President Bush hasn't changed his tune on AIDS (Photo: Associated Press)

Former president George W. Bush is back on the global AIDS prevention beat, just in time for World AIDS Day. Bush's AIDS policies, while extensive, always focused on treatment, not prevention—they emphasized abstinence over condom use, condemned prostitution, and focused on mother-to-child transmission at the expense of less popular victims.

Not much has changed. In a Washington Post opinion piece today, Bush says that he is "happily out of the political business," but his exit from office has not yet inspired him to extend his AIDS prevention efforts beyond the moral barriers set by the Christian right. Bush fails to mention condoms even once. In the face of an epidemic, even Pope Benedict is now willing to employ that dirty word. Bush insists that his interest in AIDS prevention has always been "results. In order to get them, he'll have to get realistic about sex.