Written on the occasion of President George W. Bush finally making the trip to Vietnam on November 17, 2006, decades after a better American woman, Jane Fonda, made the trip in his place. Three-and-a-half years into his own Vietnam-style debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan -- disasters that he would bequeath to his successor two years later -- Dubya the Dimwit proved to the world that what he didn't learn about America in Vietnam he wouldn't learn about America in the Middle East, either.

Hanoi Haiku

In Hanoi at last
Red-carpet in return for
Our carpet-bombing

The words no one heard,
Due so many years after:
"We apologize"

Deputy Dubya
Sheriff Cheney's Barney Fife
Lost in Mayberry

Gullible Goofy
The boy who cried Wolfowitz
Far too many times

Emerald City
Naked ruler's brand new clothes
Viewed through glasses green

Mission Accomplished!
A cakewalk in its last throes
Now a glacier race

Four Years an "instant"
Nothing happens right away
What did you expect?

Broken-egg omelets
George Orwell's Catastrophic
Gradualism

Shop till the troops drop
Buy a plane ticket or two
Your part in the "war"

Rob the future now
They will never break our will
Those grandkids of ours

Lecture the victors
About their First and Second
Indochina Wars

Where did we get him?
How come we can't do better?
We look so stupid

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2006