Rice: People will soon thank Bush

[SpursFanFirst]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/12/28/rice.administration/index.html

Rice: People will soon thank Bush for what he's done
# Story Highlights
# Condoleezza Rice says Bush's policies will "stand the test of time"
# Rice says she's not bothered by criticism; says she's "here to make tough choices"
# Secretary of state says historians criticizing Bush "aren't very good historians"
# Rice says she plans to write a book about foreign policy

(CNN) -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that despite President Bush's low approval ratings, people will soon "start to thank this president for what he's done."

"So we can sit here and talk about the long record, but what I would say to you is that this president has faced tougher circumstances than perhaps at any time since the end of World War II, and he has delivered policies that are going to stand the test of time," Rice said in an interview that aired on CBS' "Sunday Morning."

The secretary of state brushed off reports that suggest the United States' image is suffering abroad. She praised the administration's ability to change the conversation in the Middle East.

"This isn't a popularity contest. I'm sorry, it isn't. What the administration is responsible to do is to make good choices about Americans' interests and values in the long run -- not for today's headlines, but for history's judgment," she said.

"And I am quite certain that when the final chapters are written and it's clear that Saddam Hussein's Iraq is gone in favor of an Iraq that is favorable to the future of the Middle East; when the history is written of a U.S.-China relationship that is better than it's ever been; an India relationship that is deeper and better than it's ever been; a relationship with Brazil and other countries of the left of Latin America, better than it's ever been ...

"When one looks at what we've been able to do in terms of changing the conversation in the Middle East about democracy and values, this administration will be judged well, and I'll wait for history's judgment and not today's headlines."

Asked by CBS' Rita Braver why some former diplomats say Americans are disliked around the world, Rice said that's "just not true."

"I know what U.S. policy has achieved. And so I don't know what diplomats you're talking to, but look at the record," she said.

Rice said she wasn't bothered by criticism about her or the administration's polices, saying if a person in her business is not being criticized, "you're not doing something right."

"I'm here to make tough choices, and this president is here to make tough choices, and we have. And yes, I -- there are some things that I would do very differently if I had it to do over again. You don't have that luxury. You have to make the choices and take the positions that you do at the time," she said.

Asked about historians who say Bush is one of the worst presidents, Rice said those "aren't very good historians."

"If you're making historical judgments before an administration is already out -- even out of office, and if you're trying to make historical judgments when the nature of the Middle East is still to be determined, and when one cannot yet judge the effects of decisions that this President has taken on what the Middle East will become -- I mean, for goodness' sakes, good historians are still writing books about George Washington. Good historians are certainly still writing books about Harry Truman," she said.

Rice, 54, said she has enjoyed working in the Bush administration during the last eight years, first as national security adviser, then as secretary of state.

"There is no greater honor than to serve this country," she said, adding that there is also no greater challenge.

Rice said when the new administration takes over, she plans to return to the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and write two books -- one on foreign policy and one about her parents.

[whottt]

The ME Plan is a sound one for getting rid of all the crappy leaders in the ME...it should do that...


The problem is that now the stupid people won't shut up..and it was obvious the stupid would be an issue before we ever went into Iraq, or it should have been. It was to me.

And it's not just that they won't shut up...the problem is that we are paying the price for it with the corrupt socialist elitist lawyer we just elected President. Every stupid person in America is a political activist now...

Go find some illiterate lice infested bum and he'll likely have the standard anti-war talking points down...and he'll have most likely voted.


They make a perfect match with the also illiterate homeless ex opium addict terrorist recruits we are fighting over in Afghanistan.

They say the exact same things...in fact they sound just like Barrack Obama, any Hollywood liberal...or Usama Bin Laden.


It's huge price to pay...


Never ever ever underestimate the power of stupid people in large numbers.


On top of that Bush was a lousy diplomat...and makes the stupid look less stupid with his lousy communication abilities.


But overall the idea behind the Iraq war was a good one strategically for changing the culture of the Middle East...smarter brains than Bush were behind it though.

[Rohirrim]

Thanks Bush.

[baseline bum]

Our relationship with China is better than it has ever been? WTF? We're China's bitch. We have a huge trade deficit with them and we manufacture next to nothing because of them.

[boutons_]

What did anybody expect incompetent Rice to say? Speak the truth?

The dubya posse, neo-cunts, Repugs are already trying to distort the disastrous truth of the reign of error, lying revisionist history, as much as they lied for 8 years.

