George W Bush: I Have Come To Realise Power Can Be Corrosive

[Mosha]

At least this thread will permit all you US haters to get your rocks off at Bush.

All of you folks claiming he is stupid does not speak well for a couple of highly regarded Ivy League Universities. Bush obtained a Bachelor's Degree from Yale University and graduated with an MBA from Harvard Business School.

A couple of other items you folks might not realize. Bush could not have gone to war in Iraq and Afghanistan without the support of the Democratic party. They (Clinton, Kerry et al) voted FOR the wars.

This little comment can easily be applied to the current resident of the White House:

"To vote for an idiot once is unfortunate. To vote for him twice is carelessness."

Look at it this way. If the US administration and military kept their noses out of the business of other countries, there would be a great deal less criticism.

Like WW2 and Korea??? And probably your country too?

Quotes are a bit messed up but Korea was a UN operation where a certain general lost the plot. If the US had stayed out of WWII, you would have been fighting on your own turf later, Some of your brave lads I believe saw this and signed up to fight for the UK. Eventually the US joined in. The rest, as they say, is history.

[F430murci]

I chalk him up as a man of integrity and principles who was led to that position by power hungry (and evil) men who then used him to pursue their agenda(s).

Had it not been for Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, I think he would have done okay. Not the best, but certainly not the tragedy his time in office proved to be.

Sadly, it will take the USA 100 years to live down that legacy. And I don't know if we have 100 years.

He appointed all those guys and is responsible for allowing them to pursue their agendas. You can delegate authority but you can't delegate responsibility.

The sad part is I think his dad picked them and they all picked Jr. I think later in his Presidency he began to realize he was used and things got really out of hand.

I think he is a good guy deep down inside. He just had no cecept of power and responsibility at that level. It was like make believe or a video game early on and he did what people told him was right.

So much money vanished into a black hole abyss under him and generated absolutely huge wealth for some select few. The financial losses in 2008 were so huge NO ONE could put a number on it. That money landed somewhere. I wonder where?

[Microwave]

I find it vile that Bush 2 receives any attention at all as he left such a deep scar on the world.

[Loptr]

I am nohh a smarrrt man.

His IQ is reportedly 126. He is far from stupid.

By the same token, some of the smartest people I know are ignorant as hell.

[Loptr]

I chalk him up as a man of integrity and principles who was led to that position by power hungry (and evil) men who then used him to pursue their agenda(s).

Had it not been for Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, I think he would have done okay. Not the best, but certainly not the tragedy his time in office proved to be.

Sadly, it will take the USA 100 years to live down that legacy. And I don't know if we have 100 years.

Whaaaaatttttt? The US goes from a fiscal surplus to being over $10 Trillion in debt during his term AND the US enacts 2 wars which were later proven to be based on lies and false intelligence and you say his administration "not the tragedy his time in office proved to be". GWB, along with the other 3 horsemen of the apocalypse did more to destroy the image, position and stability of the US than any other president in history. His legacy is as such and his only saving grace is that Mr Obama is screwing the pooch worse than GWB ever thought possible.

If you want a little insight as to who was pulling the strings behind the scenes, the read this book.

http://www.familyofsecrets.com/

[Loptr]

Power corrupts. If he didn't realise that before he took office he wasn't fit for the job.

I wonder who really had the power. He's too dim to run a hairdryer let alone an aggressive military power. It must have been those shadowy figures who always stood by his shoulder.

Whoever wrote his little speech should be sacked. How on earth could he be prompted to say words to the effect that 'he doesn't 'feel sorry for them' and that they were 'volunteers' in war'? He never did have much in the way of speaking skills, I suppose.

GWB was never fit for the job. Every time he would speak in public I was sure spit would dribble down his chin. The guy was an embarrassment to the stature of the US. He was viewed as a complete and total moron in every country I visited during his tenure. I got sick and tired of having to apologize for being an American due to this idiot's administration. He is personally responsible for the deaths of 100s of thousands of Iraqi's and had the audacity to make jokes about it during a speech where he commented that those darned WMDs must be somewhere. To which the audience laughs. The hubris turns my stomach.

