OK, you know it’s bad when third-rate despots are taunting us. Sure it hurts when a guy like Osama bin Ladin hides in a cave and makes videos criticizing the U.S. Even with the most sophisticated technology and most advanced army in the history of the world, we can’t find this guy hiding in a cave for six years. What’s up with that?

Now, the dynamic duo of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are taking potshots at us during an OPEC meeting, at what is usually a staid conference about supply-and-demand of oil.

This year, a year when Canada’s dollar became on par with the U.S., it created fodder against the perennial sole superpower.

Chavez said about America, “The dollar is in free fall, everyone should be worried about it. The fall of the dollar is not the fall of the dollar—it’s the fall of the American empire.”

Ouch. This coming from a guy who runs a country most Americans couldn’t find on a map.

To add further insult, Chávez claimed that oil prices would rise to $200 a barrel if the U.S. were “crazy enough” to strike at Iran. Later, Ahmadinejad said, “The U.S. dollar has no economic value.”

These two powerless men can say these things about the U.S., and we’re powerless to do anything about it. They have us over a barrel—an oil barrel, that is.

Again, the most technologically-advanced country on earth should be able to figure out how to get from point A to point B without pouring liquid that builds up Chavez’s and Ahmadinejad’s economies.

Shame on President Bush, who for six years promised to fight a war on terror but in the end, because he’s in bed with the oil industry, has left us more vulnerable to these fascists and weaker financially to the whims of oil-based inflation.