Everybody everywhere is more fucked thanks to dubya, dickhead, neo-c*nts, Repugs. And now even the corps and super-wealthy are fucked.

[Cant_Be_Faded]

Never ever ever underestimate the power of stupid people in large numbers.

.

lol............................................... .....................................

[Rogue]

Thank you, George.

[CubanMustGo]

Thank you, George.

Yes, thank you for leaving, finally. Don't let the door hit you in the butt on the way out.

[byrontx]

I wish my thank-you note required the use of a prison address.

[DarkReign]

Oh yeah, we're allll going to be bowing down to Bush at some point in the distant, quasi-real future.

And we'll have flying cars, fusion energy and world peace.

Bush is/was/always will be a fuck up. A fly by night, black sheep, come to God, born-again fucking moron who presided over the sharpest decline in the American economy since the Great Depression.

By hook, crook or circumstance, his legacy will be that of hegemony, nepotism, incompetency, class warfare and brash international individualism.

Hes a fool. A puppet. A fall-guy for the larger than life proponents of "global economy" and the eradication of American sovereignty. He was another step in the wrong direction, nothing more.

Fucking self-delusional morons who whether through vote, party loyalty or retardation think this jackass is anything more than that. Hes a disaster, a very controlled and anticipated disaster.

[SpursFanFirst]

Oh yeah, we're allll going to be bowing down to Bush at some point in the distant, quasi-real future.

And we'll have flying cars, fusion energy and world peace.

Bush is/was/always will be a fuck up. A fly by night, black sheep, come to God, born-again fucking moron who presided over the sharpest decline in the American economy since the Great Depression.

By hook, crook or circumstance, his legacy will be that of hegemony, nepotism, incompetency, class warfare and brash international individualism.

Hes a fool. A puppet. A fall-guy for the larger than life proponents of "global economy" and the eradication of American sovereignty. He was another step in the wrong direction, nothing more.

Fucking self-delusional morons who whether through vote, party loyalty or retardation think this jackass is anything more than that. Hes a disaster, a very controlled and anticipated disaster.

sooo...you're saying you're NOT a fan? :p:

[Nbadan]

Forget reshaping the middle east or the economy, the W.H. has decided to reshape it's own reality instead...


-6LW1fxFAEQ

[boutons_]

http://www.alternet.org/images/site/logo.gif
The 10 Most Awesomely Bad Moments of the Bush Presidency

By Brad Reed, AlterNet
Posted on July 1, 2008, Printed on December 29, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/89686/


As part of our look at the year -- and Bush presidency -- in review, Alternet is "resurfacing" its best and most popular pieces of 2008.
In a lot of ways, choosing the Bush administration's 10 greatest moments -- disastrous failures, all -- is about as pointless as picking out your 10 least favorite hemorrhoids: There are entirely too many of them, and taken together they all add up to a throbbing mass of pain. But unfortunately, history demands that we at least make the effort so that future generations will understand why we perform voodoo rituals cursing Bush's memory before we go to bed every night.

Narrowing down the Bush administration's various debacles to a mere 10 was no easy feat. In fact, I expect that many people will express dismay that their least favorite moment was left off the list. "How could commuting Scooter Libby's sentence not even make the top 10??!!" I can hear some of you shrieking already. Well, I'll tell you. Essentially, I tried to rate each Bush disaster by two main criteria: its body count and its damage to the country's reputation. So while Bush's awkward groping (http://rawstory.com/news/2006/Bush_massages_German_Chancellor_Merkel_at_0718.htm l) of German Chancellor Angela Merkel may be personally humiliating to everyone, it doesn't have the same heft as, say, the Iraq War.

