Charlie’s Interview with President Bush

The Bush decision to launch a stupid, unjustified war and to commit torture did not enhance our security. Guantanamo, Iraq, holding people for years without charges or recourse to a court all served to put Americans and american soldiers at greater risk. For Bush to blame faulty intelligence for his poor decisions is pathetic especially because his administration was involved in cooking the evidence. The media dutifully repeats this latest lie because you were cheering him on, hoping for a war.

Asked what he was “most unprepared for,”
that would be the presidency, don’t you think?

I miss you Pres.Bush

Asked what he was “most unprepared for:
Iraq and the freakin Economy!!
What a LOSER and LIAR!!!
Always side stepping his role and responsiblity as PRESIDENT!!
Jan. 20th can not come any faster!!!

I don’t think Mumbai is a good example, with the gist of Miller’s remarks being it happened there when it could have happened here. I think we have the oceans to thank instead.

I beleive Mr Bush was being Candid and open and honest.
I think He was given a raw deal over it all. By the media, the Democratic Party, and Mr Obama.
Remember this went the UN, with all the other nations involved. The all backed the war.
Combining all the intelligences of all the nations, taking it before the UN, then before Congress.
All made the decision to enter into a war.
Mr Bush did keep us Safe, and no further terrorism on US Soil.
Continued to pursue Terrorism in Afghanistan.
I beleive The Democrats went to extreme measures over emphazing it all. To make it their platform to run on. The war and the cost of the war.
We won the war, and staying for humane reasons until the Iraq people can fend for themselves.
We will see what happens with the new President. I beleive the world has him marked as a easy push over. That would give in and up instead of fighting For the freedom and rights of Every American. It will take more than prayers to keep terror from coming onto American Soil.

A cousin of Saddam Hussein, he was considered one of the most powerful and brutal men in Saddam’s inner circle. It is his second death sentence after he was condemned last year to be hanged on five separate charges for his role in a 1980s genocide campaign in the Kurdish northeast. “Chemical Ali” earned his nickname for his poisoned gas attacks on the village of Halabja and his crushing of the Kurdish autonomy campaign that killed up to 100,000 Kurds.
For a long time they have had the ability for Chemical weapons, which are WMD.
They even used them on their own people.

Jen – First of all, I was asserting that historically, geographic barriers ward off attacks. And the Atlantic Ocean has most certainly provided a good barrier, something which the European countries could have used in their post 911 terrorist attacks. In respect to the national tragedy of 911, which occurred under Bush’s watch, many have suggested with credibility that it could have been prevented. During his vacation time in Crawford in Aug. of 01, he did receive a specific memo that Bin Laden was attempting to a mass attack on the US and could use hijacked plans as a means. As the result of a perhaps avoidable tragedy, the security of national ann international flights has been improved as it should have been. But it was belated. I’m not aware of significant security improvements made to ports. They remain frighteningly vulnerable.
Look, Jen, I don’t like to rehash what all has gone wrong in the past eight years, so I tend to keep it short and sweet on the Bush years. Except obviously, when a Bush apologist makes issue on my reticence to complain about the past.

Sargent is correct, and Gibson carried more than his share of the water.

Kat, first off, apologies for the snarkiness of my posts. I could have been more reasonable, but I was trying to make a point.
I’m not a Bush apologist, I’m a realist. I would no more claim that our safety over the past 7 plus years has been solely because of Bush than I would accept a claim that it is merely geography that has kept us safe.
The point I was trying to make, albeit a tad rudely, was that there is a tendency with ideologues to have Bush be the catch-all with no credit given or be (and I’ll use your word here) complete apologists for all his actions. The truth lies somewhere in between. That’s the reality that I’m looking for instead of blind talking points.
It’s actually the reality that Dennis Miller looks for on his radio program as well. He’s not a blind puppet of the right, despite the hateful depictions of him in Nazi garb on the Web that his kids have to see.
Again, I apologize for the way I put things earlier. Battle reflexes from arguing reality vs. perception of reality.

Jen- You’re in for an unending battle if you believe that you’re in the position of arguing reality to the perceptions of reality. And battle reflexes outside actual battle conditions are internally generated and controllable. But apologies are graciously accepted.

