- Bush delivers a State of the Union address, with his opposition to performance-enhancing drugs in sports standing out against a bleak roster of new policies.
- Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill writes a book claiming Bush was determined from the get-go to overthrow Iraq's Saddam Hussein.
- The president's shaky performance on NBC's "Meet the Press" fuels anxiety among GOP allies about Iraq and the fledgling re-election campaign.
- Richard Clarke, the top counterterrorism official for Presidents Clinton and Bush, undercuts the president's tough-on-terrorism claims during congressional testimony.
- National security adviser Condoleezza Rice at first refuses to testify before Congress about the Sept. 11 attacks, then bows to pressure.
- Bush's economic adviser, N. Gregory Mankiw, says the transfer of U.S. jobs overseas is sometimes a good thing.
- Bush scuttles plans to name Anthony Raimondo as manufacturing czar after Democrats point out that the businessman's company laid off 75 workers in 2002 while announcing the construction a $3 million plant in China.
- The death toll in Iraq mounts through the spring as Republican governors, busy attending funerals of slain servicemen and shipping National Guard troops overseas, warn the White House that voters are getting antsy.
- Four U.S. contractors are killed and mutilated near Baghdad.
- Train bombers strike Madrid. Voters throw the Bush-backing Spanish government out of power. Spain later withdraws its troops from Iraq.
- Vice President Dick Cheney comes under fire for past business ties, secretive deliberations on energy policy and unsubstantiated suggestions that his office might be behind the leak of a CIA operative's name.
- U.S. weapons inspector David Kay concludes that Iraq did not have stockpiles of forbidden weapons, undercutting Bush's main justification for war.
- Democrats unite behind Kerry after a short nomination fight, allowing him to raise record amounts of money and turn quickly against Bush.
- Democratic lawmakers call for an investigation into whether the Bush administration's Medicare chief pressured a subordinate to withhold estimates of the cost of last year's Medicare legislation.
- Clarke follows his testimony with a book claiming Bush was so preoccupied with Iraq both before and after the Sept. 11 attacks that he failed to effectively confront threats from al-Qaida.
- Gas prices top $2 per gallon.
- Revelations that U.S. soldiers abused prisoners in Iraq fuel anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world and raise questions at home about U.S. moral authority in Iraq.
- Militants linked to al-Qaida behead American Nicholas Berg.
- The leader of Iraqi's governing council is assassinated.
- A memo reveals plans for the Bush administration to slash domestic programs after the Nov. 2 presidential election.
- Al-Qaida militants in Saudi Arabia behead American helicopter technician Paul M. Johnson Jr.
- Militants in Iraq behead South Korean Kim Sun-il.
- Insurgents launched coordinated attacks that kills more than 100 people, including three U.S. soldiers.
My list would include some of these things, others were only tangentially the result of GWB's incompetence.
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