This was yet another media blitzkrieg and people behind the scenes manipulating reality that got GWB into office. Then there is the 2000 hanging chad, triple recount, the governor of FL is my brother election.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_tFKa2_YBQ

What a idiot.

[F430murci]

I am nohh a smarrrt man.

His IQ is reportedly 126. He is far from stupid.

By the same token, some of the smartest people I know are ignorant as hell.

No doubt about it. IQ not always correlate with common sense, but take a look at people like Paul Allen, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and etc. IQ sure served those guys well.

[surangw]

Politicians are the corrosive agent in all this.

Most run for office to satisfy their huge egos

[F430murci]

Hi IQ or not, he can't string together a coherent sentence and his grammar is appalling:

"One of the very difficult parts of the decision I made on the financial crisis was to use hardworking people's money to help prevent there to be a crisis." --George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Jan. 12, 2009[/size]

"I've been in the Bible every day since I've been the president." --George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Nov. 12, 2008[/size]

*Deleted quote edited out*

Actually, I think power was given to him by his daddy and his daddy's connections on capital hill. I think a retarded pedeophile could have run in 2000 on anti abortion and still win as the Christian right needed to act due to the upcoming Supreme Court justice retirements. They did not care who or what what for President as long as they regained a majority in the Supreme Court.

What Bush did with the power was not short of miraculous. Took a country with a strong market, booming business, booming housing market, booming commercial lending, solid GDP, a balanced budget and . . .

7 1/2 years later all of out largest banks were insolvent (bankrupt, gone, failed), AIG was insolvent which would have taken down the little guys like State Farm, Allstate and maybe even CNA due to reinsurance, had most the terrorist related deaths inside US on his watch, stock market lost 60 %, Americans lost more wealth than any other time in history, 10 Trillion debt, and our housing and commercial lending market was decimated.

Yep, nothing wrong here. Attaboy G.W. Great job!

Edited June 2, 2013 by Scott

[Publicus]

@impulse

Powell lied and he knew he was lying.

The major Western intelligence agencies knew there weren't any WMD in Iraq, so why was the "good guy" Powell the only non-neocon the only guy not to know? The former director of French intelligence said last year he watched Powell very closely at the UNSC meeting and saw that Powell knew he was lying.

Even trying to give the guy credit for being "duped," he'd have to be pretty stupid. If Powell had been duped then he should have resigned and blown the whole scam wide open. Powell instead was too enamored with himself in his job to quit it. He, even more than Bush, fell in love with power, was corroded by it and corroded others around him. Being "duped" on this should have caused Powell to clear his name in history and to do the morally right thing, which was to have resigned.

The guy's a sleazebag who fits Dumbya's own self-description of being duped by power, authority, prestige, status, self-importance. Powell earned his stars in the White House, not on the battlefield; During the Vietnam War Major Powell's report on the My Lai massacre hedged and contributed no understanding of it, concluding that relations between the Vietnamese people and U.S. soldiers were "good." Powell never held a major military command yet was advanced by Bush the father to chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.

Rather than lie, Powell should have resigned. If it were a matter of his having been "duped," then he was astoundingly stupid and should have resigned to disassociate himself from the lies.

Pathetic

[marinediscoking]

Sorry, he comes off as pretty darned stupid.

If he really has a high IQ, that doesn't mean he used it.

Clearly his bizarre fundamentalism (God talks to him when making big decisions, yeah right) was a crutch.

His Iraq war invasion was the biggest foreign policy mistake in American history.

I think the legal right to own slaves brought from Africa was America's biggest foreign policy mistake in its history. Especially since several Presidents were slave owners.

[farang000999]

I am sure GWB would have still gone to Yale and Harvard if his father wasn't the Head of the CIA and from one of the wealthiest families in America.

[wooloomooloo]

Clearly his bizarre fundamentalism (God talks to him when making big decisions, yeah right) was a crutch.

Getting God involved in policy has been popular in the past.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/4773124.stm

[OldChinaHam]

Is he coming out with a new children's colouring book?

Last time he read to children was the day of 9-11, wasn't it?

