Bush's presidency

[WVaGAL]

Hey dan foster,followsthewolf,awol and any others that do not like Bush..I posted some very interesting articles that has to do with him a little while ago...check them out...@ my blog..

[Ghost of Jaco]

Wow! A Bush hating thread! Cool! Why, we haven't had one of these here since...er, nevermind.

Oh, what the heck! I'm in: The prescription drug bill was bad, CFR was bad (and unconstitutional), and Iraq could have been handled a little better. For most of his term I thought he wasn't even aware that he could veto legislation.

[dan foster]

Wow! A Bush hating thread! Cool! Why, we haven't had one of these here since...er, nevermind.

Oh, what the heck! I'm in: The prescription drug bill was bad, CFR was bad (and unconstitutional), and Iraq could have been handled a little better. For most of his term I thought he wasn't even aware that he could veto legislation.

He was only aware of the darkness that surrounded his head, with a pungent odor that constantly took him back to his ranch in waco.  Of course, that was occasionally replaced by the cold, dark place that was up cheney's arse.    He never saw daylight, or any kind of intellectually driven logic, while president.

[Ghost of Jaco]

Hey dan foster,followsthewolf,awol and any others that do not like Bush..I posted some very interesting articles that has to do with him a little while ago...check them out...@ my blog..

Oh come on, WVG! Your blog is getting kinda full! We needed a new place to vent our BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome).

[Ghost of Jaco]

Hmmmm... A different view, from a historical perspective (and a foreign one at that):

History will show that George W Bush was right

By Andrew Roberts

Last Updated: 7:47PM GMT 14 Jan 2009

The American lady who called to see if I would appear on her radio programme was specific. "We're setting up a debate," she said sweetly, "and we want to know from your perspective as a historian whether George W Bush was the worst president of the 20th century, or might he be the worst president in American history?"

"I think he's a good president," I told her, which seemed to dumbfound her, and wreck my chances of appearing on her show.

In the avalanche of abuse and ridicule that we are witnessing in the media assessments of President Bush's legacy, there are factors that need to be borne in mind if we are to come to a judgment that is not warped by the kind of partisan hysteria that has characterised this issue on both sides of the Atlantic.

The first is that history, by looking at the key facts rather than being distracted by the loud ambient noise of the
24-hour news cycle, will probably hand down a far more positive judgment on Mr Bush's presidency than the immediate, knee-jerk loathing of the American and European elites.

At the time of 9/11, which will forever rightly be regarded as the defining moment of the presidency, history will look in vain for anyone predicting that the Americans murdered that day would be the very last ones to die at the hands of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists in the US from that day to this.

The decisions taken by Mr Bush in the immediate aftermath of that ghastly moment will be pored over by historians for the rest of our lifetimes. One thing they will doubtless conclude is that the measures he took to lock down America's borders, scrutinise travellers to and from the United States, eavesdrop upon terrorist suspects, work closely with international intelligence agencies and take the war to the enemy has foiled dozens, perhaps scores of would-be murderous attacks on America. There are Americans alive today who would not be if it had not been for the passing of the Patriot Act. There are 3,000 people who would have died in the August 2005 airline conspiracy if it had not been for the superb inter-agency co-operation demanded by Bush
after 9/11.

The next factor that will be seen in its proper historical context in years to come will be the true reasons for invading Afghanistan in October 2001 and Iraq in April 2003. The conspiracy theories believed by many (generally, but not always) stupid people – that it was "all about oil", or the securing of contracts for the US-based Halliburton corporation, etc – will slip into the obscurity from which they should never have emerged had it not been for comedian-filmmakers such as Michael Moore.

Instead, the obvious fact that there was a good case for invading Iraq based on 14 spurned UN resolutions, massive human rights abuses and unfinished business following the interrupted invasion of 1991 will be recalled.

