Bushisms

[femme Fatale]

And too think, one more VERY long week of this before inauguration!

 

[Hear Again]

mmm, im not so sure about your accents comment, yes sure, so long as everyone all over the US can understand you, you are never going to rid it, but for example if I talked scots with full accent, none of the english would understand, nor the welsh, you ahve to be understood by the people you represent or else whats the point?
it's not the accent thats the problem anyway, he's as thick as 2 short planks, he could have got away with being a texan if his IQ reached double figures.
the US really lost alot of respect from the rest of the world voting in such a numpty barely able to string a sentence together, he is the perfect example money can buy votes in the US or at least the media to help pull the wool over their eyes, good bye and good riddance mr bush

<counting the days until january 20th>

 

[deafskeptic]

And too think, one more VERY long week of this before inauguration!

LOL. Another week of the President mangling the English language. He made the rest of us look dumb.

 

[Hear Again]

LOL. Another week of the President mangling the English language. He made the rest of us look dumb.

he sure did. it will be so refreshing to *finally* have someone in the white house who can speak coherently.

 

[Steel X]

let's see....

President Bush
1. worst rating in the history
2. the most unpopular & corrupted president in the history
3. the highest national debt in the history
4. arguably the most blatant criminal in the history who won't even get prosecuted
5. Probably the most hated man in the world

VP Al Gore
1. Noble Peace Prize winner
2. major driving force in revolutionizing Internet
3. raised awareness in global warming and probably one of few major influences in pushing for green friendly policy
4. people rather listen to Gore's dull lecture than Bush's repetitive 9/11 this, 9/11 that talk

I guess after all... Gore didn't need grad school to accomplish what he accomplished...

If Gore was president instead of Bush, proably that none of this crap would've happened.

 

[Jiro]

If Gore was president instead of Bush, proably that none of this crap would've happened.

or it could be more or less worse. I believe 9/11 and recession were inevitable events. I'm not sure I'd be comfortable with Gore as Command-in-Chief for that. Recession? sure why not. 9/11? hhmmm not comfortable. In fact - I was never comfortable with a Democrat President being Commander-in-Chief (a military role) so I'm hoping Obama will be an exception.

 

[Hear Again]

or it could be more or less worse. I believe 9/11 and recession were inevitable events. I'm not sure I'd be comfortable with Gore as Command-in-Chief for that. Recession? sure why not. 9/11? hhmmm not comfortable. In fact - I was never comfortable with a Democrat President being Commander-in-Chief (a military role) so I'm hoping Obama will be an exception.

what about abraham lincoln during the american civil war or bill clinton during kosovo and samalia? they both were excellent leaders during a time of war.

 

[Jiro]

what about abraham lincoln during the american civil war or bill clinton during kosovo and samalia? they both were excellent leaders during a time of war.

Abraham Lincoln was a Republican.

Bill Clinton did OK in Somalia but he made some flawed military decisions. Democrat Presidents are known to make a deep slash on defense budget... which was what Clinton did. handful of Generals and key players left to join private sector. Clinton emphasized on technology rather than people (spy). Because of that - it led to a deep hole in our intelligence capability which led to 9/11. Nothing can beat gathering intelligence in old fashioned way... no matter if you have several billion-dollars state-of-art satellites.

 

[BradB08]

Abraham Lincoln was a Republican.

Bill Clinton did OK in Somalia but he made some flawed military decisions. Democrat Presidents are known to make a deep slash on defense budget... which was what Clinton did. handful of Generals and key players left to join private sector. Clinton emphasized on technology rather than people (spy). Because of that - it led to a deep hole in our intelligence capability which led to 9/11. Nothing can beat gathering intelligence in old fashioned way... no matter if you have several billion-dollars state-of-art satellites.

Clinton didn't cut military spending as much as George H.W Bush did:

FactCheck.org: N.H. Debate: The GOP Field

Giuliani: Bill Clinton cut the military drastically. It's called the peace dividend, one of those nice-sounding phrases, very devastating. It was a 25, 30 percent cut in the military. President Bush has never made up for that. We – our Army had been at 725,000; it's down to 500,000.

Actually, most of the cutting to which Giuliani refers occurred during the administration of George H.W. Bush. At the end of fiscal year 1993 (which was Bush’s last one in office), the Army had 572,423 active-duty soldiers – a far cry from 725,000. In fact, to get to that number, one has to go back to 1990, during the first gulf war. Moreover, Clinton’s cuts in the military, while large, were nowhere close to 25 percent to 30 percent. Between 1993 and 2001, the Army went from 572,423 to 480,801, which is a decline of 16 percent. The entire military went from 1,705,103 to 1,385,116, a decrease of 18.8 percent.