But for those of you who insist on seeing your least favorite moment get its due, here is list of every honorable mention I could come up with:
warrantless wiretapping (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/politics/16program.html);
Valerie Plame;
Scooter Libby's sentence commuted;
Bush believes (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2005/08/02/BL2005080201070.html) Rafael Palmeiro is innocent;
soldiers face neglect (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/17/AR2007021701172.html) at Walter Reed;
signing statements;
the Kyoto treaty ripped up (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8422343/);
loyalty oaths (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31019-2004Jul31.html); the fake turkey (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/12/04/politics/main586761.shtml);
a staged teleconference (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,172186,00.html) with troops,
staged FEMA press conference (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/25/AR2007102502488.html),
extraordinary rendition,
support for junk science (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/12/08/tech/main1109280.shtml);
endorsement (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/02/AR2005080201686.html) of neo-creationist "intelligent design";
inaction against global warming;
record oil prices;
record budget deficits;
record trade deficits;
record number of Americans without health insurance;
two recessions;
no-bid contracts;
bin Laden still at large;
the Federal Marriage Amendment;
stem cell research vetoed (http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/07/19/stemcells.veto/index.html);
waterboarding ban vetoed;
"Last throes";
"Old Europe";
"It's hard work";
"Bring it on";
"Yo, Blair!";
"I'm the decider";
"I'm the commander guy";
"I'm a war president";
"This is the guy who tried to kill my dad";
"So (http://abcnews.go.com/WN/Vote2008/story?id=4481249)?";
"Let the Eagle Soar (http://www.cnn.com/video/us/2002/02/25/ashcroft.sings.wbtv.med.html)";
John Bolton;
Kenny Boy;
Harriet Miers;
John Roberts;
Sam Alito;
Blair talks (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2006/jan/09/Iraqandthemedia.politicsandiraq) Bush out of bombing al-Jazeera;
Cheney shoots some guy in the face;
the Military Commissions Act;
Jose Padilla arrested and held without charge or access to counsel;
endless tax cuts for the rich;
let's waste (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4181187) a shitload of money by sending people to Mars and
let's hire (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48543-2004May22.html) some Heritage Foundation staffers to rebuild Iraq.
And with that, let's go onto our 10 worst moments.

10: Bush Gets Re-elected
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In a way, Bush's re-election was even more depressing than the shady shenanigans (http://edition.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/11/16/election.harris/index.html) the GOP used to get him elected in 2000. See, back then Bush ran as a "compassionate conservative" who promised to be a "uniter, not a divider" who would run a center-right administration like his father did. By 2004, the myth of Bush the Uniter had been demolished by his exploiting the 9/11 terror attacks for political gain, by dropping poison pills (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,58748,00.html) into bills to make Democrats vote against their own proposals, and by supporting needless and divisive initiatives such as a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. On top of this, the Bush re-election crew ran (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3222-2004May30.html) one of the nastiest and most negative campaigns in recent memory. The low point in the whole affair came when administration allies and surrogates took to the airwaves to falsely accuse (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21239-2004Aug21.html) Democratic candidate John Kerry of lying about his service in Vietnam, even claiming in one instance that he intentionally shot himself (http://mediamatters.org/items/200408200005) to get out of the war.

The reason for this historically negative campaign was obvious: As Paul Krugman deftly observed (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C03E2D7143EF937A1575BC0A9629C8B 63) at the time, Bush had "no positive achievements to run on." But this didn't stop more than 59 million Americans from voting to give Bush yet another four years to build on his already-impressive resume of negative achievements.
9: Alberto Gonzales' Congressional Testimony
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One of the Bush administration's favorite pastimes over the past eight years has been gleefully urinating in the faces of the other two branches of government. This tendency is best exemplified by Ex-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee to answer questions under oath about whether a group of eight federal prosecutors had been fired (http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/usa-timeline.php) for partisan reasons. Essentially, all of the attorneys in question had exemplary performance records but were targeted because they did not prosecute several so-called "voter fraud" cases to then-presidential adviser Karl Rove's satisfaction (http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0312-01.htm). When the Senate Judiciary Committee called then-Deputy AG Paul McNulty to testify about the firings, he claimed that all of them had been dismissed due to "performance-related issues." (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/06/AR2007020600732.html) About a month later, Gonzales penned (http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20070307/oppose07.art.htm) an editorial for USA Today reiterating McNulty's claim that the attorneys were fired for performance reasons and called the entire controversy an "overblown personnel matter."

After it emerged that six of the fired attorneys had actually been given positive job evaluations (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/17/AR2007021701509_pf.html), Gonzales rushed up to Capitol Hill to perform damage control. He said he "regretted" saying that the fired attorneys had lost his confidence, and then went on to say that he had no idea why the attorneys had been targeted for dismissal. Additionally, Gonzales said there was nothing at all improper about the firings, despite the fact that he admitted that he had "limited involvement" in the ordeal. Gonzales also responded to questions by answering "I don't recall" a total of 64 times (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/19/AR2007041900192_2.html).

Although several GOP senators called on Gonzales to resign in the wake of his testimony, Bush said Gonzales' performance had "increased my confidence in his ability to do the job" and that he would stay on as attorney general.

