D

“Second, enhanced interrogation of terrorists. Along with use of secret prisons and wireless eavesdropping, this saved American lives..”

The other word for that would be torture. Shame on us.

In fact, the entire list could also serve as a pretty good list of what W did wrong in his eight years in the White House.

I think over time, after Bush gets older and more frail and the media stops painting him as some kind of Dark Lord, they (media) will again focus on the human that is George W. and recognize that this is a man who had to deal with more adversity and scrutiny than any person or even President had ever had to deal with. In that context, I think he will be seen as, although flawed, he had an overall decent if not, excellent Presidency.

Now that I think about it, Abraham Lincoln MIGHT have had to deal with a bit more adversity than Bush.

It’s not over ’til Glenn says it’s over. “Was is over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor, Hell No, and it’s not over now.”

@ mm I might give you Lincoln, but Bush had a little larger area of the world to be more concerned with than Lincoln did. That being, the ENTIRE globe. But I bet the emotional taxing pressure to each was about the same. Lincoln was certainly more eloquent.

another achievement that has been widely ignored: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/world/stories/DN-africalegacy_12int.ART.State.Edition1.4af6d52.html

Yeah, I can’t wait until Bush is seen as more fragile and human. Almost fragile and human like the young people who came back from Iraq in coffins after serving their country. You know, those coffins W and the Pentagon banned from being photographed, as it would be a reminder of what a bummer the unjustified war and MISSION ACCOMPLISHED display was. Yeah, human like that.

Everything George W. Bush did was right.
He has been one of the bravest commanders in chief this country has ever been blessed with. He is leaving America in far better shape than it was prior to his brillaint leadership as well as that of Karl Rove.
While the rest of the world will miss seeing him, we in Dallas are lucky enough to be able to go to his think tank as often as we want. I heard him today suggesting that he might get started on that book sooner rather than later.
God Bless George W. Bush.

Welcome Home Mr. President!

Who are you? And was your statement some sort of performance art?

@Amanda

At least our guys got coffins. There are still mass graves filled with bodies dotted in and around Iraq that I suppose MSNBC, CBS, ABC and other outlets banned themselves from photographing. But in hindsight, I suppose your right. We should have stayed out of Iraq and just have let Hussein and Ahmenidajad eventually go at each other. Sure Millions more humans would be dead but at least they wouldn’t be American humans with coffins and all.

@Obama’s seat: will be hard to re-install Saddam Hussein, with him dead and all, and without a head.

But, if it’s any consolation, in the 80s the Reagan administration was instrumental in keeping him in power: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Saddam_rumsfeld.jpg

It’s always reassuring to read praise from a Dallas journo about Fred Barnes and his minions, inc. Charles “I am SO a psychiatrist” Krauthammer.

Advantage: Black holes.

@Obama’s seat: you mentioned re-installing despots, to appease the left. (see Strawman Argument, definition)

I assumed you considered Saddam Hussein to be a despot. I apologize for the error.

Like Bill Clinton, Kerry, et al, I did consider him a despot, but I realize that it can be problematic to have a dead, headless person as head of state.

Hang in there, there’s always Afghanistan, the “good” war.

As for strawmen, see: Iraq/Iran war and our position at the time.

@mm:

“But, if it’s any consolation, in the 80s the Reagan administration was instrumental in keeping him in power:”

That’s one of the most commonly told lies from the left. Reagan had nothing to do with keeping Saddam in power. The US and Iraq weren’t allies. We didn’t sell them weapons. The Reagan Administration did five things in relation to Iraq in the 80’s.

1. Established diplomatic relations. That’s what that picture that you linked to is from, and it’s telling that the Administration only sent the Def Sec instead of a higher ranking official. The Admin didn’t think very highly of the Iraqi regime.

2. Protected Kuwaiti oil tankers that carried oil that was known to be from Iraq. This was for our benefit, not their’s.

3. Sold some unarmed civilian helicopters to Iraq.

4. Provided Iraq with satellite intelligence on Iranian troop movements.

5. Sold weapons to Iraq’s enemy, Iran.

For people in this country to think that Bin Laden’s terrorists did not have more plans for American attacks is naive (keeping the nice nice theme going). Waterboarding the terrorists to get information has been overblown: compare that treatment with what happens to those that are captured by them – beheading, dragging bodies through the streets, buried alive. They do not worry about prisoners rights or returning them alive.