This man is incapable of any valid introspection whatsoever

Totally blind when it comes to the subject of the self.

[NeverSure]

Sorry, he comes off as pretty darned stupid.

If he really has a high IQ, that doesn't mean he used it.

Clearly his bizarre fundamentalism (God talks to him when making big decisions, yeah right) was a crutch.

His Iraq war invasion was the biggest foreign policy mistake in American history.

England provided one-third of the troops for the Iraq invasion. There were more than 20 countries in that invasion, including Thailand.

Tony Blair stood before his country and stated that there were weapons of mass destruction which had to be taken out.

Now of course it's all Bush's fault. Certainly it's all the US fault. Never mind that Britain has high quality intelligence who themselves said there were WMDs,

Both the US Congress and the British Parliament voted to go to war. That's a lot of people. Even liberal Democrats in the US congress voted to declare war on Iraq.

So how do you explain Britain providing 1/3 of the troops with approval from Parliament, along with 20 other countries, and then blame Bush?

Your revisionist history makes you look like what you are, speaking of IQ.

I blame it all on Tony Blair and the Brits.

Why other countries joined in is easy to explain.

'You are either with us or against us'.

So with the US being an economic power the smaller countries just joined in to not be offside with the good old US of A.

Also many countries had very little intelligence on WMD as most of that intelligence came from the USA. So most of the world believed Bush when he lied about the WMD's and just hoped they would be found.

Now that the majority of the world knows the US govt will lie to them to get their own way they may not be so quick to back them next time.

You're kidding, right? The UK doesn't have really good intelligence of its own? 1/3 of the troops which invaded Iraq were British. Tony Blair told his nation there were WMDs from the UK's intelligence. The UK told the world there were WMD's.

What's a WMD? I never heard anyone say he had nukes. Saddam Hussein had killed thousands of people with poison gas during the Anfal campaign. His own people tried him and hanged him.

I didn't support the invasion of Iraq, believing that it was up to the people to get rid of Hussein if that was their choice. Many countries have had revolutions to remove leaders and I felt that was up to the people if they wanted it.

I didn't vote for or support Bush either although I now think Gore would have been worse. He's crazy.

But I don't buy the idea that anyone lied. Many think those WMD's were moved to Syria as Hussein saw the invasion coming. Many believe they are still there. I don't think anyone on this forum really knows what happened but I put my beliefs on the clear fact that the British intelligence, on their own, also believed the WMD's were there and voted to go to war.

Too many make this into an American invasion which it wasn't. More than 20 countries including Thailand provided troops for that invasion.

I think this is another hate America thread, not an objective thread.

[OldChinaHam]

Sorry, he comes off as pretty darned stupid.

If he really has a high IQ, that doesn't mean he used it.

Clearly his bizarre fundamentalism (God talks to him when making big decisions, yeah right) was a crutch.

His Iraq war invasion was the biggest foreign policy mistake in American history.

England provided one-third of the troops for the Iraq invasion. There were more than 20 countries in that invasion, including Thailand.

Tony Blair stood before his country and stated that there were weapons of mass destruction which had to be taken out.

Now of course it's all Bush's fault. Certainly it's all the US fault. Never mind that Britain has high quality intelligence who themselves said there were WMDs,

Both the US Congress and the British Parliament voted to go to war. That's a lot of people. Even liberal Democrats in the US congress voted to declare war on Iraq.

So how do you explain Britain providing 1/3 of the troops with approval from Parliament, along with 20 other countries, and then blame Bush?

Your revisionist history makes you look like what you are, speaking of IQ.

I blame it all on Tony Blair and the Brits.

Why other countries joined in is easy to explain.

'You are either with us or against us'.

So with the US being an economic power the smaller countries just joined in to not be offside with the good old US of A.

Also many countries had very little intelligence on WMD as most of that intelligence came from the USA. So most of the world believed Bush when he lied about the WMD's and just hoped they would be found.

Now that the majority of the world knows the US govt will lie to them to get their own way they may not be so quick to back them next time.