Compare that with the far larger cuts made during the first Bush administration: In 1989, the military stood at 2,130,229 and the Army had 769,741 soldiers. By 1993, those numbers had declined by 19.9 percent and 25.6 percent, respectively.

And as we’ve pointed out before, it was the first Bush administration – specifically then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney – that began bragging openly of the peace dividend.

 

[Hear Again]

Abraham Lincoln was a Republican.

Bill Clinton did OK in Somalia but he made some flawed military decisions. Democrat Presidents are known to make a deep slash on defense budget... which was what Clinton did. handful of Generals and key players left to join private sector. Clinton emphasized on technology rather than people (spy). Because of that - it led to a deep hole in our intelligence capability which led to 9/11. Nothing can beat gathering intelligence in old fashioned way... no matter if you have several billion-dollars state-of-art satellites.

i was thinking about war presidents and typed abraham lincoln on a whim. my bad. :Oops:

 

[Hear Again]

Clinton didn't cut military spending as much as George H.W Bush did:

FactCheck.org: N.H. Debate: The GOP Field

i was just about to mention that, but you beat me to it.

if anyone is to blame for 9/11, it's george h. w. bush.

 

[Hear Again]

or it could be more or less worse. I believe 9/11 and recession were inevitable events. I'm not sure I'd be comfortable with Gore as Command-in-Chief for that. Recession? sure why not. 9/11? hhmmm not comfortable. In fact - I was never comfortable with a Democrat President being Commander-in-Chief (a military role) so I'm hoping Obama will be an exception.

jiro,

if given the choice between george w. bush and al gore as commander in chief, which one would you pick and why?

 

[Hear Again]

If Gore was president instead of Bush, proably that none of this crap would've happened.

i think our economy would have been better off as well.

 

[BradB08]

i was just about to mention that, but you beat me to it.

if anyone is to blame for 9/11, it's george h. w. bush.

Actually, the new world order is to blame for 9/11 and its' aftermath.

 

[Jiro]

Clinton didn't cut military spending as much as George H.W Bush did:

FactCheck.org: N.H. Debate: The GOP Field

Here's an opinion article from NY Times -

Winning With the Military Clinton Left Behind

Some would prefer to credit Ronald Reagan or President Bush's father with the fine military this country now possesses. They rescued the armed forces from a post-Vietnam malaise and made the overwhelming victory in Desert Storm possible. They were also much more popular among America's military personnel than Bill Clinton ever was.

But Bill Clinton did not squander their legacy. The performance of American forces in the Balkans in the late 1990's and in Afghanistan in 2001 has been outstanding. And the military has wielded new weapons and new concepts in these recent campaigns that it did not possess during Desert Storm: several types of guided weapons, unmanned aerial vehicles, near-real-time communications systems.

There were some setbacks. The Clinton administration misused military power during its first year in office in Somalia and then in Haiti; the results were needless American deaths in the first instance and a poorly planned, aborted mission in the second. Morale was low, and recruitment and retention posed problems. Cuts in defense spending to help balance the federal budget went too far in some cases -- until the Republican Congress stepped in and insisted on adding money for the Pentagon. And the Clinton administration and the uniformed military struggled with how to sustain numerous small missions overseas without overusing certain parts of the armed forces.

Despite these problems, which put a drag on military readiness, statistical measures of combat preparedness -- the condition of equipment, training standards met by pilots and troops, aptitude scores and experience levels of personnel -- compared relatively favorably with those in the Reagan years. And by the end of Mr. Clinton's second term, increases in pay and innovations in the force structure helped to resolve some of the morale, recruiting and retention problems that had been serious in the mid-90's.

Of course, the main credit for the quality of America's military must go to its own personnel. But the victory in Afghanistan, coming on the heels of the successful action against Serbia in 1999, shows that the Clinton administration maintained a strong and focused military able to carry out a post-cold war mission.

I agree with half of the article. Yes it is arguable that what Clinton Administration did was credited for Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Iraq because of advanced weapons. Clinton Administration adjusted the defense budget to emphasize on technology rather than personnel. Because of that - the special forces & intelligence capability was reduced.