Lincoln presided over a war that cost over 600,000 lives and is considered an American hero today. There is not one American soldier that does not know the risk of being in the military before they sign up. Coming home in a casket is certainly not the goal when they enter but they are doing it to keep others alive in the long run. We forget that there were more American lives lost in each of dozens of our civil war battles that lasted only a few days than have been lost in the entire Iraq war.

I for one am thankful that President Bush has served as commander in chief for the past 8 years and welcome him home to our city.

I for one am NOT thankful that W served as commander-in-chief for the past 8 years and do NOT welcome him to Dallas. He deserves to be ducking shoes for the rest of his life. His approval rating says it all, no matter what the apologists write about him.

Dubious Brother, very well put.

today reverend bush said that those helicopter drivers saved 30,000 people during katrina. the problem bush and his followers will have is that history has been recorded and videotaped. he and they can lie about it all from now till doomsday but the facts will always kick them in the tail end. even as a last ditch effort fox news created the term bush derangement syndrome, a reference that anyone who doesn’t agree with bush must be insane.

…unless you just want to say, “Suck it, liberals!” That’s the only the thing Rove et al have been any good at – pissing off the left. If they spent half the time considering Iraqi history that they do coming up with attacks on Hollywood and “the elite” then maybe things would be going a little better.

I still like pie.

If those of you filling yet another thread with your “Bush is teh war criminal!111!!eleventy!!111″ nonsense would venture outside your liberal cocoon once in a while you’d discover that only three people have been waterboarded. There have actually been more people waterboarded during protests. And if you’ll look at the end of that first link, you’ll see a list of the enhanced interrogation techniques used by the CIA. If you have the sensibilities of a delicate little flower, you might view them as torture, but normal people won’t.

And since Obama has decided to keep Bush’s policies intact such as keeping the people responsible for those enhanced interrogation techniques at the CIA, voting for FISA, keeping Guantanamo open, sending more troops to Afghanistan and so on, you’ll no doubt be calling him a war criminal and marching in the streets against him as well. Oh, wait…..

@Brett:
Obama has decided to keep Bush’s policies intact such as…keeping Guantanamo open

Brett is discredited, I’d go with the delicate little flower.

Brett, if President Elect Obama continues the policies of torture, secret prisons, and rendition, I will in fact criticize him with the same vigor that I did President Bush. I never called him a war criminal, but I don’t think that you have to have the sensibility of a little flower, to believe that torture is wrong and that it violates domestic law and international treaties. I have known people suffering torture in African hellhole prisons, and it’s shameful to me to be in that awful company.

brett you must be thrilled to think that obama will continue the policies of bush.
since you loved bush, you should double love
obama. although he may not be able to clear fake brush like bush.

@Julie and Sid

Here’s the link from Sid (it accidentally got a couple extra letters in it and didn’t work). If you’ll read it, you’ll see this -

It’s unlikely the detention facility at the Navy base in Cuba will be closed anytime soon. In an interview last weekend, Obama said it would be “a challenge” to close it even within the first 100 days of his administration.

But the order, which one adviser said could be issued as early as Jan. 20, would start the process of deciding what to do with the estimated 250 al-Qaida and Taliban suspects and potential witnesses who are being held there.

In other words, Gitmo isn’t going anywhere. Obama is doing what he always does, he says what liberals want to hear and then he throws them under the bus.

How can one possibly accuse Dallas residents of never leaving their liberal cocoon? Headscratcher, that.

So…. a report comes out today that was done 2 years ago, when they polled HISTORIANS about the then current times and how we will look back in history sometime in the far future? And done by CBS news? Where is Sienna College and how did they tenure 744 historians? And what the hell are the qualifications to be an official ‘historian’? Does one put that on their card? Statistics lie and liars use statistics.

