World News 21-01-2005 Bush Takes Freedom Worldwide who: George W Bush what: Inaugurated for second term as US president where: Washington DC when: Thursday snippet: "If you thought George Bush was going to crawl away and hide after the calamity of Iraq, you can think again," says The Mirror`s Anthony Harwood following the president`s inauguration in Washington DC on Thursday. "America is on the march once more, led by a President with fire in his belly and a place in history on his mind." Gerard Baker of The Times says Mr Bush has completed his transformation from "frat-boy-made-good" to a self-styled "solemn champion of an urgent, messianic mission to transform the world". "We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion," Mr Bush told the thousands gathered outside the Capitol building for his inaugural address, "the survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world." "Mr Bush`s place in history will depend largely on whether he can carry through the ambitious agenda of the first [term] by securing peace and democracy in Iraq and making permanent the largest tax cuts in US history," comments Edward Alden of The Financial Times, who suggests that he will be assisted to this end by the Republican domination of Congress, which should spare him any "congressional investigations into alleged wrongdoing". In an article for The Guardian on Friday, former Labour front-bencher Robin Cook cannot hide his distaste over the festivities in Washington and relishes the fact that Mr Bush`s second term was won by "the smallest margin in 100 years of those presidents who won a second term". His opinion of the president`s "adventure in Iraq" is of course no secret. "Iraq was the flagship project of the Bush administration and has turned into its greatest disaster," he goes on. "A successful search for a new strategy can only start with a recognition that the present strategy has comprehensively failed. But the Bush administration II that took office yesterday is stuffed with people who are in denial." "None of this will worry Mr Bush today," wrote Alec Russell in The Telegraph on the morning of the president`s swearing-in. "In his first term his family are said to have called him Quincy, after John Quincy Adams, the only previous son to have followed his father to the presidency. Now the Bushes have outdone the Adamses - both John Adams and John Quincy Adams served only one term." [... more]

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