You're kidding, right? The UK doesn't have really good intelligence of its own? 1/3 of the troops which invaded Iraq were British. Tony Blair told his nation there were WMDs from the UK's intelligence. The UK told the world there were WMD's.

What's a WMD? I never heard anyone say he had nukes. Saddam Hussein had killed thousands of people with poison gas during the Anfal campaign. His own people tried him and hanged him.

I didn't support the invasion of Iraq, believing that it was up to the people to get rid of Hussein if that was their choice. Many countries have had revolutions to remove leaders and I felt that was up to the people if they wanted it.

I didn't vote for or support Bush either although I now think Gore would have been worse. He's crazy.

But I don't buy the idea that anyone lied. Many think those WMD's were moved to Syria as Hussein saw the invasion coming. Many believe they are still there. I don't think anyone on this forum really knows what happened but I put my beliefs on the clear fact that the British intelligence, on their own, also believed the WMD's were there and voted to go to war.

Too many make this into an American invasion which it wasn't. More than 20 countries including Thailand provided troops for that invasion.

I think this is another hate America thread, not an objective thread.

Please look at the relative numbers of troops supplied by each of the 20 countries and then you might wish to rethink this a little.

[F430murci]

No one is hating in America. Just criticizing the decision to invade Iraq a second time which may be one of the costliest blunders ever. Although it sure did make all the Halliburton guys wealthy.

Criticizing a bad decision of a President, that actually made a lot of bad decisions, is nit hating in America at all. Unusual projection there.

[NeverSure]

No one is hating in America. Just criticizing the decision to invade Iraq a second time which may be one of the costliest blunders ever. Although it sure did make all the Halliburton guys wealthy.

Criticizing a bad decision of a President, that actually made a lot of bad decisions, is nit hating in America at all. Unusual projection there.

I'm saying that Tony Blair and Great Britain were in it up to their eyeballs, but they get a pass.

[NeverSure]

England provided one-third of the troops for the Iraq invasion. There were more than 20 countries in that invasion, including Thailand.

Tony Blair stood before his country and stated that there were weapons of mass destruction which had to be taken out.

Now of course it's all Bush's fault. Certainly it's all the US fault. Never mind that Britain has high quality intelligence who themselves said there were WMDs,

Both the US Congress and the British Parliament voted to go to war. That's a lot of people. Even liberal Democrats in the US congress voted to declare war on Iraq.

So how do you explain Britain providing 1/3 of the troops with approval from Parliament, along with 20 other countries, and then blame Bush?

Your revisionist history makes you look like what you are, speaking of IQ.

I blame it all on Tony Blair and the Brits.

Why other countries joined in is easy to explain.

'You are either with us or against us'.

So with the US being an economic power the smaller countries just joined in to not be offside with the good old US of A.

Also many countries had very little intelligence on WMD as most of that intelligence came from the USA. So most of the world believed Bush when he lied about the WMD's and just hoped they would be found.

Now that the majority of the world knows the US govt will lie to them to get their own way they may not be so quick to back them next time.

You're kidding, right? The UK doesn't have really good intelligence of its own? 1/3 of the troops which invaded Iraq were British. Tony Blair told his nation there were WMDs from the UK's intelligence. The UK told the world there were WMD's.

What's a WMD? I never heard anyone say he had nukes. Saddam Hussein had killed thousands of people with poison gas during the Anfal campaign. His own people tried him and hanged him.

I didn't support the invasion of Iraq, believing that it was up to the people to get rid of Hussein if that was their choice. Many countries have had revolutions to remove leaders and I felt that was up to the people if they wanted it.

I didn't vote for or support Bush either although I now think Gore would have been worse. He's crazy.

But I don't buy the idea that anyone lied. Many think those WMD's were moved to Syria as Hussein saw the invasion coming. Many believe they are still there. I don't think anyone on this forum really knows what happened but I put my beliefs on the clear fact that the British intelligence, on their own, also believed the WMD's were there and voted to go to war.

Too many make this into an American invasion which it wasn't. More than 20 countries including Thailand provided troops for that invasion.

I think this is another hate America thread, not an objective thread.

