Are We Ready to Rehabilitate George W. Bush’s Reputation?

texasmonthly ^ | 09/16/2020 | ANDREW R. GRAYBILL

[lonestar67]

Its always entertaining to see the Bush reactionaries try to defend their hopeless positions.

The Great Recession was absolutely 150% the blame of Bush reactionaries.

Democrats campaigned in 2006 under the leadership of Senators Clinton and Obama that we needed to stop illegal immigration. That argument was essential to the Democrat landslide in November 2006 that made Nancy Pelosi the speaker of the House.

Bush repeatedly warned the Congress to limit GSE indiscretion and yes that was the Constitutional need. Congress refused and once Barney Frank was the head of this committee in January 2007, the Housing markets were officially and fully “de-regulated” so that everyone knew that now limits on lending by the GSEs would be enacted:

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2011/12/the_fall_of_the_house_of_frank.html

With regard to India, in fact China and India have increasingly been in direct military conflict at that border. If India were to have been aligned with China or even been ambivalent to it as a threat our global world would be impossible. I have no idea how you imagine this to be fake history. The US/India nuclear deal is rather important to our larger vision of containing China. Trump’s own visits with Modi both in the US and India are predicated on this Bush foundation.

Maybe you will believe Free Republic on the question of Iraq:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1062281/posts

The Sept. 11 airline crashes were not the first attempt to topple the World Trade Center towers. In February 1993, a bomb blast in a public parking garage below the North Tower of the World Trade Center killed six people and left a crater six stories deep. It could have been much worse. In her book, “The War Against America: Saddam Hussein and the World Trade Center Attacks,” Laurie Mylroie says that the bomb was designed to topple the North Tower into the South Tower and envelop the scene in a cloud of cyanide gas. Hearing the case, Judge Kevin Duffy agreed, saying that if the plan had worked, “we would have been dealing with tens of thousands of deaths.” After the bombing, the FBI rounded up four Muslims who moved in extremist circles in the New York area. Three others escaped overseas: a Palestinian, an Iraqi named Abdul Yasin, and Ramzi Yousef.

Ms. Mylroie’s book argues that Iraq was complicit in this attack. At the very least, she notes, Saddam Hussein is harboring a wanted terrorist: Abdul Yasin. He came to the U.S. six months before the Trade Center attack and is charged with helping mix chemicals for the bomb. Picked up in an early sweep after the bombing, he talked his way out of an FBI interrogation and turned up back in Baghdad.

Beyond this, Ms. Mylroie contends that the bombing was “an Iraqi intelligence operation with the Moslem extremists as dupes.” She says that the original lead FBI official on the case, Jim Fox, concluded that “Iraq was behind the World Trade Center bombing.” In late 1993, shortly before his retirement, Mr. Fox was suspended by FBI Director Louis Freeh for speaking to the media about the case; he died in 1997. Ms. Mylroie says that Mr. Fox indicated to her that he did not continue to pursue the Iraq connection because Justice Department officials “did not want state sponsorship addressed.”

Your assertion that “they had absolutely no connection” is easily disproven by dozens of research reports. This excerpt above is but one of many explaining multiple connections. Yours is the common neo-isolationist fantasy that there is not a broad global desire to destroy the United States. All of America’s enemies lack the obvious coherence to cooperate and enable all forms of attack against the United States. Instead of this logical view, every conceivable enemy is minuscule and absolutely opposed to cooperating with other anti-American agents to accomplish evil deeds. That is of course ridiculous.

One of the most important successes of the Trump administration is a military strike in Baghdad to kill Iranian commander Solemani. This is again built upon the predicate of Bush’s correct action to remove Saddam and replace the government with one more amenable to US goals. There is little chance that such a strike could have happened in a world still nurturing the dictatorship of Saddam.

you are mistaken and have little chance of prevailing in your argument.

[Pelham]

What your screed lacks in knowledge it makes up for in length.

“Bush repeatedly warned the Congress to limit GSE indiscretion”

Bush’s warning about the GSEs was entirely about their capitalization ratio. Cap ratio has nothing at at all to do with subprime lending and the bubble. Moreover GSEs dealt in conforming paper. The massive subprime market that created and collapsed the bubble was in non-conforming paper issued by Wall Street shadow banks which operated in competition with the GSEs. It’s tedious to unwind your goofy and ill-informed ideas about the mortgage market.

“The US/India nuclear deal is rather important to our larger vision of containing China. “

No it’s not. It’s important to India. And to those who want to keep America obligated to defend every corner of the world. India is quite capable of defending themselves, even if they can’t figure out how to build sewers and toilet systems.

“Ms. Mylroie’s book argues that Iraq was complicit in this attack.”

Good old Laurie Mylrloie. Darling of the neocon cabal that Dubya brought into his administration and who egged him into invading Iraq.

The 1993 WTC bombers were an Egyptian terror group led by the Blind Sheik. Not Iraqi.

Andy McCarthy who actually prosecuted the 1993 bombers dismisses Mylroie as a crackpot. So does a long list of other security experts. But it’s easy to see why she would appeal to someone who admires Bush’s globalism and who wants to keep America stuck with being policeman of the world.