A forest fire named the Biscuit Fire, started by a bolt of lightning, began burning in the national forest in the center of Oregon in mid-July, 2002. For the critical first week of the fire nothing was done. The Government pleaded a shortage of resources to fight the fire. By the time they started to fight it, it was out of control. By the third week of August it had consumed over a half million acres of federal forest.

The US Government short of resources? Where was the Army with their thousands of heavy lifting helicopters and hundreds of thousands of soldiers? When the fire started, Bush went on vacation. The fire, destroying a national asset, wasn't even on his radar screen. He was too busy making verbal war on Iraq. If our stupid Congress were to take Bush's Oath of Office and their separation of powers seriously, they'd impeach him. The fact that they don't means that the separation of powers, which was supposedly America's unique guarantee of democracy, is non-existent in 21st century America.

Bush's only reaction to the fire, when it got too big to ignore, was to exploit it for the political purpose of changing the law to allow the logging companies to cut down more trees on public land.

P.S. I am writing this from Crescent City, California which is near the southern limit of the Biscuit Fire. It is a measure of the distrust of Washington that is rampant here, that people here believe the Government intentionally let the fire burn. I was told by one former lumber mill employee that the lumber companies never let a fire on their private land burn out of control.