Please look at the relative numbers of troops supplied by each of the 20 countries and then you might wish to rethink this a little.

Well according to this, GB supplied about 25% of the troops. Other reports have been 1/3. Whichever it is, Tony Blair and the UK government voted for the invasion based on their own intelligence and participated, but they always get a pass.

I disagreed with the invasion at the time because I thought if the Iraqi people didn't like their leader it was up to them to have a revolution. I've always thought it was a mistake.

But giving Great Britain a pass and blaming only Bush or the US is incredibly naive. (I didn't like Bush either.) If you think about the population of the US and of Great Britain, per capita Great Britain had a greater involvement. That matters to me as to commitment level.

Just don't give all other countries a pass. Great Britain has great foreign intelligence and is capable of making its own decisions.

[SunSeek01]

You can read the lead up to the war on Wiki. It is far from simple as some seem to think. Then there's the little issue of 500 train cars of yellow cake (which Canada took), anthrax and more found in IQ. Still a mistake sure, based on bad intel. But heck, they were shooting at our jets daily in the no fly zone, makes you mad yeah ? I'd take an honest person over what we have now any day.

Edited June 1, 2013 by SunSeek01

[F430murci]

I heat the free pass thing, but Bush completely and totally initiated the process. Great Britian would have never even considered invading Iraq but for US and I am afraid that they had little option but to participate. US was clearly posturing the for us or against us.

Candidly, I don't care what Blair or Great Britian did or didn't do. We the US tax payers are paying and will be paying for this mistake for a long time.

[impulse]

Sorry, he comes off as pretty darned stupid.

If he really has a high IQ, that doesn't mean he used it.

Clearly his bizarre fundamentalism (God talks to him when making big decisions, yeah right) was a crutch.

His Iraq war invasion was the biggest foreign policy mistake in American history.

I think the legal right to own slaves brought from Africa was America's biggest foreign policy mistake in its history. Especially since several Presidents were slave owners.

Except that wasn't an American mistake. That was a European mistake that took the Americans way too long to rectify. Slavery in America began long before Americans were in any position to dictate policy in the New World.

[OldChinaHam]

"I disagreed with the invasion at the time because I thought if the Iraqi people didn't like their leader it was up to them to have a revolution. I've always thought it was a mistake."

Very, very true. This should almost always be the policy, every time. But we do not go to war to help others, we go to war for other reasons.

[pmarlin]

Power corrupts. If he didn't realise that before he took office he wasn't fit for the job.

I wonder who really had the power. He's too dim to run a hairdryer let alone an aggressive military power. It must have been those shadowy figures who always stood by his shoulder.

Whoever wrote his little speech should be sacked. How on earth could he be prompted to say words to the effect that 'he doesn't 'feel sorry for them' and that they were 'volunteers' in war'? He never did have much in the way of speaking skills, I suppose.

This is what he said, from the DM article "‘On the other hand, every one of these men were volunteers. None of them are angry. They don’t blame anybody. And so I believe strongly that the decisions I made were the right decisions.’

He added: ‘I don’t feel sorry for them, because they don’t feel sorry for themselves.’

A lot different than the headlines from the OP.

[moe666]

No matter how wrong and damaging a presidents policies they will still have their supporters as this thread shows

[impulse]

@impulse

Powell lied and he knew he was lying.

The major Western intelligence agencies knew there weren't any WMD in Iraq, so why was the "good guy" Powell the only non-neocon the only guy not to know? The former director of French intelligence said last year he watched Powell very closely at the UNSC meeting and saw that Powell knew he was lying.

...

You and I will probably never agree on Powell's motives, and that's okay.

But it seems the French have their own 'splaining to do.

I agreed with them when they did not back the war. Right up until they found French weapons in the Iraqi arsenals. Seems the French were violating UN sanctions and continued to sell weapons to Iraq. Hard to give them the moral high ground after that. So when that French Intelligence Directors lips move, I don't trust what come out. He's got his own motives.

[SteeleJoe]

I chalk him up as a man of integrity and principles who was led to that position by power hungry (and evil) men who then used him to pursue their agenda(s).

