At a time when 58% of Americans believe that President George W. Bush lacks integrity, one would think that the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue would be bending over backwards to prove to his fellow citizens that 'integrity' is really his middle name. Not so however with this president who still has three more years to spread havoc throughout the world in his perpetual and oftentimes maniacal quest for world domination in the form of the liquid gold that he believes will bring his country to nirvana. The man who once stood tall and proudly declared himself to be the "war president" can now add another title to his ever-growing list of fait accomplis - the "plundering president".

President Bush can now declare to his own citizens that God really does bless America and in that blessing she is about to bestow upon that great land the stuff of SUV dreams, the pinnacle of pedal power, the acme of American automobiles and if in the process of feeding the mightly machines of mobility, a few hundred polar bears should bite the dust or the odd herd of caribou should migrate to their final resting place in the great beyond, oh well, ya snooze ya lose.

I'm referring of course to the November 3rd vote in the U.S. Senate to approve oil drilling and exploration in of all places, a wildlife refuge. In Alaska. In the Arctic. You know the Arctic - that cold vast hinterland to the north of everything that the scientific experts have been warning us is melting and if it continues to melt, the results for everyone living to the south of that area involve perpetual water treading? Yeah, that Arctic.

The Senate voted in favour of opening up a good chunk of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska so the U.S. and her close buds, the oil corporations can start drilling through the frozen tundra in search of crude. There's supposedly a few million barrels of oil in them thar hills and certain political factions in the U.S. have been salivating over that fact for decades. Up until today, sanity and common sense prevailed. And then came Bush. Enviromentalists everywhere, hide your protected flora and fauna - Bush is on the loose yet again!

So while the drilling runs uninterrupted inside the refuge, producing lots of money for the oil corporations, jobs for the unemployed and resulting in less American dependance on foreign oil imports, we will witness a tragic decline in already endangered and threatened wildlife species - polar bears who are already declining in numbers as a result of a warmer Arctic, will stop digging their maternity dens because really, who wants to give birth amid all that oil drilling racket? Porcupine caribou herds migrate to the coastal plains within the refuge to give birth. Like the polar bears, countless oil drilling monstrosities just might make them rethink their birthing ground choices for the last few centuries.

Bush and Company however don't care about polar bears' maternity dens or caribous' birthing grounds. They've made it abundantly clear that the American people enjoy the god-given right to drive their gas-guzzling sports utility vehicles and if that means the extinction of the odd wildlife species then so be it because afterall, what has the polar bear ever done for them?

Way back in 2002, President Bush and Vice President Cheney were extolling the virtues of the great northern land plunder and in closing I offer you the reader classic Bushisms and Cheneyisms:

Dick Cheney said drilling for oil and gas would disturb "only" 2,000 acres of the refuge - "The notion that, somehow, developing the resources in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Reserve requires some sort of vast despoiling of the environment up there is just garbage."

Earlier this year Bush said, "Developing a small section of ANWR would create thousands of new jobs". He went on to say in that same speech to a group in Ohio describing the 2000 acre exploration site as "the size of the Columbus airport" and exploration could be done "with almost no impact on land or local wildlife."

Now, correct me if I'm wrong but I seem to remember a time way back in 2001 when President "with-almost-no-impact-on-land-or-local-wildlife" Bush told the American people that Iraq had developed weapons of mass destruction and Saddam wasn't afraid to use them.

We all know how that turned out. So why should we believe him now?