Skipper

So it seems Virginia Senator Allen's smears against challenger Jim Webb's historical novels failed to prevent George Bush's 'thumping' being elevated to a 'kicking' as he lost control today of the Senate as well as the House of Representatives which he lost yesterday. Now he faces an impotence over the next two years which the long overdue despatch of Donald Rumsfeld will not in any way prevent.

Shelley's poem, Ozymandias, on the arrogance and transience of power, includes the famous lines

'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'

Well, in the poem, at least it took centuries for the 'king of kings' (thought to refer to Napoleon) to end up ruined and swallowed up by the desert sands. In the case of Bush the timescale has been only three years though the sands in his case have been not the presumed Sahara of the poem, but the sands of Iraq. Already:

The lone and level sands stretch far away

[Oh Boy, what a result!]