And the fun didn't stop there. When the Senate Judiciary Committee hauled Gonzales back to testify about his frantic hospital visit (http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1622832,00.html) to get a fresh-from-surgery John Ashcroft to approve Bush's warrantless wiretapping program, it resulted in the sort of clown show that would have put Barnum and Bailey to shame. The lowlight came during a classic debate (http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/003759.php) between Gonzo and Arlen Specter over whether Ashcroft could have effectively performed his duties as attorney general while he was under heavy sedation. After Gonzales finally stepped down in August 2007, Bush stamped his feet and cried that Gonzo had had "his good name dragged through the mud."

8: North Korea Conducts a Nuclear Test

In his 2002 State of the Union Address, Bush stated (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/01/20020129-11.html) forthrightly that "the United States will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons." And to show how serious he was, Bush decided to invade Iraq, a country whose vast stockpile contained precisely zero weapons of mass destruction.

But while Bush was busy freedomizing the Iraqis, North Korea -- a country best known (http://www.atimes.com/koreas/CG14Dg03.html) for being home of the world's worst government -- steadily built up its nuclear capabilities and eventually conducted a nuclear test in October 2006.

Oopsie-doodles!

While there is a great deal of dispute over whether the North Korean test was actually a successful test, it seemed clear that Bush's strategic doctrine of ignoring our enemies until they meet every one of his demands has failed somewhat spectacularly. Naturally, Condi Rice declared (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/21/AR2006102100296_pf.html) that the test was actually a significant win for Bush administration policy, thus proving once again that down isn't just up for the Bush administration, but sometimes sideways as well.

7: Colin Powell's Bogus WMD Presentation at the U.N.

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For those of you who are too young to remember, there was a time when Colin Powell was an internationally respected diplomat and military leader who was seen as the sort of rare Republican straight-shooter who also had a fine sense for global sensibilities. Indeed, at the time of Powell's appointment to the State Department, the BBC described (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1073212.stm) him as Bush's "trump card" and as "a national hero whose charismatic image bridges America's racial divide." But little did anyone know that Powell's public image as a renowned warrior-scholar would come crashing down to Earth less than four years after his appointment.

In February 2003, Powell gave a presentation before the U.N. Security Council that was instrumental in convincing both the American public and large swaths of the international community (http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=29471) that Saddam Hussein had large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction that posed an immediate threat to global security. During his speech, Powell told scary tales of mobile biological weapons labs, chemical weapons stockpiles and aluminum tubes (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32110-2003Feb5?language=printer) that could be used in a nuclear weapons program. All of these claims turned out not only to be wrong (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4654048/), but based on sourcing that even Powell acknowledged (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE3D9143FF934A25756C0A9629C8B 63) was "deliberately misleading" in some cases.

And what's more, Powell knew how shaky a lot of the intelligence was before he made his infamous presentation to the United Nations. As Bob Woodward reported (http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh062505.shtml) in his book Plan of Attack, (http://www.powells.com/partner/32513/biblio/9780743255479) Powell had deep doubts about an intercept between two senior members of the Iraqi Republican Guard that vaguely sortakindamaybe might have mentioned something along the lines of using vehicles for bioweapons labs. Yet despite reservations about the intel, Woodward reports that Powell "decided to use it" for his U.N. presentation anyway. Ditto for an "inferential" report on Iraqi Scud missiles that Powell acknowledged had not been seen by anyone.

Years after feeding bogus intel to the Security Council, Powell said his performance was a "painful" "blot" on his record. Well la-tee-da. I'm sure that's a fine comfort to the hundreds of thousands of people who died needlessly as a result of Powell's Security Council boo-boo.

6: The Terri Schiavo Affair
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In what will no doubt go down in history as one of the craziest things our federal government has ever done, the U.S. House and Senate both passed an emergency law to save the life of a woman who had been near-brain dead for more than a decade. The case of Terri Schiavo, who collapsed in her home and who later lost oxygen to her brain after her doctors misdiagnosed the cause of her collapse, was undoubtedly tragic for everyone involved; it was also undoubtedly none of the federal government's business.