Similarly, the cold light of history will absolve Bush of the worst conspiracy-theory accusation: that he knew there were no WMDs in Iraq. History will show that, in common with the rest of his administration, the British Government, Saddam's own generals, the French, Chinese, Israeli and Russian intelligence agencies, and of course SIS and the CIA, everyone assumed that a murderous dictator does not voluntarily destroy the WMD arsenal he has used against his own people. And if he does, he does not then expel the UN weapons inspectorate looking for proof of it, as he did in 1998 and again in 2001.

Mr Bush assumed that the Coalition forces would find mass graves, torture chambers, evidence for the gross abuse of the UN's food-for-oil programme, but also WMDs. He was right about each but the last, and history will place him in the mainstream of Western, Eastern and Arab thinking on the matter.

History will probably, assuming it is researched and written objectively, congratulate Mr Bush on the fact that whereas in 2000 Libya was an active and vicious member of what he was accurately to describe as an "axis of evil" of rogue states willing to employ terrorism to gain its ends, four years later Colonel Gaddafi's WMD programme was sitting behind glass in a museum in Oakridge, Tennessee.

With his characteristic openness and at times almost self-defeating honesty, Mr Bush has been the first to acknowledge his mistakes – for example, tardiness over Hurricane Katrina – but there are some he made not because he was a ranting Right-winger, but because he was too keen to win bipartisan support. The invasion of Iraq should probably have taken place months earlier, but was held up by the attempt to find support from UN security council members, such as Jacques Chirac's France, that had ties to Iraq and hostility towards the Anglo-Americans.

History will also take Mr Bush's verbal fumbling into account, reminding us that Ronald Reagan also mis-spoke regularly, but was still a fine president. The first
MBA president, who had a higher grade-point average at Yale than John Kerry, Mr Bush's supposed lack of intellect will be seen to be a myth once the papers in his Presidential Library in the Southern Methodist University in Dallas are available.

Films such as Oliver North's W, which portray him as a spitting, oafish frat boy who eats with his mouth open and is rude to servants, will be revealed by the diaries and correspondence of those around him to be absurd travesties, of this charming, interesting, beautifully mannered history buff who, were he not the most powerful man in the world, would be a fine person to have as a pal.

Instead of Al Franken, history will listen to Bob Geldof praising Mr Bush's efforts over Aids and malaria in Africa; or to Manmohan Singh, the prime minister of India, who told him last week: "The people of India deeply love you." And certainly to the women of Afghanistan thanking him for saving them from Taliban abuse, degradation and tyranny.

When Abu Ghraib is mentioned, history will remind us that it was the Bush Administration that imprisoned those responsible for the horrors. When water-boarding is brought up, we will see that it was only used on three suspects, one of whom was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, al-Qaeda's chief of operational planning, who divulged vast amounts of information that saved hundreds of innocent lives. When extraordinary renditions are queried, historians will ask how else the world's most dangerous terrorists should have been transported. On scheduled flights?

The credit crunch, brought on by the Democrats in Congress insisting upon home ownership for credit-unworthy people, will initially be blamed on Bush, but the perspective of time will show that the problems at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac started with the deregulation of the Clinton era. Instead Bush's very
un-ideological but vast rescue package of $700 billion (£480 billion) might well be seen as lessening the impact of the squeeze, and putting America in position to be the first country out of recession, helped along by his huge tax-cut packages since 2000.

Sneered at for being "simplistic" in his reaction to 9/11, Bush's visceral responses to the attacks of a fascistic, totalitarian death cult will be seen as having been substantially the right ones.

Mistakes are made in every war, but when virtually the entire military, diplomatic and political establishment in the West opposed it, Bush insisted on the surge in Iraq that has been seen to have brought the war around, and set Iraq on the right path. Today its GDP is 30 per cent higher than under Saddam, and it is free of a brutal dictator and his rapist sons.

The number of American troops killed during the eight years of the War against Terror has been fewer than those slain capturing two islands in the Second World War, and in Britain we have lost fewer soldiers than on a normal weekend on the Western Front. As for civilians, there have been fewer Iraqis killed since the invasion than in 20 conflicts since the Second World War.

