Posted on 01/12/2009 8:02:14 AM PST by lewisglad
As he leaves office, President Bush is passing on to his successor two wars and a growing economic debacle. What a way to go!
Because of Bush's policies, the U.S. also is complicit in the Israeli attack on the Palestinians on the Gaza Strip by providing a "made-in-America" high-tech arsenal for the assault and blocking a ceasefire for nearly two weeks, a move intended to help the Israelis consolidate their hold.
Not to worry, Bush says he isn't concerned about how history will view his militant eight years in the White House, telling ABC News that he "won't be around to read it."
Well, they say that journalism is the first draft of history. So I am going to predict that those future historians will not deal kindly with the Bush presidency.
It's true -- as Bush and company point at their proudest achievement-- there have been no new terrorist attacks on the U.S. since Sept. 11, 2001.
But they fail to acknowledge administration mistakes before and after that fateful day, starting with the fact that White House and security officials ignored significant early warnings of an imminent strike against the U.S.
The second half of the double 9/11 mistake was the trampling of our constitutional system and American values by the administration's infamous torture policies, illegal interrogation practices, including water boarding (simulated drowning), secret prisons abroad and U.S. run jails at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere. Post- 9/11 Bush strategy also nurtured a climate of fear that enabled the self-styled "decider" to lead the country into a senseless war against Iraq, a calamity still underway as he leaves office almost six years after the invasion.
Add the administration's pathetic response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and you have basis to dub Bush's eight White House years as the "Bush error."
He was to be the great "unifier" but instead he became a great polarizer.
While he remained stubbornly steadfast to his core social convictions, he did a 180-degree turn when it came to the role of government in the economy when he bailed out the collapsed giants of Wall Street.
He told CNN: "I've abandoned free market principles to save the free market systems." So much for all the anti-government rant of Republican conservatives.
After the 9/11 attacks, Vice President Dick Cheney and then-national security advisor Condoleezza Rice drummed up the fiction that Iraq was linked to the al Qaida attacks and sold that fable to a naive Congress and jittery American people. During the first crisis meeting after the 9/11 attack, neo-con advisor Paul Wolfowitz, said: "Let's bomb Iraq."
There were no Iraqis involved in the attack and no evidence that Saddam Hussein had any role in planning or executing it.
Other falsehoods that these officials peddled included the tale that Iraq's Saddam Hussein had an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. Cheney told his Sunday television audiences, "We know where they are."
Official inspectors found none. The non-existent weapons were used to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
Bush is not about to admit that his costly inhumane attack on Iraq was a mistake. How could he tell grieving families of more than 4,000 American service members that their loved ones had died because of his error?
In addition to the flawed decision to attack Iraq, Bush and Co. used the aftermath of 9/11 to take wholesale swipes at our civil liberties, including warrantless wiretapping.
So those future historians will have a clear view of the 43rd president as they look back on the early years of the 21st century.
A list of Bush's accomplishments also should include his efforts to pay more money and political support into helping victims of AIDS and malaria in Africa. And he is proud of his controversial program "No Child Left Behind" to upgrade public school students by imposing national standards on an education system that had none.
Those future historians should also take note that Bush was hailed for his "likeability" when he came into office and was dubbed the guy you would like to share a beer with.
However, a CNN poll last year suggested that Bush had become the most unpopular president in modern American history. That CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey indicated that 71 percent of the American public disapproved of how Bush was handling his job as president.
Bush must have a sense of relief in giving up the presidential burdens.
He is confident that those future historians will vindicate him and his presidency.
But no one is expecting him to wind up on Mount Rushmore
We’d better get ready to call him Barack/Barry Soretoro or Barack/Barry Dunham.
He has no legal right to the name Obama, as his father was a bigamist (polygamist?) already married to Kezia.
The myth began with OBAMA- HOPE, CHANGE, PROGRESS.
And didn't ask Congress...
In the year 2000, idiots in my area built "the Peace Bell". A huge, functioning bell, it hangs in the middle of a shopping complex across the river, and on New Year's Eve, confused liberal wingnuts from across the land sanctimoniously surrounded it, whacked on the thing once for each something or other, and pronounce with great serioiusness that we were entering a new Age of Peace. Less than two years later, screaming Islam-crazed Muslims that we had never heard of before killed 3,000+ innocent Americans whose only crimbe was going to work in the morning.
There was no peace. There is no peace. There will be no peace until those who have sworn to kill us and enslave our children, to occupy and outbreed us, and who try to use our own liberty to take that liberty away are dead, dead, dead.
Sadly, there is a contingent amongst us who will prattle on about how everyone is good inside and other cultures are just misunderstood all the way up until they sneak up behind them and slit their throats.
One thing which is indisputable: W will actually be relevant to history, Helen (the face that sank 1000 ships) won't be.
Maybe this old bag will choke on a biscuit at the immaculate inauguration.
Helen Thomas was at Bush's press conference this morning, looking even uglier than before.
Many elitist windbags didn't like Winston Churchill, either, but he saved them right along with the rest of Western Culture. Scre\/\/ 'em.
This is one sad, delusional old bitty. She has no foot remaining in reality. Someone do this country a favor and get her in a home somewhere.
Helen Thomas.........”Those who speak the loudest....”
Also Bush should have said simply:
“I made the best decisions based upon the information I received and I am proud of my Presidency.”
Well, if he will free Ramos and Compean I will see him in another light once again.
Well, I'm going to refer to their guy as "Zero", "BO" or "Oba Mao".
In his last presser today I didn’t see Bush call on the idiot. But I missed part of it.
...rhymes with runt, punt and hunt.
Bush.
IIRC, Helen said the same type of thing about Ronald Reagan.
For those who missed the mocking YouTube sing-along, here is MY CALENDAR TROLL - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrOMOh56Z3Y
Thanks!
That’s “Helen”, fer sher!
I loved that show.
Hope that she’s still around when the first US city is nuked by the Islamofacists!
That broad needs to pull her head out and recognize, then admit, the fact that the war in Iraq is winding down to a successful conclusion, and that the economy was fine until it started looking certain that Obamalamadingdong was going to be elected and then everything went down the toilet. We were fine for 7 years under W, but now everything is all his fault.
Spiteful senility isn’t pretty in print, either. Poor Helen. She should have quit during one of the Rooseveldt administrations...(Teddy’s)
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