After numerous state courts had sided with then-husband and guardian Michael Schiavo and ruled (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2536-2005Mar26.html) that Terri's condition was irreversible and that her feeding tube could be removed to end her life, the Christian Right launched into an epic freak-out the likes of which America has not seen since 17th Century Salem (http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/salem/salem.htm). After much Tasmanian devil-style screeching and hollering from the GOP base, the Republican Congress passed a bill transferring jurisdiction of the Schiavo case to federal court. Bush, who seemingly never misses an opportunity to take a naked ride on the crazy train, interrupted (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/21/politics/21bush.html) one of his frequent Texas vacations to sign the damn thing into law.

Ah, if only he'd been this swift and alert when Hurricane Katrina hit (see Moment #4).

While there were several moments of sheer, unbridled lunacy throughout (Pat Buchanan calls Michael Schiavo and his supporters Nazis! (http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=6949) Tom DeLay issues threats (http://thinkprogress.org/2005/04/02/delay-refuses-to-clarify-threatening-statement/) against judges who don't rule how he wants them to! Peggy Noonan calls (http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110006460) Michael Schiavo supporters part of "culture of death!"), the craziest by far was then-Senator Bill Frist's declaration (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48119-2005Mar18.html) that Terri had been misdiagnosed after he spent an hour watching a video of her in his office.

5: Bush and Condi's Excellent Gaza Adventure
The Bush administration can be described as a slapstick comedy with an unusually high body count: Picture the Three Stooges and the Keystone Cops duking it out with cruise missiles.

There is no better example of this than Bush and the State Department's wild adventures in the Gaza Strip in 2006. As Vanity Fair's David Rose reported (http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/04/gaza200804) earlier this year, the trouble began when Bush started stamping his feet and throwing a hissy fit about having elections in the Palestinian territories. Essentially, Bush's desire to be seen as a "freedom president" meant forcing various swarthy third-worlders to vote in elections that would presumably result in U.S.-friendly regimes around the world. After Hamas predictably defeated (http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/01/26/palestinian.election/index.html) Fatah in the elections, Bush decided he didn't like democracy in the Middle East so much after all, and he had Condi Rice tell Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas that "America expected him to dissolve the Haniyeh government as soon as possible and hold fresh elections." Apparently, Condi believed that having an American-backed leader dissolve a democratically elected government would warm the Palestinians' hearts to American aims. Long story short: The U.S. government decides to bolster Fatah by sending them a bunch of arms. Word of these shipments leaks to a Jordanian newspaper. All hell breaks loose; Hamas defeats Fatah and proceeds to use the American-supplied arms it confiscated from Fatah against Israel. The entire ordeal was an amazing illustration of the administration's complete inability to anticipate entirely predictable outcomes. Or as Khalid Jaberi, a commander with Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, put it: "Since the takeover, we've been trying to enter the brains of Bush and Rice, to figure out their mentality. We can only conclude that having Hamas in control serves their overall strategy, because their policy was so crazy otherwise."
Epic, epic fail.

4: "Brownie, You're Doing a Heckuva Job"
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Yes, we're getting into Bush's real crowning achievements here. The Think Progress blog has done an admirable job of chronicling the entire affair (http://thinkprogress.org/katrina-timeline/), so I'm just going to summarize the lowlights from its timeline:

Aug. 29: Katrina makes landfall, then-FEMA chief Michael "Brownie" Brown warns Bush that the levees could overflow, Bush gives John McCain a cake. Brown, a Bush hack who had previously worked as "the chief rules enforcer of the Arabian Horse Association," also preemptively asks Cindy Taylor, FEMA's deputy director of public affairs, if he "can quit now." He also declares himself "a fashion god."

Aug. 30: Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff learns that the New Orleans levees had failed, looters run rampant in New Orleans, Bush plays guitar, then-White House spokesman Scott McClellan says that Bush will return to his Texas ranch for one more night of vacation before returning to Washington.

Aug. 31: Federal relief workers try to evacuate New Orleans residents in what Chertoff describes as "conditions of urban warfare."

Sept. 1: Bush says, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." Brownie says he's received "no reports of unrest."

Sept. 2: Karl Rove begins to enact his strategy of blaming local officials for the Katrina disaster, Bush tells Brownie that he's doing "a heckuva job" and also says he's "satisfied with the response" of the federal government but "not satisfied with all the results," and pledges to rebuild Trent Lott's house.

Sept. 4: Chertoff says that "government planners did not predict such a disaster ever could occur."

