Dubya remembers that as he sat reading My Pet Goat and being friendly and feeling bored to death a staff-person came to him, stooped over to whisper a message as if it was very important and secret. And it was very important and secret and so very big that Dubya sat very still and floated into a private world. And the more he thought about the news that the man had whispered, the more he felt amazed.

He remembers the feeling that things were going to change. That they had changed already. There was a glow. He was in the middle of it. The world was shining, the world was new already and more his. It was more Dubya’s world, it had a place for him, a place made for him. He saw the world turning and himself at the center. Now he was the big man, bigger than anyone ever. He saw himself as like the eye of the hurricane, that turns everything around, sweeps everything away all around, controls it all, touches everything and is never touched. It is awesome, inviolate, and perfect.

He remembers: it was the happiest moment of his life.

Now, ten years later, shivering in his dank cell, he picks nervously at his scabs and wonders whether back in 2001 he had perhaps miscalculated.