Osama bin Laden: missed opportunities
Under Clinton Administration - they actually had Osama bin Laden in their sight but there were legal trouble within White House about "assassinating" bin Laden. They wanted to capture him alive rather than killing him because of legal issue.

The tape proves the Clinton administration was aggressively tracking al-Qaida a year before 9/11. But that also raises one enormous question: If the U.S. government had bin Laden and the camps in its sights in real time, why was no action taken against them?

“We were not prepared to take the military action necessary,” said retired Gen. Wayne Downing, who ran counter-terror efforts for the current Bush administration and is now an NBC analyst.

“We should have had strike forces prepared to go in and react to this intelligence, certainly cruise missiles — either air- or sea-launched — very, very accurate, could have gone in and hit those targets,” Downing added.

Gary Schroen, a former CIA station chief in Pakistan, says the White House required the CIA to attempt to capture bin Laden alive, rather than kill him.

What impact did the wording of the orders have on the CIA’s ability to get bin Laden? “It reduced the odds from, say, a 50 percent chance down to, say, 25 percent chance that we were going to be able to get him,” said Schroen.

A Democratic member of the 9/11 commission says there was a larger issue: The Clinton administration treated bin Laden as a law enforcement problem.

“We used military force, we used covert operations, we used all of the tools available to us because we realized what a serious threat this was,” said President Clinton’s former national security adviser James Steinberg.

One Clinton Cabinet official said, looking back, the military should have been more involved, “We did a lot, but we did not see the gathering storm that was out there.”

bullshit. Clinton didn't have balls to do it.

 

[Hear Again]

Actually, the new world order is to blame for 9/11 and its' aftermath.

i thought the purpose of the new world order was to maintain global peace, safety and security.

 

[Jiro]

jiro,

if given the choice between george w. bush and al gore as commander in chief, which one would you pick and why?

tough choice but most likely GWB as Commander-in-Chief compared to Gore. He did what he had to do that Gore could not do. I mean... GWB is like Jack Bauer. He disregarded the laws to get the job done and to authorize illegal torture to get information. That's the kind of man I want to make an extremely difficult & impossible decision but unfortunately.... GWB executed it poorly. very poorly. but somehow... I applauded him for making an impossible decision and another and another and another that no one can do.

I tend to favor a hardliner approach most of time but this time - the hardliner will have to stfu and sit down. Right now - I think Obama will be able to repair the war mess caused by GWB but I don't think I can count on Obama to make an extremely difficult military decision if something worse than 9/11 happens. What worries me is that Obama Administration will review the laws regarding conduct of wars to specify/narrow down the scope of laws. There's a reason why that laws were left alone for several decades to stay as broad as possible because the time changes, warfare changes. USA needs to be flexible to adapt to that change. To narrow down the scope of laws will severely hamper the USA's war effort in the future.

If you're going to do everything by the book and refuse to shoot down a hijacked plane carrying hundred of civilians to save thousands of other civilians.... sorry that's not the kind of man I want as Commander-in-Chief.

Bush's Army—or Bill's?

However, in another sense, Bush—or at least the Bush administration—does deserve credit for the victory. In the most basic consideration, Clinton probably would not have fought this war, at least not in the way it was fought. When Clinton confronted the Serbs over Kosovo, he firmly resisted using U.S. ground forces—beating back proposals even to threaten putting troops on the ground as a bargaining lever. He also directed that all U.S. pilots fly above 10,000 feet, well beyond the range of Serbian air-defense missiles. He wanted no American combat casualties—and he got none. It is impossible to say whether Clinton would have loosened his standards in a war with Iraq (assuming for a moment that he would have gone to war with Iraq). But it is a fair judgment that Clinton had little appetite for wars that would kill American soldiers. It is doubtful that he would have approved the sort of bold, swift, and unabashedly risky offensive that Bush approved for Gulf War II. It was to a large extent Clinton's arsenal. It was Bush's war.

 

[Hear Again]

...but we haven't won the war yet. bush *wants* us to think that we have (as evidenced by his hastiness in hanging a "mission accomplished" sign on the uss abraham lincoln), but when it comes right down to it, we will *never* win the "war on terror."

 

[BradB08]

i thought the purpose of the new world order was to maintain global peace, safety and security.

I'm afraid not.

 

[BradB08]

...but we haven't won the war yet. bush *wants* us to think that we have (as evidenced by his hastiness in hanging a "mission accomplished" sign on the uss abraham lincoln), but when it comes right down to it, we will *never* win the "war on terror."

No one has won and no one will win this war. It is like Vietnam. No winner.