This volume contains essays drawn from The Kensington Review, covering the second half of 2003. During this period, the occupation of Iraq demonstrated not only the lack of planning on the part of the Bush administration but also its general incompetence in administration in general. Elsewhere, Zimbabwe's descent into misery continued, and in some ways, it accelerated; Britain's Tony Blair began to take the heat for his support of the Bush White House in its Iraq policies; and France and Germany violated with impunity the Stability and Growth Pact upon which the euro was launched - setting a precedent which would directly lead to the excessive borrowing in periphery states of the eurozone that undermined the currency later in the decade. At the same time, the people of California indulged in a grand case of buyers' remorse, recalling Gray Davis as governor and replacing him with action-film actor Arnold Schwarzenegger after a campaign that resembled a circus more than anything else.