virtually all analysts in Washington agree that almost everything Bush has done in the region - from invading Iraq and ousting Saddam Hussein and then rejecting an Iranian offer to negotiate a settlement on all outstanding issues; to pressing for the total isolation of Hamas after it won (US-backed) democratic elections in the Palestinian Territories and egging on the Israelis in their attack on Lebanon and Hezbollah in 2006 - has undermined US standing and influence, even as it enhanced Tehran's.

Even in Iraq, recent US attacks on Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, particularly in Baghdad's Sadr City, appear to have bolstered the government factions with the closest and most-longstanding ties to Iran - the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and its Badr Organization, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Da'wa party.

The fact that Tehran itself played a key role in brokering the truces between Muqtada and the government in both the southern city of Basra last month and in Sadr City last weekend underlines the degree to which Iran is effectively challenging Washington in what neo-conservative hawk Reuel Marc Gerecht of the American Enterprise Institute admits "is the only arena [in the region] where the administration is capable of moving effectively against Tehran".

Which will only reinforce the desire of the "dead enders" in the Bush administration, led by Cheny, to make one last run at bombing Iran. And it's highly likely that the biggest dead ender of them all is the President himself. Five years removed from his "Mission Accomplished" moment when media morons like Chris Matthews swooned over his manly package as he strutted across the stage of one of the most absurdist photo ops in history, the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, in his tight fitting flight suit, Bush appears ready to put on his warlord costume one last time.

Still, some observers believe Hezbollah's victory may yet serve the administration's ends, if only by reminding the Sunni leaders with whom Bush meets this week that, in Gerecht's words again, "Tehran is on a roll," and they need the US and even Israel to contain it and roll back its influence. Indeed, some analysts believe the weekend's events may add to the gradually growing clamor by hawks in and outside the administration to take military action - if only, for now, limited strikes on weapons factories and training sites inside Iran allegedly used by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps to train "terrorists" in Iraq, Lebanon, and the Palestinian Territories - to "put Iran in its place".

"The next couple of days may be critical," said one former senior Central Intelligence Agency officer with expertise on the region, who added that any decision to "strike will actually motivated by an irresistible urge, stemming from pure frustration over continuing American impotence throughout the region, just to 'do something' ... even though the actual positive gain in this case would be minimal, while the downside risks are enormous."

Bush is still the Decider, the leader of a "corrupt criminal enterprise" which I predict will not go gently into that good night of political oblivion. Like a spoiled little bully who's finally been made to seem like the petty and impotent tyrant that he is, he will lash out one more time to let the world know he's still the biggest badass on the planet. You see, for Bush, the only thing he really understands, and the only path he prefers to take to reshape reality foir us to study, is the use of military force. That thousands may die and millions suffer for his grandiose schemes of world domination through violence means nothing to him. He may cry tears for his daughter at her wedding, but rest assured, he will never shed a tear, or spend a sleepless night, over the murderous consequences his actions.

And until January, 2009, he is still the man with his finger on the button of Armageddon.