Re: Bush rag

[Klavdy]

...and you were doing so well....

Oh, alrighty then,
George Bush the worst president in 100 years: here's why
The impact of the miscalculations, insularity and ineptitude of President Bush's defining decisions that are still rippling through American society. The events of recent weeks reveal the scale of the cost of his prodigiously wasteful invasion of Iraq in 2003.
In 2013, the Watson Institute of International Studies at Brown University studied the direct cost of the war and came up with a figure of $US1.7 trillion. The indirect costs would take this figure to at least double that figure. That is a heavy burden of wasted productivity even for America.
It was President Bush, and his top advisers, who argued that the US would establish a pro-western democracy in Iraq, which would influence its neighbours. Instead, Iraq has ceased to exist as a viable nation and, along with Syria, is engulfed by the schism between Sunni and Shia Muslims. The leadership of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has been a catastrophe. The region is defined by more violence, more division and more repression than existed before the Iraq war.
The material waste has been enormous but his management of the economy cost even more. The Bush administration was part of the bipartisan deregulation of the home mortgage sector which incubated toxic loans and led to a housing bubble. Its collapse produced the financial crisis of 2008, just as Bush was departing the White House.
During his presidency, from January 2001 to January 2009, Bush inherited a $US237 billion surplus from President Bill Clinton and a national debt of $US5.6 trillion (and the tech stock bust on Wall Street) then pushed through significant tax cuts and increased spending. By the time he left office, US federal debt had almost doubled, to $US10.6 trillion, and the nation was in recession, triggered by the financial and housing crisis.
Bush's spending on massive military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, following the September 11, 2001, bombings, weakened the government's position in confronting the financial crisis of 2008. But his deficit spending pales when compared with the waste of lives and strategic equilibrium in his wars. The successful US blitzkriegs against the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 produced shock and awe and military triumphs. But they were followed by long occupations. In Iraq, it lasted nine years and cost 4805 coalition forces killed and 32,753 wounded, most of them Americans. It cost many more Iraqi lives.

Iraq does indeed no longer exist. In the south, it is a Shia-dominated client of the Iranian theocracy. In the north-east, it is a de facto Kurdistan. In the north-west it is Sunni-dominated and has been overrun by psychopaths fighting under the banner of Islamic State. Neighbouring Syria is in chaos. Lebanon is embroiled. Jordan is packed with refugees. Egypt is locked down.
The ongoing consequences of Bush's military adventurism have weakened the resolve of the United States to take action in the Middle East when a far more dangerous threat than Saddam Hussein has emerged. The Islamic state of Iran has exploited the chaos in Iraq and Syria to extend its influence. It is intent on acquiring nuclear weapons. The Iranians are talking and talking to the US while they are building and building their centrifuges. It's a con.
Iran could turn out to be a failure for Obama, but the present is linked in so many ways to Bush's past. The more I see, the worse he looks, to me the most damaging president of the past hundred years.

Paul Sheehan July 13, 2014

[Steve_in_Florida]

...and whether hooker tears make the best anal lube.

Ah! My favourite subject ^^^

Bloodhound Gang - A Lap Dance Is So Much Better When The Stripper Is Crying

[The General]

...and you were doing so well....

Oh, alrighty then,
The successful US blitzkriegs against the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 produced shock and awe and military triumphs.

Were they Dessert duelers? 

[simi_ed]

...and you were doing so well....

Oh, alrighty then,
George Bush the worst president in 100 years: here's why

<snip>
Paul Sheehan July 13, 2014[/url]

Well, a journalist has spoken, quoted by the single most offensive person on the internet, so it must be fact!  

[Pat Conlon]

Note to others: I moved this political discussion out of the "Tyres" thread to keep that discussion on track.

I find this opinion ^^ amusing seeing as though leaving that murderous bastard Sadam in control of Iraq would have resulted in far worse consequences.

The US in its struggle with its young democracy, went through its own bloody (and costly) civil war and it looks like Iraq is doing the same.

If the standing Iraqi army does not have the balls or courage (they have the equipment) to defeat the invaders, then the nation of Iraq will dissolve into 3 separate regions (Kurds, Sunni and Shia) so be it.

Either way, Iraq or no Iraq, I am happy we are out of there.

Rest assured, this Paul Sheehan weenie would be complaining about a whole different set of issues if Sadam were left charge, besides he's an Australian, so his opinion is moot.

[Burns]

"Iraq" is an invention of the British.  Before The War to Make the World Safe for Haliburton Shareholders it was held together by a strongman - much like Tito held his "country" together, and was a stronghold against the rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism in he Middle East. 

It is now shattered into its constituent parts and is a stronghold FOR Islamic fundamentalism.

Thanks very much Neo-Con men. 

I would leave aside the mendacity of the crew that sold that war to us with a fabric of lies but for the fact that these very same people are making the same pitch again. Dick Cheney and the crew is betting that America is stupid and has no memory.

Saddam was a former CIA supported assassin, when he started making oil deals "off the reservation" the big boys (Exxon et  al) got rid of him.

There is no honor is this story, just money and blood and we do not need an Act II.

[Klavdy]

It is noted that Pat's closing remark plays the man, not the ball.

[Dan Filetti]

Not quite as provocative of a thread as you'd hoped, eh Klavdy?

Dan

[The General]

Not quite as provocative of a thread as you'd hoped, eh Klavdy?

Dan

All subserviently moot down here, playing ball.

[Klavdy]

Not quite as provocative of a thread as you'd hoped, eh Klavdy?

Dan

Provocative?
Not at all, looks like everyone agrees with the statement.

[simi_ed]

Everyone named Klavdy is what you meant!