Bush Must Go by Bill Press Introduction?One year ago today, the time for excuse-making has come to an end.' George W. Bush, January 8, 2003In our great democracy, elections come and go. Some are more exciting than others. Some are more important than others. But make no mistake about this one. The presidential election of 2004 is the most important of our lifetime. Never before has there been such a dangerous man in the White House.

Never before has it been so vital, for the good of the Republic and everything we stand for as Americans, to oust an incumbent president from office.Before Tom DeLay lumps me among the ?Bush-haters,? I want to make one thing perfectly clear: I do not hate George W. Bush. It's nothing personal. I just think he's a sad, sorry excuse for a president. His policies have ruined the economy, pitted Americans against each other, destroyed the environment and made enemies around the world.Despite losing the 2000 popular vote to Al Gore, George Bush did not walk lightly into the Oval Office. His administration brought more than a change of presidents and cabinet secretaries.

He acted as if he had a mandate. Both at home and abroad, he has steered this nation in radical and dangerous new directions. He has betrayed our trust. He has adopted policies that are antithetical to our core national values.On the international scene, Bush promised a ?humble? foreign policy. Instead, he has delivered the most arrogant brand of foreign relations possible. He abandoned the idea of ?containment,? successfully followed for four decades by Republican and Democratic presidents alike--against such enemies as the Soviet Union, Communist China and Cuba--and replaced it with his new policy of ?first strike? or ?anticipatory self-defense?--the same argument used by the Japanese Empire to justify its strike on Pearl Harbor. Under the new Bush doctrine, the United States asserts the right to go anywhere, anytime and overthrow any government we think may someday pose a threat.

Iraq was Bush's first pre-emptive war. Today, over a year later, it is still a war in search of a reason. As it turns out, everything George Bush told the American people to justify going to war in Iraq was a lie. We've found no weapons of mass destruction, no nuclear weapons, no long-range missiles, no bomb-carrying drones, no connection to September 11, no links to Osama bin Laden and no imminent threat to the United States. None of Bush's reasons for unilaterally starting a war that has claimed over 500 American lives proved to be true. The war in Iraq--which has so far claimed over 600 American lives'was both unnecessary and unwise. Bush also reversed course on decades of international cooperation'much of it wisely championed by his father--on global issues. Flying the flag of neo-isolationism, Bush cancelled U.

S. participation in existing treaties on the law of the sea, biological weapons and missile defense, pulled the plug on a new treaty on global warming and thumbed his nose at the United Nations.As a result, respect for the United States and for our president has deteriorated around the world. Bush is ridiculed as the ?Toxic Texan.' Even among our allies, most people now regard America as an unfriendly and belligerent power. The United States could only round up two other countries, Great Britain and Australia, to join in the invasion of Iraq--and then on a very small scale.On the home front, Bush has wreaked even more havoc. He took the country's economy from A-OK to IOU, turning a projected, 10-year $5 billion surplus into a projected $5 billion deficit and, in the short term, replacing Bill Clinton's balanced budget with a 2004 budget deficit of $374 billion, the largest in history.

According to projections issued by the White House Budget Office in January 2004, Bush will set an all-time new deficit record of $520 billion in 2005. At the same.