In my last political posting, I suggested Bush was one of the worst Presidents in history. My reasoning was straight forward: no matter what your position on the war in Iraq, his handling of the planning up to war, the execution of the war itself, and the poor after-thought about the conflict's aftermath, make him a nominee for Lousy Prez.

So, many more conservative bloggers took me to task on the intelligence leading up to the war. "No," they write, "hind sight is 20/20, and it's easy to see the intelligence was wrong after the fact."

The problem is,from the beginning, Bush forced the intel to fit his agenda. It's not me who says this, it's a chorus of people from both the right and left. David Kay, former head of the Iraq Survey Group, couldn't believe the lack of intel on WMD's when he started looking for WMD's after the conflict began. And although he had no intel, was given a rag-tag group to look for WMDs, he still thought the wMDs probably existed. As he dug into the reports, he understood how everyone was duped.

The Bush Administration relied on Iraqi exhiles to support the WMD beliefs. Some of these folks hadn't been to Iraq since the first Gulf War. Their intel was more than 10 years old. One was later arrested for accepting money from SH himself, under the oil for food program. He had been a regular visitor at the White House.

A leader doesn't take facts and fit them to his agenda. A leader evaluates facts and reacts to the facts. A leader inspires others to come forward and voice their opinion, even when that opinion is different from theirs. A leader evaluates his team, and watches for power hungry people who can't run their department (read: Rumsfeld), a leader works with the minority and incorporates their concerns, where possible, into his agenda. A leader works within the Constitution. A leader unites and inspires.

Bush did none of these. (Though whether he stepped out of the bounds of the Constitution is open to debate). He took a "you're with us or you're against us" approach.

The uniter turned out to be the ultimate divider.