George Bush, President of the United States, is widely viewed as incompetent, and his public approval rating in polls is well below 50%. He has no special training in security. If you believe Russian propaganda, America is hated by the whole world.

Yet, since September 11, 2001, there has not been one single terrorist event on American soil.

Vladimir Putin, "President" of Russia, is widely viewed as highly competent, and his public approval rating in polls is above 70%. He is a lifelong member of the security services. If you believe Russian propaganda, Russia is loved by the whole world, and certainly much more widely respected than America.

Yet, terrorist attacks on Russian soil continue unabated. CNN reports that today Ingushetia's Deputy Interior Minister Dzhabrail Kostoyev was riding to work in an armored car when a sedan packed with explosives blocked a road on the outskirts of the region's main city of Nazran and blew up, according to regional police officials and a spokesman for the Interior Ministry branch in southern Russia. Reuters adds that a series of suicide bombings since 2000 have killed hundreds of people in Russia, targeting planes, trains, concerts, government buildings and other objects, but their use has tailed off more recently. Itar-Tass reminds us that Kostoyev was a known target, yet Putin still could not protect him. A concerted attack targeting police in Ingushetia in June 2004 killed 92 people.Kostoyev, then Nazran’s police chief, was wounded in August when unknown assailants detonated a radio-controlled land mine as his car was passing. The ITAR-Tass news agency reported that a mortar shell hit his office in a February 2005 attack, but that he was not there at the time, and RIA-Novosti said his home in the village of Ekazhevo was hit by gunfire twice late last year.

Incidentally, the Putin administration has also been a monumental failure in addressing human trafficking in Russia, to say nothing of that fact that under its care the Russian population is continuing to become extinct.

For sheer, life-threatening incompetence, who can rival Vladimir Putin? Is Russia the ultimate proving ground for the Peter Principle, where each person's ability to rise in authority is limited only by his level of haplessness?