I don’t know how we can evaluate the intelligence Bush received on Iraq without looking at the intelligence Clinton received.
Bush didn’t create the “Hussein is a horrible man” storyline, and the media didn’t believe it just because Bush said it. It was something Americans “knew” for the previous 10 years.
What I think is unfair are the criticisms of Bush’s choices that assume he made them out of incompetence or for nefarious reasons.
I can’t imagine what it would have been like to be President on 9/11 and to desperately want to keep it from happening again. Some choices might have been wrong, but I believe they were done for the right reasons.
Obama will be in charge of a war soon enough. He’ll be in charge of CIA interrogations soon enough. He’ll be tested soon enough. The Greg Sargents of this world better hope his political opponents and the media don’t try to destroy him for unpopular choices like they’ve tried to destroy Bush.

Wow, are you kidding me? After loosing thousands of soldiers, billions of dollars, lot of civilians death etc. Now you are saying intelligence were falsified. What a mess in bush’s brain! Some people are just living right, they don’t even know how! It’s all because of Bush.
Mo

I watched a little of the interview and as far as I’m concerned, that interview just underlined the fact that Dubya is a permanent resident in La-La land.

Bush was not taking the chance on Saddam. Even the FBI agent who interviewed Saddam asked him why he didn’t come out and say that he didn’t have WMD’s and he said it kept the illusion up for Iran, so they would fear him. Then he mentioned that he miscalculated Bush and thought he would only do air raids.
Don’t forget all of the cat and mouse games Saddam played in the 90′s. Maybe Bush didnt want to take the chance and trust Saddam’s word.
The fact is there have been no more attacks on US soil and there have been plenty of threats.

Bush will be remembered for:
- starting the Iraq War without cause
- Abu Ghraib, torture, Guantanamo
- not finishing and under resourcing the Afghanistan War as well as Iraq.
- closing down diplomacy with the rest of the world
- Hurricane Katrina
- “bring it on” & “mission accomplished”
- ‘signing statements’ to avoid comply with laws
- presiding and doing little during an economic melt-down
- beneficial HIV aid to Africa
- advocating the teaching of ‘creation science’ in public schools…
I could go on….. but you get the idea…..

This guy grows more pathetic daily. It’s almost painful to watch this stuff. How can anyone be this out of touch with reality? Everything that went wrong was someone else’s fault.
History will determine where he ranks on the list of “worst Presidents.”
In the mean time, he should go back to Crawford and cut brush…the only activity he engages in where he can’t possibly screw anything up.
We now have grownups in Washington who will clean up the messes that he and his incompetent hacks have left us. Good riddance.

Let’s look at this portion of the interview closely:
—-
GIBSON: You’ve always said there’s no do-overs as President. If you had one?
BUSH: I don’t know — the biggest regret of all the presidency has to have been the intelligence failure in Iraq. … And, you know, that’s not a do-over, but I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess.
GIBSON: If the intelligence had been right, would there have been an Iraq war?
BUSH: Yes, because Saddam Hussein was unwilling to let the inspectors go in to determine whether or not the U.N. resolutions were being upheld. In other words, if he had had weapons of mass destruction, would there have been a war? Absolutely.
GIBSON: No, if you had known he didn’t.
BUSH: Oh, I see what you’re saying. You know, that’s an interesting question. That is a do-over that I can’t do. It’s hard for me to speculate.
—-
Besides the obvious mendacity of W regarding Gibson’s question forcing him to clarify “No, if you had known he didn’t” (it is obvious that Bush knew exactly what Gibson meant and was trying to avoid answering it), consider what, if we take him at his (worthless) word, what the implications are. If Bush wishes that the “intelligence was different” and by “different” or “right”, if you follow his contorted evasion, then Bush wishes that it was *true* that Saddam Hussein *did*, in fact, have weapons of mass destruction. Why would a U.S. President, or any responsible world leader, or any decent person at all wish that someone as evil as Saddam Hussein would have WMD?
No matter which way you interpret it, Bush is damned. He was either nakedly disingenuous about “misunderstanding” Gibson’s question, or if he was truthful (cough, cough), what he really wished was that an evil megalomaniac had WMD.
I could see through this immature, dishonest, and vapid empty suit in 2000, why is/was it so hard for so many Americans to see through it?

I woulld vote for this man again He has
did the best to keep us safe and free
President Bush has been a good President