The lunatics are now in charge of the asylum." So wrote the normally staid Financial Times, traditionally the voice of solid British business opinion, when surveying last week's tax bill. Indeed, the legislation is doubly absurd: the gimmicks used to make an $800-billion-plus tax cut carry an official price tag of only $320 billion are a joke, yet the cost without the gimmicks is so large that the nation can't possibly afford it while keeping its other promises.

But then maybe that's the point. The Financial Times suggests that "more extreme Republicans" actually want a fiscal train wreck: "Proposing to slash federal spending, particularly on social programs, is a tricky electoral proposition, but a fiscal crisis offers the tantalizing prospect of forcing such cuts through the back door."

Good for The Financial Times. It seems that stating the obvious has now, finally, become respectable.

It's no secret that right-wing ideologues want to abolish programs Americans take for granted. But not long ago, to suggest that the Bush administration's policies might actually be driven by those ideologues — that the administration was deliberately setting the country up for a fiscal crisis in which popular social programs could be sharply cut — was to be accused of spouting conspiracy theories.

Yet by pushing through another huge tax cut in the face of record deficits, the administration clearly demonstrates either that it is completely feckless, or that it actually wants a fiscal crisis. (Or maybe both.)

Independent human rights groups estimate that there are more than 600 politically motivated arrests a year in Uzbekistan, and 6,500 political prisoners, some tortured to death. According to a forensic report commissioned by the British embassy, in August two prisoners were even boiled to death.

The US condemned this repression for many years. But since September 11 rewrote America's strategic interests in central Asia, the government of President Islam Karimov has become Washington's new best friend in the region.

The US is funding those it once condemned. Last year Washington gave Uzbekistan $500m (£300m) in aid. The police and intelligence services - which the state department's website says use "torture as a routine investigation technique" received $79m of this sum.

Mr Karimov was President Bush's guest in Washington in March last year. They signed a "declaration" which gave Uzbekistan security guarantees and promised to strengthen "the material and technical base of [their] law enforcement agencies".

The three U.S. diplomats who resigned to protest the Iraq war say they're glad it ended fairly quickly but still think the war was unjustified - and doubt toppling Saddam Hussein has made Americans any safer from terrorist attacks.

While there's no clear indication the recent suicide attacks in Saudi Arabia and Morocco were retaliation for the war, the ex-diplomats worry that the occupation of Iraq could spur similar assaults on U.S. targets - particularly if order isn't restored soon.

"The longer we stay, and the more that people say the new Iraqi government is a lackey of the U.S., the more dangerous it is for Americans," said Mary Ann Wright, 57, the former deputy chief of mission at U.S. embassies in Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and Mongolia.

Wright, also a former Army colonel, quit March 19, after resignations by John Brady Kiesling, the former political counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Athens, and John Brown, who spent most of his 22 years with the Foreign Service in Europe and Russia.

In resignation letters to Secretary of State Colin Powell, all three said they found the Bush administration's case for war unconvincing and its approach toward other countries condescending.

The war, they said, would hurt U.S. interests, and they haven't changed their views.

[T]he fact that Mr. Rumsfeld even raised the possibility that Iraq might have destroyed unconventional weapons before the war prompts new questions about the intelligence tha President Bush and his senior advisers relied on to go to war, and about the credibility of the United States, defense analysts said yesterday.

"They don't have a good explanation, and therefore are trying to come up with as long a list as possible," said Joseph Cirincione, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "But it's impossible to destroy or hide the quantities the administration said they had without our noticing it."

Mr. Bush, in an interview last month with NBC News, acknowledged, "there's going to be skepticism until people find out there was, in fact, a weapons of mass destruction program."

It's because George W. has seemingly taken Willie's offhand remark and turned it into political philosophy. In matters as diverse as the situation in Iraq, the economy and the environment, Bush's rhetoric attempts to create perceptions entirely at odds with any objective reality.

WHILE THE NATION remains transfixed on the war in Iraq and distracted by the burden of a woefully downturned economy, a group of Beltway Republicans are crafting a scheme to forever wipe out the hallmarks of democracy.

With appalling guile, Republicans and the Bush administration are planning to make permanent the anti-terrorism provisions that granted the federal government unprecedent powers following Sept. 11, 2001.

The "Patriot Act," undermined due process and free speech by expanding eavesdropping and surveillance; legitimizing random looks at e-mail and other personal computer data; allowing the freezing of bank assets and monitoring of bank transactions; authorizing the indefinite and unspecified detention of citizens; and allowing warrantless searches of homes.

The act was hastily approved with no public debate. And, even if arguably justified by the Pentagon and World Trade Center horrors, it's a scary document that's marginally palatable only because it automatically expires at the end of 2005.

But with American public's eyes trained on the war, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R- Utah, has slyly proposed to repeal the "sunset" clause and make the expanded powers permanent. The plan undoubtedly will be attached to another bill to further hide it from public scrutiny.

The Bush Administration is holding thousands of Iraqi POWs and civilians without access to the International Committee of the Red Cross in violation of the Geneva Conventions and, therefore, the United States Constitution. Meanwhile it is still increasing support to Uzbekistan, a key ally in the War on Terror that uses terror as an instrument of state policy.

President Bush's "war on terror" has been a war that's been long on stagecraft and short on results. The recent terror bombings in Saudi Arabia and Morocco, the continuing civil chaos in Iraq and the resurgence of the warlords in Afghanistan are just the latest examples of this.

The Bush administration likes to preen before the television cameras and claim credit for anything that looks good. It also likes to disappear when the going gets tough. The laziness of the press allows the Bush administration to get away with this. You keep hearing about a 70 percent approval rating for President Bush, but you see precious little in the way of accomplishments to justify that figure.

You'd think that the May 12 suicide bombings in Riyadh - the biggest terrorist strike against U.S. interests since the Sept. 11 attacks - would have been big news for days. It hasn't been. Why? Could it be because the Bush administration would rather not discuss the matter since it doesn't fit their master narrative of steady gains against the forces of evil?