And so on. While watching Katrina unfold live on my television, I suddenly had the urge to sell all my belongings, purchase several firearms, move out to a remote cabin in Montana and wait for society to fall apart. Because hey: If the entire world was going to completely collapse around me, I might as well have a wise-cracking psychic dog (http://www.tvguide.com/movies/boy-dog/review/118445) to keep me company.

3: Abu Ghraib
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In its May 10, 2004, issue, the New Yorker magazine published an explosive report by renowned investigative journalist Seymour Hersh detailing the systematic torture of prisoners by U.S. military personnel at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Administration apologists used two distinctly different strategies to push back against the inevitable bad press that ensued: One was to condemn the guilty parties but refer to them merely as "a few bad apples" who weren't reflective of American policy; the other was to dismiss (http://mediamatters.org/items/200408310002) the entire scandal as "an out-of-control fraternity prank."

But it turned out, of course, that the crimes committed at Abu Ghraib weren't merely the work of a few rogue soldiers. Indeed, it turns out that the tactics employed in the infamous Iraqi dungeon were first taken out for a test spin (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/13/AR2005071302380_pf.html) at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. And what tactics did those include, you ask? Why, sleep deprivation, stress positions, sexual humiliation and a technique called waterboarding that is meant to simulate the experience of drowning. And where did they get the idea to use these techniques? Why, from senior Bush administration officials (http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/LawPolitics/Story?id=4583256&page=1), of course! With the full approval (http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/LawPolitics/story?id=4635175&page=1) of Bush himself! As ABC News reported earlier this year, "the high-level discussions about these 'enhanced interrogation techniques' were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed."

Amazingly, the Bush administration tried to justify its decisions by claiming that waterboarding was perfectly legal and did not constitute torture. Despite the fact that, you know, it was deemed illegal 40 years ago by U.S. generals in Vietnam.

This particular scandal was so bad that even the John Birch Society (http://www.jbs.org/node/7023) (!!!) concluded that the administration and its flunkies were war criminals.

2: 9/11
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The terrorist attack of Sept. 11, 2001, was one of the most terrifying and traumatic moments in American history. Thousands of people perished that day, all due to an evil act carried out by a group of religious fanatics who crashed airplanes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field near Shanksville, Penn. But while the loss of life on that day was indeed a major tragedy for all Americans, what happened afterward was in many ways more disturbing: In essence, the politicization of 9/11 caused us to lose our collective minds for a long period of time.

The first shot was fired (http://www.observer.com/node/45522) by Karl Rove in a January 2002 address to the Republican National Committee in which he implored the GOP to "go to the country on (the War on Terror) because they trust the Republican Party to do a better job of protecting and strengthening America's military might and thereby protecting America." And sure enough, by the time the midterm elections rolled around, Bush and his GOP minions were milking 9/11 to get as many votes as they could. When Senate Democrats tried to extend union rights for workers in the newly created Department of Homeland Security, for instance, Bush issued (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,58748,00.html) a pissy veto threat, and then-spokesman Ari Fleischer described the Dems' proposal as "a step backward, not forward, in protecting the country."

And that's just a mild example. Here are some other choice GOP attacks that accused Democrats of helping al Qaeda win by not kissing Bush's ass with the sufficient level of enthusiasm:

"America sits and wonders why it is that al Qaeda, this ragtag bunch of terrorists scattered all over the globe, can reorganize themselves. I think the difference is that al Qaeda doesn't have a Senate. Al Qaeda doesn't have a Senator Daschle." -- Dick Armey

"As America faces terrorists and extremist dictators, Max Cleland runs television ads claiming he has the courage to lead. He says he supports President Bush at every opportunity, but that's not the truth. Since July, Max Cleland voted against President Bush's vital homeland security efforts 11 times." -- An attack ad targeting then-U.S. Senator Max Cleland. Cleland is a vet who lost both legs and an arm in the Vietnam War.

"Al Qaeda terrorists. Saddam Hussein. Enemies of America. Working to obtain nuclear weapons. Now more than ever our nation must have a missile defense system to shoot down missiles fired at America. Yet Tim Johnson has voted against a missile defense system 29 different times." -- An attack ad targeting Sen. Tim Johnson. This one was particularly rich, since a missile defense shield would have done precisely nothing to stop the 9/11 attacks.

