A recent report by the Chatham House–aka The Royal Institute of International Affairs–suggests that the quagmire the Bushies have created in Iraq has strengthened rather than weakened the Iranian leg of the so-called ‘axis of evil’ (see here).  Here are some noteworthy excerpts:

• "There is little doubt that Iran has been the chief beneficiary of the war on terror in the Middle East."
• "The United States, with coalition support, has eliminated two of Iran’s regional rival governments – the Taliban in Afghanistan in November 2001 and Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq in April 2003 – but has failed to replace either with coherent and stable political structures."
• "The US-driven agenda for confronting Iran is severely compromised by the confident ease with which Iran sits in its region."

It appears that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad–who is obviously smitten with our "freedom agenda"–owes our "war president" a thank-you card.  Ahmadinejad just needs to make sure he keeps it simple–everyone knows how poor Georgie has a hard time with big words and difficult concepts.  Perhaps the hardest concept of all for him to keep straight is "moral universalizability"–something he clearly never learned while cheer-leading at Yale. 

I suppose W should have spent less time doing cartwheels and learning secret handshakes with John Kerry and more time paying attention in political science, history, biology, English 101, and philosophy.  If he had, perhaps we would not be foolishly considering going to war with the very country we have strengthened by our already foolish war-mongering.