The President's biggest regret

Intelligence failure Iraq is the President's biggest regret. The story is here:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20081201/pl_afp/uspoliticsbushiraqafghanistan

It appears than somebody is having nightmares, insomnia, delirium, and who knows…

 

Thank God this idiot is leaving office soon. Sound partisan? Too bad. I am grateful as hell I didn't vote for him.

Abner

 

He was asked what his decision would be if the intelligence had been correct. I enjoyed this quote. "That is a do-over that I can't do. It's hard for me to speculate," said Bush. Perhaps he's saying that he can't speculate on his decision since he's not sure what his previous meal would have been prior to making this decision using his gut?

 

I'll make a prediction; history will judge George W. Bush much better than the leftist media is trying to portray him now.

 

How can this prediction be better quantified? Approval rating, or is that just more "leftist media"? If that is the criteria then I doubt your prediction will ever put GW above the bottom few in history. Perhaps a more quantified and fairer way to interpret the prediction would be historical rankings. e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_United_States_Presidents Using this kind of scale, my interpretation is that he is currently in the bottom half dozen presidents now. My prediction is that historically he'll remain there. Christopher Buckley the conservative ex-writer for National Review and son of well respected conservative William F. Buckley said that GW was very possibly the worst President in US history. So, it's not just the "leftist media" (unless you consider Christopher Buckley part of the "leftist media") that is currently contributing to the lowest approval rating since approval ratings have been around. In this type historical scale do you think that GW will likely rise above the bottom dozen Presidents?

 

I preparing to take a course in history and reading up in advance of the course. The texts point out that history is constantly being rewritten because takes a long time to credit people for their actions - sometimes information is hidden from public view for as long as 50years, or until the actors involved are dead. For example details are just now emerging on Eisenhower and spy satellites.

 

I just read that more Nixon tapes & documents will be released today:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081202/ap_on_go_pr_wh/nixon_disclosures;_ylt=AkcvEAPY24WgC_kwGyT6roGs0NUE

 

It used to be that deposing a dictator who murdered countless numbers of his own people was seen as a good thing. Apparently, not anymore.

 

Good things are not always good when considered within the full context of the situation. First, those American lives lost are worth more to me than the number of Iraqis that probably would have been killed by the dictator since 2002. Second, spending close to a trillion dollars to do it is beyond ridiculous, IMHO. Third, diplomacy is better than the Bush schoolyard bully millitary force approach to foreign affairs. Forth, we should not be the police of the world for responding to domestic disturbance calls.

Since you didn't respond to a more quantitative predictive guess, I guess I'll assume that after more thought, you think that perhaps he is on bottom of the scale?

Have fun,
Bill

 

He's certainly not the best (Reagan was, IMO), but I firmly believe that history will prove he was right about Iraq.

 

Very interesting, Reagan as best ever!

Here's my personal ranking.

1. Abraham Lincoln
2. George Washington
3. Thomas Jefferson
4. FDR
5. Theodore Roosevelt
6. Woodrow Wilson
7. Andrew Jackson

... middle group that I haven't thought much about ranking

Bottom listed from worst to less bad

James Buchanan (The traitor)
Franklin Pierce (The sub traitor)
Andrew Johnson (revenger)
George W. Bush (torturer, warmonger, and gut decider)
John Tyler (His Accidency)

Does the above list put GW in the proper rank according to the "leftist media" or does the "leftist media" put GW at the very bottom? Perhaps a more interesting question to me though is where the "rightest media" would put GW? (For rightest media let's use Fox News as the entity.) Any opinion, anyone?

 

I meant to say "in my lifetime".

Well Bill, the invectives you used (torturer, warmonger) are right out of the lefty's playbook. Call me a cynic, but I kind of doubt that George W. Bush has tortured anyone.

As I said, history will be the final arbiter of what kind of President anyone is. And, I stand behind my assertion that Bush 43 will be judged much more kindly by history than he is right now.

 

I too do not believe that GW personally tortured anyone. He only approved that others may use torture. If I recall correctly though, we had this discussion already regarding Ayers and we agreed that if Ayers had asked others to bomb or kill then he too was guilty himself of bombing and killing even if he hadn't personally done it himself.

A last thing, I have always been against torture. I consider torture to be in the same general category as murder. I am against torture or murder whether it is perpetrated by the left or the right. Heck, I'm even against capital punishment.

 

Well, I have to disagree. If non-uniformed enemy combatants (a.k.a. terrorists who can be summarily executed) have information that could save American lives and torture is the only way to get it, then pass the bamboo shoots.

 

"Summarily executed" so do you think that we should require someone to be at least a military officer before summarily executing suspected terrorists or should a Private First Class be able to make such life/death decisions? If you arrested someone that you thought to be a terrorist would it be a wise policy to let law officers also summarily execute suspected terrorists, after the proper torturing first, of course? I'll guess that your series of if's are a possible example of Bush gut think when he decided to allow torture. I do not believe that whatever was learned (if anything) was worth lowering this country to the level of being torturers. McCain is against torturing and Gitmo. Thank goodness that Bush's term is almost over. Either McCain or Obama would have been many times better than what will end on January 20.

Bruce, I think you must be a tired fellow. Please get some rest, relax, kiss the kids, make love to your dear wife and hopefully ideas of torture and summarily executing people won't be quite such attractive ideas.

 

Obviously that's not happening, or else Gitmo would be empty, would it not?

To quote gone-but-not-forgotten member Dennis Huber, you're comparing apples to moonrocks. Having been both a police officer in the United States as well as a soldier in an overseas combat theatre, I can state with authority you cannot possibly compare the two. Anyone arrested by the civil police in the United States is afforded the full protections of the US Constitution, as it should be.

However, when an enemy combatant is caught behind the front line wearing civilian clothing, they're subject to summary execution by military authorities. The infamous picture of the South Vietnamese Police Chief executing the man wearing a plaid shirt with a shot to the head from a .38 revolver is a good example; most news accounts never mention that he was Viet Cong, caught behind enemy lines in civilian clothing. Perfectly legal.

It's easy to pontificate from the moral high ground when such decisions don't impact you. If terrorists had information that could save the lives of some of your family members, I would wager my life savings you'd be first in line to torture them to extract that information.

Leave my family out of it, Bill. That's out of bounds.

 

McCain knows that condoning torture exposes Americans to such treatment if they are captured in a foreign country. Could it happen anyway? I suppose, but having a policy that says we allow torture does not bode well in the arena of foreign relations and ally building. We are supposed to be above that. Bush was to busy being the big bad cowboy Tex and it has put this country in a bad position that needs much repairing. Bush finally made some admissions regarding the war. Why did he suddenly come clean? Probably due to the fact he knows others will now (soon) have access to information that could not be obtained previously. Lord knows what will be uncovered once W and his minions are gone. This is just my humble opinion.

Abner

 

If my kind comments on your family bothered you that much then I will no longer join in any political discussion. Peace.

 

Come on fellas, let's ease up a bit. It's just politics. In the whole scheme of things, the world will not stop turning.

Abner

 

I REALLY didn't want a political forum on DegreeInfo at all, simply because all that happens is people with different viewpoints jab at each other continuously. Sort of similar to the religious arguments that happened until all of the strongly-opinionated religious people left DegreeInfo. (Which has honestly, in my opinion, made the board a lot more peaceful!!)

Adding the political discussions section was essentially a "last resort" after my attempts to get people to simply not discuss politics at all failed miserably.

I still wish that people could just not discuss things like that that simply degenerate into arguments that can never be won because of differing viewpoints