"How dare Senator Daschle criticize President Bush while we are fighting our war on terrorism, especially when we have troops in the field?" -- Trent Lott, who freaked out because then-Senate majority leader Tom Daschle had the gall to suggest that we'd have to capture Osama bin Laden in order to consider the war on terror successful.
"(Daschle's) divisive comments have the effect of giving aid and comfort to our enemies by allowing them to exploit divisions in our country." -- Virginia Representative Tom Davis, also attacking Daschle's remarks. Who knew that demanding the capture of our enemies was tantamount to treason?

And so on (http://www.spinsanity.org/columns/20040930.html). The Republicans' "The Democrats Want to Help al Qaeda Kill You" gambit worked for two consecutive elections before finally running out of gas in 2006. But even so, the ability of one political party to garner votes simply by yelling about treason incessantly is incredibly depressing.
Pass me that bucket of Freedom Fries, will you?

1: "Mission Accomplished"
http://www.alternet.org/images/managed/storyimage_brad8.png
A lot has been written about Bush's aircraft carrier stunt over the past few years, and with good reason. After all, no other incident better illustrates how Bush's presidency was built entirely on hubristic arrogance, shameless propaganda and a destructive disregard for reality. In what Noam Chomsky correctly called (http://www.chomsky.info/talks/20031021.htm) "the opening of the year 2004 election campaign," George W. Bush delivered a so-called "victory speech" for the Iraq War after landing on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln aboard an S-3B Viking jet dressed in full flyboy gear.

Bush's posturing as a war hero was, of course, laughable. During the Vietnam War, Bush used his family connections (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/campaigns/wh2000/stories/bush072899.htm) to obtain a gentleman draft dodger's assignment (http://www.slate.com/id/2095256/) flying planes in Alabama for the Air National Guard -- a cushy assignment that he didn't even do very well (http://www.boston.com/news/politics/president/bush/articles/2000/05/23/1_year_gap_in_bushs_guard_duty/). But no matter! As long as he gave off an aura of steely resolve, and as long as he wore a ridiculous outfit (http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_04_01_digbysblog_archive.html) to emphasize his "manly characteristic (http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh051303.shtml)," our ever-watchful pundit corps endlessly praised him as the gin-you-wine article.

A sample of the atrocities, painstakingly compiled (http://mediamatters.org/items/200604270005) by Media Matters:

"(T)hat's the president looking very much like a jet, you know, a high-flying jet star. A guy who is a jet pilot. Has been in the past when he was younger, obviously. What does that image mean to the American people, a guy who can actually get into a supersonic plane and actually fly in an unpressurized cabin like an actual jet pilot?" -- Chris Matthews

"A little bit of history and a lot of drama today when President Bush became the first commander in chief to make a tail-hook landing on an aircraft carrier. A one-time Fighter Dog himself in the Air National Guard, the president flew in the co-pilot seat with a trip to the USS Abraham Lincoln." -- Wolf Blitzer

"And two immutable truths about the president that the Democrats can't change: He's a youthful guy. He looked terrific and full of energy in a flight suit. He is a former pilot, so it's not a foreign art farm -- art form to him. Not all presidents could have pulled this scene off today." -- Brian Williams

And in the time since Bush performed this grotesque PR stunt, roughly 4,000 troops have been killed in action along with tens of thousands of Iraqis (http://www.iraqbodycount.org/), with nary a WMD in sight to justify the carnage. Heck of a job, all around.

Brad Reed is a writer living in Boston. His work has previously appeared in the American Prospect Online, and he blogs frequently at Sadly, No! (http://sadlyno.com/)

© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/89686/

======================

Thanks for the Memories!!

You've done a heckuva job, dubya

GTFO & GFY

[spurster]

Good riddance to 2008 and Bush.

[ClingingMars]

lol............................................... .....................................

lol, obama

-Mars

[Supergirl]

LOL. Rice is delusional.

Bush will go down in history as the worst president ever - seriously. His style as president redefined the presidency into something more totalitarian and his policy on foreign policy was one of devastate and then allow corporations to come in an profit, regardless of the outcome in terms of human life.

Nixon is no longer the worst president ever, as the bumper sticker says.

[exstatic]

Would you expect Condi Rice to say anything else? If she weren't a Diesel Dyke, she'd have probably bedded W at some point. The bitch is a living example of the Peter Principle.

"In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence."

[balli]

lol, obama

-Mars

Fuck you mars... And keep it up moron. Nothing is better for the Democrats than republican, racist, butt-hurt, scum-suckers such as yourself, continuing to act like a bunch of spoiled little bitches over the fact that America (in a landslide) didn't elect a GOP president; as if the current GOP president hadn't torn the world to pieces over the past 8 years.

