Guantanamo Bay has only just begun to haunt the United States

The 70% of Americans who have gifted President W Bush with the highest disapproval ratings of any US president in polled history (going back to 1930), including higher than Richard M. Nixon immediately prior to his resignation, tend to focus on the invasion of Iraq as their greatest point of regret.

It is my view that decisions on the periphery of the invasion are far more damaging to the United States, decisions by this administration that deprived America of its 200 year earned moral status. It is the recussitation of America's efforts to be a good nation that is most fully required of the current president's successor.

clipped from www.nytimes.com

Pentagon Drops Post in Pakistan for Top General

WASHINGTON — When the Pentagon announced in March that Maj. Gen. Jay W. Hood would become the senior American officer based in Pakistan, it reflected the military’s aim to put a crisis-tested veteran in a critical job at a pivotal time in the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

But nearly two months later, the military has quietly canceled the assignment of General Hood, a 33-year Army veteran who was excoriated in the Pakistani news media for one of his previous jobs: commander of the United States prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The decision to withdraw General Hood’s assignment has not been announced, but it appears to reflect the widening shadow that the military prison at Guantánamo is casting over American foreign policy.