Jim Hightower

At last, the President has been greeted in Iraq by an outpouring of hugs, kisses, and rose petals – just as the Bushites predicted would happen when they invaded that country in 2003.

Unfortunately, though, it is not George W getting the love treatment from the Iraqis. It is President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran. O, bitter fate! O, the bile and gall of political irony! The very man whom Bush considers the devil incarnate, the one he accuses of promoting terrorism in Iraq – that man is being lauded by Iraq’s leaders, who were supposed to be grateful to Bush – not Iran.

Has Bush not sacrificed the lives of nearly 4,000 American troops to try to impose a Western-style democracy in Iraq? Has he not committed trillions of dollars from our public treasury to war and nation building in Iraq? Has he not sacrificed America’s good name and his own political standing in his hellbent effort to make Iraq a bulwark against Iranian dominance in the Mideast? Yes, yes and yes.

Yet, Ahmadinejad is the one getting hosannas from the very government that Bush put into power. Indeed, the Iranian is the only foreign leader to be given a full-dress state reception by the Iraqi government – including red-carpet treatment at the president’s palace. Contrast his loving reception to George W’s own furtive trips to Iraq, where he has to be rushed in under total secrecy and fearful security, then rushed out again before the people even know he's been there.

And while the Bushites frantically scramble to get even the weakest concessions from the Iraqi government that our troops are so valiantly defending, Iraq’s prime minister threw himself at Ahmadinejad, declaring: “There are no limits to the cooperation that we are going to open up with our neighbor Iran.”

So, all of America’s sacrifice in Iraq – comes down to a victory for Iran. Way to go George.