iraq was a historic "wait- what...? moment.

Yes, Saddam and his psychopathic offspring were worthy of being offed. But as evil as they were, subsequent events would prove that Saddam's regime was keeping an even worse evil at bay.

In hindsight, while I don't think Dubya lied about the WMDs, I am also firmly convinced that Dubya really didn't care whether or not the WMDs existed. For the purposes of whatever agenda he was serving, it was as good a pretext as any for going in, and that is all.

I am all the more firmly convinced of this due to Dubya's refusal to vindicate before the world our commitment of blood and treasure to a war in Iraq by relentlessly hunting down, locating, and broadcasting said location of the WMDs. I'll leave his true motives up for others to speculate, but I'm damned sure that it wasn't really about the WMDs.

Now, on the home front- couple Dubya's double-minded prosecution of a 'war on terror' with his open betrayal of the people who worked heart and soul for his 2004 re-election during his second term, and his promotion of a new federal agency that ultimately and solely exists to squelch dissenting American voices against a monstrous federal tyranny.

So let's talk about Dubya's legacy- what it is and what it is not.

Dubya's greatest legacy is not his leadership after the worst attack ever on American soil. Rather, it is the creation of a violative, invasive, anti-citizen, and openly-menacing agency whose sole purpose is to intimidate and silence anyone who speaks out against governmental tyranny. This is coupled with his act of kicking away the stops on a relatively stable Middle East and allowing it to slide into a hell of chaos and genocide.

Thanks a lot, Dubya. I wouldn't hoist a beer with ya, but I'd gladly punch yer ever-lovin' lights out for what you did to American citizens, and for paving the road for the SOB we've been stuck with since 2008.