Had it not been for Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, I think he would have done okay. Not the best, but certainly not the tragedy his time in office proved to be.

Sadly, it will take the USA 100 years to live down that legacy. And I don't know if we have 100 years.

From the time he announced his candidacy I felt strongly he shouldn't be president and that option only strengthened hugely over time (especially in 2003) - I have very little, if anything, good to say about him as a president and I never did. I think his administration did huge damage to the US and the rest of the world.

However, while I hold him absolutely responsible for decisions he did make (or go along with), I think the post above is probably largely true.

And I agree that one of the worst things about his presidency was the residual and very long term (if not permanent) damage to the US prestige, credibility, esteem, image and so on...

[Scott]

Some off-topic posts removed and posts edited. It's a pretty broad topic, but still some people manage to go off-topic.

[Morden]

Sorry, he comes off as pretty darned stupid.

If he really has a high IQ, that doesn't mean he used it.

Clearly his bizarre fundamentalism (God talks to him when making big decisions, yeah right) was a crutch.

His Iraq war invasion was the biggest foreign policy mistake in American history.

England provided one-third of the troops for the Iraq invasion. There were more than 20 countries in that invasion, including Thailand.

Tony Blair stood before his country and stated that there were weapons of mass destruction which had to be taken out.

Now of course it's all Bush's fault. Certainly it's all the US fault. Never mind that Britain has high quality intelligence who themselves said there were WMDs,

Both the US Congress and the British Parliament voted to go to war. That's a lot of people. Even liberal Democrats in the US congress voted to declare war on Iraq.

So how do you explain Britain providing 1/3 of the troops with approval from Parliament, along with 20 other countries, and then blame Bush?

Your revisionist history makes you look like what you are, speaking of IQ.

I blame it all on Tony Blair and the Brits.

Why other countries joined in is easy to explain.

'You are either with us or against us'.

So with the US being an economic power the smaller countries just joined in to not be offside with the good old US of A.

Also many countries had very little intelligence on WMD as most of that intelligence came from the USA. So most of the world believed Bush when he lied about the WMD's and just hoped they would be found.

Now that the majority of the world knows the US govt will lie to them to get their own way they may not be so quick to back them next time.

You're kidding, right? The UK doesn't have really good intelligence of its own? 1/3 of the troops which invaded Iraq were British. Tony Blair told his nation there were WMDs from the UK's intelligence. The UK told the world there were WMD's.

What's a WMD? I never heard anyone say he had nukes. Saddam Hussein had killed thousands of people with poison gas during the Anfal campaign. His own people tried him and hanged him.

I didn't support the invasion of Iraq, believing that it was up to the people to get rid of Hussein if that was their choice. Many countries have had revolutions to remove leaders and I felt that was up to the people if they wanted it.

I didn't vote for or support Bush either although I now think Gore would have been worse. He's crazy.

But I don't buy the idea that anyone lied. Many think those WMD's were moved to Syria as Hussein saw the invasion coming. Many believe they are still there. I don't think anyone on this forum really knows what happened but I put my beliefs on the clear fact that the British intelligence, on their own, also believed the WMD's were there and voted to go to war.

Too many make this into an American invasion which it wasn't. More than 20 countries including Thailand provided troops for that invasion.

I think this is another hate America thread, not an objective thread.

David Kelly, a chemical weapons expert working for the MoD, told a journalist that there were no weapons of mass destruction. Once this became know and Kelly's name was linked to the story, Kelly was found dead in woods near his home. It's said that he committed suicide but not many people seem to believe that. The post mortem papers have been locked away for 70 years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Kelly_(weapons_expert)

[Mosha]

No one is hating in America. Just criticizing the decision to invade Iraq a second time which may be one of the costliest blunders ever. Although it sure did make all the Halliburton guys wealthy.

Criticizing a bad decision of a President, that actually made a lot of bad decisions, is nit hating in America at all. Unusual projection there.

I'm saying that Tony Blair and Great Britain were in it up to their eyeballs, but they get a pass.

We Brits were never asked, hell Blair didn't even consult his cabinet.