So yeah, don't wake the fuck up anytime soon. Democrats have great use for your idiocy.




Bigger Than Bush

As the new Democratic majority prepares to take power, Republicans have become, as Phil Gramm might put it, a party of whiners.

Some of the whining almost defies belief. Did Alberto Gonzales, the former attorney general, really say, “I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror”? Did Rush Limbaugh really suggest that the financial crisis was the result of a conspiracy, masterminded by that evil genius Chuck Schumer?

But most of the whining takes the form of claims that the Bush administration’s failure was simply a matter of bad luck — either the bad luck of President Bush himself, who just happened to have disasters happen on his watch, or the bad luck of the G.O.P., which just happened to send the wrong man to the White House.

The fault, however, lies not in Republicans’ stars but in themselves. Forty years ago the G.O.P. decided, in effect, to make itself the party of racial backlash. And everything that has happened in recent years, from the choice of Mr. Bush as the party’s champion, to the Bush administration’s pervasive incompetence, to the party’s shrinking base, is a consequence of that decision.

If the Bush administration became a byword for policy bungles, for government by the unqualified, well, it was just following the advice of leading conservative think tanks: after the 2000 election the Heritage Foundation specifically urged the new team to “make appointments based on loyalty first and expertise second.”

Contempt for expertise, in turn, rested on contempt for government in general. “Government is not the solution to our problem,” declared Ronald Reagan. “Government is the problem.” So why worry about governing well?

Where did this hostility to government come from? In 1981 Lee Atwater, the famed Republican political consultant, explained the evolution of the G.O.P.’s “Southern strategy,” which originally focused on opposition to the Voting Rights Act but eventually took a more coded form: “You’re getting so abstract now you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites.” In other words, government is the problem because it takes your money and gives it to Those People.

Oh, and the racial element isn’t all that abstract, even now: Chip Saltsman, currently a candidate for the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee, sent committee members a CD including a song titled “Barack the Magic Negro” — and according to some reports, the controversy over his action has actually helped his chances.

So the reign of George W. Bush, the first true Southern Republican president since Reconstruction, was the culmination of a long process. And despite the claims of some on the right that Mr. Bush betrayed conservatism, the truth is that he faithfully carried out both his party’s divisive tactics — long before Sarah Palin, Mr. Bush declared that he visited his ranch to “stay in touch with real Americans” — and its governing philosophy.

That’s why the soon-to-be-gone administration’s failure is bigger than Mr. Bush himself: it represents the end of the line for a political strategy that dominated the scene for more than a generation.

The reality of this strategy’s collapse has not, I believe, fully sunk in with some observers. Thus, some commentators warning President-elect Barack Obama against bold action have held up Bill Clinton’s political failures in his first two years as a cautionary tale.

But America in 1993 was a very different country — not just a country that had yet to see what happens when conservatives control all three branches of government, but also a country in which Democratic control of Congress depended on the votes of Southern conservatives. Today, Republicans have taken away almost all those Southern votes — and lost the rest of the country. It was a grand ride for a while, but in the end the Southern strategy led the G.O.P. into a cul-de-sac.

Mr. Obama therefore has room to be bold. If Republicans try a 1993-style strategy of attacking him for promoting big government, they’ll learn two things: not only has the financial crisis discredited their economic theories, the racial subtext of anti-government rhetoric doesn’t play the way it used to.

Will the Republicans eventually stage a comeback? Yes, of course. But barring some huge missteps by Mr. Obama, that will not happen until they stop whining and look at what really went wrong. And when they do, they will discover that they need to get in touch with the real “real America,” a country that is more diverse, more tolerant, and more demanding of effective government than is dreamt of in their political philosophy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/02/opinion/02krugman.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

[JoeChalupa]

I knew there would be a "Rice" book tour. She knows where the money is at. How long before she becomes a contributor on FoxNews?

[ClingingMars]

Fuck you mars... And keep it up moron. Nothing is better for the Democrats than republican, racist, butt-hurt, scum-suckers such as yourself, continuing to act like a bunch of spoiled little bitches over the fact that America (in a landslide) didn't elect a GOP president; as if the current GOP president hadn't torn the world to pieces over the past 8 years.

gotta love the name-calling...what's next? homophobe? faggot?

wow, what a response "lol, obama" gets...should do that more often for shits and giggles.

-Mars