"I just don't think it's the role of the United States to walk into a country and say, we do it this way, so should you. "

He's on a Mission... from God!

George W. Bush was elected the 43rd president of the United States in 2000 and was elected to a second term in 2004. Previously he had been the governor of Texas and a businessman.

The son of Barbara and George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush moved to Midland, Texas at the age of two, and identifies himself as a "native Texan." He was raised in Midland and Houston, Texas with his siblings Jeb, Neil, Marvin, and Dorothy. Bush attended prep school at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts before enrolling at Yale. He was in the National Guard, where he trained for two years and learned to fly. He served as an F-102 pilot until 1972 (although some contend that he was AWOL for some of his service years).

In 1976, Bush was arrested in Maine for drunken driving. He kept the news under wraps until it broke just days before the 2000 presidential election. Bush was a heavy drinker until he quit in 1986, at the age of 40.

Bush met Laura Welsh, the woman who would become his wife Laura Bush, in 1977 and married her the same year. She gave birth to twins Barbara and Jenna Bush in 1981.

Bush established an oil company called Arbusto Energy in 1979. He used funds from a trust and some other investors to launch the company. In 1984, Bush sold the company to Spectrum 7 who appointed Bush CEO. Spectrum then merged with Harken Energy and Bush became a director of Harken. He then served as a partner of the Texas Rangers baseball team for five years, which helped him develop a strong reputation in Texas -- he was active in the construction of a new stadium as well as media relations for the team.

In 1994 Bush ran for Governor of Texas and was elected in November of that year. During this time he began positioning himself for the 2000 presidential election. As a "compassionate conservative" he campaigned on tax cuts, educational vouchers, oil drilling and religious issues.

After winning the Republican presidential nomination against Senator John McCain, Bush and his running mate Dick Cheney faced Vice President Al Gore and Senator Joseph Lieberman in the 2000 general election. He won the electoral votes 271 to 267, but received fewer popular votes than Gore. He is the fourth president elected after losing the popular vote. Bush ran for a second term in 2004, winning against Senator John Kerry by a margin of about 3 percent. This was the smallest popular vote margin for a re-elected president since Woodrow Wilson in 1916.

The terrorist attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001 transformed Bush from a president with seemingly modest ambitions into a 'war president.' Bush ordered the invasion of Afghanistan in November 2001, to remove from power the Taliban regime, which had sheltered Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. While the Afghanistan invasion is widely regarded as a great success, the Taliban has since reemerged as a guerilla force in the country.

The invasion of Iraq in March 2003 became the defining moment of the Bush presidency. The Iraqi army was quickly subdued. On May 1, 2003 Bush landed on the aircraft carrier the USS Abraham Lincoln where he gave a speech signalling "the end of major combat operations" in Iraq. Bush declared "The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September 11, 2001, and still goes on." Behind the president was a giant banner reading "Mission Accomplished." In October 2003 Bush acknowledged that the banner had not been such a great idea. Today the United States military remains in Iraq and there is no end in sight to the American occupation.

Prior to the war, Bush administration officials strongly implied that Saddam Hussein and Iraq were involved in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. But in a news conference on August 21, 2006, when asked what Iraq had to do with the 9/11 attacks, Bush's response was "nothing."

To justify going to war against Iraq, senior members of the Bush administration -- including Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice -- also argued unequivocally that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, although no such weapons have been found. In his address to the nation on March 17, 2003 on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, Bush said that "intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."

In March 2004, at a black-tie dinner for journalists, Bush made fun of the search for WMDs during a satirical slide show. One slide pictured Bush looking under a piece of furniture in the Oval Office, at which the president remarked: "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be here somewhere."

With no weapons of mass destruction in evidence and the alleged link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda discredited, the Bush White House has attempted to transform the rationale for the Iraq war into a project to build democracy in the Middle East and around the world.

George W. Bush Poll Results

This poll ran from July 23 to 29, 2007.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

Do you approve of the job President Bush is doing? Yes 793/33% No 1590/67%

Votes: 2383

This poll ran from March 26 to April 1, 2007.

Mondo Stars Poll Results

"President George W. Bush is a war criminal." True 1591/46% False 1904/54%

Votes: 3495

Rocky Anderson, the mayor of Salt Lake City, Utah and a Democrat, speaking at a rally in Salt Lake City on Monday, March 19 2007 marking the fourth anniversary of the war in Iraq. Referring to President George W. Bush, he said "Let impeachment be the first step toward national reconciliation — and toward penance for the outrages committed in our nation's name."

As reported in the story "In Utah, an Opponent of the 'Culture of Obedience'" by Kirk Johnson in the March 22, 2007 edition of the New York Times, Anderson is a 55-year-old lapsed Mormon and former civil litigator. The article states that "He has presented his constitutional argument against Mr. Bush's presidency in speeches from the Washington Legislature to peace rallies in Washington, D.C., making him a favorite punching bag of conservative talk show hosts and bloggers well beyond his home state. He went on Bill O\'Reilly's show on Fox News on Tuesday, for example, and Mr. O\'Reilly promptly called him "a kook."

"Mr. Anderson cheerfully conceded in an interview in his office that he had no hope whatsoever of a statewide political future in Utah because people outside Salt Lake City — who are far more likely to be conservative, Republican and members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — are likely to hate him. But in what has been a trademark of his seven years in office, he can seem equally disdainful of those who disdain him.

"There's a real resistance to change and an almost pathological devotion to leaders simply because they're leaders," Anderson said, in describing fellow Utahans who do not share his views and who in large numbers support the president (and gave him 72 percent of their vote in 2004). "There's a dangerous culture of obedience throughout much of this country that's worse in Utah than anywhere."