... On September 12, 2001, the consensus of reasoned opinion was that there was going to be a long series of terrorist attacks around the world, in various countries.
... Throughout Bush's term, society continued to be more and more open.
... there was no one whose freedom of speech was prohibited or even inhibited.
... Our European friends might be interested to know that the regimes they are accustomed to living under are considerably more invasive than the US before or after the Patriot Act.
... There was no warrantless wiretapping in violation of the Constitution.
... The Iraqi War was started on the basis of faulty intelligence, evaluated in good faith ...
When you leap to conclusions like those above, you are right to expect your post to be met with derision and contempt. You are obviously well read, and you do a good job of expressing yourself. Your breakdown comes when you reach such sweeping conclusions based on insufficient evidence, and attributing your personal feelings to the masses. Effectively, you are begging the question, by assuming your conclusion as if it were evidence to support your argument. This is witnessed in the following section:
There remains, however, the possibility that Bush got the Big Thing right - that the changes he and Tony Blair initiated in the Middle East are positive and ongoing. Faulty intelligence didn't change Iraq into the Netherlands or Saddam Hussein into Queen Wilhelmina. The regime change as such was a big step forward for the Iraqi people. The creation of a successful democracy there will be a major step forward for progressive Muslims. It is an intuitive certainty that its example has had some positive influence on events in Egypt, Tunisia, and elsewhere. How much I don't know.
Did you see how you did that? You start out making claims about the efficacy of Bush's policies, and by the end of the paragraph you have simply accepted your premise as the conclusion.
... They have literally reinvented the old apologia for fascism, that Mussolini at least made the trains run on the time.
You make this claim in relation to "liberals". The really ironic thing is, your point is valid, but it is clearly more appropriately applied to the apologists for Bush's implementation of his "pre-emptive strike" mentality which has now come to be known as the Bush Doctrine.
There are all sorts of things to dislike and disapprove about Bush without inventing myth to justify raw loathing.
So, are you now the arbiter of how much emotion others can feel toward someone? If I were the parent of a son (or daughter) that died in Iraq due to Bush's manipulation of the American electorate, I dare say that my "loathing" would be more than justified. If you disagree with someone's assessment, that's fine. On the other hand, you really have no standing on which to appoint yourself as the final judge of how they handle their feelings on the subject.
Was that contemptuous enough for you?