Iraq has been a victory for the US-led coalition, a fact that the Bush-haters will have to deal with when perspective finally – perhaps years from now – lends objectivity to this fine man's record.

Andrew Roberts's 'Masters and Commanders: How Roosevelt, Churchill, Marshall and Alanbrooke Won the War in the West' is published by Penguin

Here's the link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/4241865/History-will-show-that-George-W-Bush-was-right.html


From another article in the Telegraph

The Beeb is currently gearing up for act two of its anti-war stance. The first act failed but now we go to "Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Truth", which, post hoc, can make the war a bad thing. Before the inevitable debates with Tariq Ali, George Soros and General Wesley Clark, let me, as a post scriptum, put down a couple of markers on the issue. Was the intelligence on WMD wrong? Don't know. One can't be sure that stockpiles were not removed from Iraq. This, after all, was a regime that just before the first Gulf war sent its entire air force for safe-keeping in Iran. If the intelligence services were wrong, every Western service and regime, from France to America, from Clinton to Chirac, failed. It is conceivable that Saddam Hussein found it important to pretend that he had nuclear weapons. He might have been like any moronic hooligan or bank robber who, faced with the police, pretends they have a weapon and often die as they reach for their toy pistol - or sunglasses.

Iraq was a regime that had a nuclear reactor (before Israel bombed it), attempted to acquire technological information abroad, refused to follow 16 UN resolutions and periodically kicked out UN inspectors. If its WMD programme was only disinformation, it was believed because Iraq did its level best to make it credible.

President Bush's policy was that his was a pre-emptive doctrine. His action was based on the notion that once you find WMD it's too late. If deployment is to be the proof of their existence, the price tag becomes too high. Emphasis mine - GoJ

Link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3602161/The-BBC-got-the-dossier-wrong-so-here-comes-WMD-The-Truth.html


Certainly food for thought.

[DannyBoy]

the half-full glass says.....we have not been physically attacked on our soil since 9/11.

[awol]

the half-full glass says.....we have not been physically attacked on our soil since 9/11.

neither have we been wiped out by a super-virus, blasted by lazer beams from outer space, or suffered a catastrophic total existance failure.

thank god for my lucky rock.

[Gardengirl]

He's kept us safe the past 8 years. Thank you, Mr. President.

[me]

He's kept us safe the past 8 years. Thank you, Mr. President.

Yes he has and for that I thank him also. 

[awol]

He's kept us safe the past 8 years. Thank you, Mr. President.

'cept for those poor fuckers in the towers back in 01.

[Exterminator]

He's kept us safe the past 8 years. Thank you, Mr. President.

Actually, 7.  If you give him credit for preventing terrorist attacks during that time, you also have to hold him responsible for allowing the largest ever on American soil.

[Sandy Eggo]

Exactly what did he do to keep us safe?

[Henry Hawk]

homeland security, patriot act, wire-taps, information sharing between agencies, and yes, Guantanamo Bay....and he also destoyed al-Qaeda cells along with many top insurgent leaders.............guys, like him or not..and I'm sure it's not for most of you.........he DID keep us safe.

[Exterminator]

Bullshit.   Virtually every so-called security measure put into place has been breached when put to the test.  Terrorists could strike again any time they want to and there is nothing that can be done to prevent it.  All of these "improvements" accomplish nothing more than giving the illusion of security to cowards willing to trade their Constitutional rights for it.

[Anne]

If they can strike anytime they want to, why don't they? Are they afraid of the consequences? Do they suddenly feel sorry for possible victims? There is no reason for them not to strike us if they can, unless they are afraid of the consequences. Same result, President Bush's actions have prevented attack on American soil for 7 years. Mr. Clinton received a security briefing specifically talking about terrorists using hijacked airplanes to attack the US. He did nothing. Where is his blame in 9/11?