The next time you think about how horrible Bush is, think about one thing. Mass graves. If you have not had the experience of a mass grave (and I hope you never do), imagine this:
You approach from upwind because the smell of rotting corpses will make you double over and vomit. You smear a healthy dollup of menthol or camphor under your nose to overwhelm your sense of smell. It almost works, but you can still smell death. You follow a predetermined path to reach the gravesite (landmines kill very well), since the men who carried out this crime want as few witnesses to their misdeeds as possible. If the killers had time and a few bags of lime, the bodies will be well on their way into decomposition. Consider yourself lucky. If you get there while the bodies are bloated, you may get an unwelcome surprise. You can often find the gravesite by watching where the feral dogs are digging. They were not abandoned by their owners; their owners are in the hole. After you remove the thin layer of dirt that covers the first layer of bodies, the real ‘fun’ begins. The task of identifying remains is arduous and will scar your soul.

If you have read this far, you should know that George W Bush has helped end the practice of fratricide and genocide in the country of Iraq. Mass graves were the du jour way of dealing with political malcontents under the regime of Saddam Hussein. Even if GWBs primary intent was something else, I will always be grateful that he ended Baath party rule in Iraq.

I experienced my first mass grave when I went to protect Muslims in Bosnia from Christian and Catholic genocide. I am grateful that President Clinton had the cajones to do what was right on that occasion as well. Set politics aside and try to see our leaders as people who we elect to make difficult and heart wrenching decisions everyday. The sword of Damocles will hang over Obama as well and we should all pray he makes the right decisions and protects our nation and our rights.

History will look back on the last eight years and the real story will be about how petty we all were as a nation of whiners and miscontents…

Here ! Here! El Rey. Gracias.

elrey
while personal attacks on this blog are only
acceptable if they are made by a right winger. i will answer your question without a attacking you.
we don’t know how many iraqis are in mass graves due to americans. we are not even allowed to see the coffins of those who have returned home. the united states government will not allow for an accurate count. i could suggest several sites to check it out, but not one of them are related to fox news.

so you tell me. how many people do you think have died as a result of this war about wmd’s. i have seen figures as high as 1.4 million and as low as 600,000.

for some reason you seem more insulted by an open grave than by a death.

oh i missed that. hey i saw a dog water ski once but i don’t think all dogs should be forced to do it.

When does The Fred Barnes Comedy Hour start on Comedy Central. The guys “hi”larious!! No Child Left Behind a success (chortle, chortle). The Medicare Drug Plan a success (guffaw, guffaw).

@ Brother
No, its just that many people can only seem to wrap their tiny little brains around the quite successful propagandized notion that the sole reason for invading Iraq was because of WMD’s. There were at least 10 other compelling reasons as well, ( attacks in the no fly zone, kicking out of weapons inspectors, defiance of UN 13 times, a U.S. government policy of regime change ordered by the Clinton administration,…etc., and Saddam PRing that he did indeed hold WMD’s.) Take in account that we did find all the components in Iraq to make WMD’s (hint: they’re in Canada now) after the war started and all Saddam had to do was put them together like Lego’s to combine with his rebuilt army funded from under the table oil deals with such allies as France and Germany along with the rise of Shia power in Iran under a just as nutty as a leader Ahmadinejad and yea, I think a million dead is a conservative estimate of loss of life in that region.

It is not a question of ‘if.’

As a mega Superpower, our country has the moral responsibility to prevent, stop, or at the very least minimize genocides, wars, and basic inhumanities IF we are capable of doing so. Its what we have done since at least WWII and what many countries fail to do or even attempt. You didn’t see China jumping in to stop the Somali warlords, you didn’t see Europe jumping in to stop the Serbs without us in their own back yard, you don’t see Russia doing anything about Darfur or AIDS in Africa, and you didn’t see anyone leading but the U.S. of A. rushing to stop Saddam in the first Gulf war. Iraq was posturing to start another war with Iran and we were a nuisance to Saddam. Had we sat back, it probably would have been Armageddon complete with Israel involvement causing such a domino effect that a million dead would be lucky.

Yes,
It is nice to see that Hamas has stopped using their women and children for suicide attacks and evolved to the more humane Hezbolah trained tactics of random rocket attacks into heavily populated areas. Ahhh….progress for the sake of THE CHILDREN.