I hope she gave you permission to have her pic in my sig
I consider myself a pretty smart guy, but that description fits Extra Stout way more than it does me, although I'll admit to destroying W's score on the SAT. I totally agree with your second paragraph though.
I hope she gave you permission to have her pic in my sig
Bud Light is pretty smart. And I have no recollection what my SAT scores were. But, like most 17-year-olds, I didn't really study that hard. But one's SAT scores are not exactly a great measure of how one will end up anyway. Augustine woke up intellectually from reading Cicero. I woke up, ironically, AFTER college. W ... I don't know.
The author of the defininite biography of Bush probably hasn't even been born yet.
(And ... I would LOVE to read what Lincoln's contemporaries thought of him. Or, I dunno, Kennedy. Or Washington.)
I don't think W's such a bad guy as much as he is a sucker; the way he was manipulated by Rumsfeld and Cheney was disgusting. No way history remembers him well unless that history is written by Ann Coulter though.
if ann coulter writes it, it will truly be history
Hmm. Coulter is pretty partisan, but no more than Olbermann, Maher, Schlesinger, and co. But she is not a historian anyway (Schlesinger is).
Truth is, we have NO idea how the stuff Bush put in motion is going to affect things 50-100 years down the road. He could quite possible be lauded for his foresight in democratizing the Islamic world. He could be respected for his work at stemming AIDS in Africa. Or he will be known as the one who failed to secure our borders. The point is, we have no idea.
I know this violates the sentiment of ST Politics Rule #1: Bush is in no way smart, wise, decent, or competent.
Last edited by Don Quixote; 04-01-2009 at 09:46 AM. Reason: typo
You can't possibly believe he handled the Iraq War well, independent of whether we should have been there in the first place.
Well ... the initial charge went very well. You don't want to get into a hot war with the U.S. military, because you will lose very quickly.
Also, after Rumsfeld was let go, the surge helped considerably. Iraq is much, much safer now. (How long will this be? Who knows? If I'm a terrorist, I'm waiting for Obama's announced pullout date before I start moving. Until then, I lie low and train. And plan.)
But the middle part went very badly. I agree with you. That was not handled well, as many of us on the Right were saying (and writing). Were we just too nice? Too desirous of being seen as benevolent?
The initial charge? You mean the one that was massively undermanned and led to huge riots in Baghdad when there was no one to keep the peace?
That's how wars go sometimes. No, it wasn't close to perfect. But the military accomplished its first mission very quickly -- toppling Saddam's govt.
Would you have preferred a massive land invasion? With 100,000 or more soldiers & Marines on the ground in Baghdad? Would you (and the American media) have been willing to live with the casualties that would have surely caused? We had enough as it was! Air power, for all it does in winning a war quickly, DOES have that weakness in that there aren't as many troops on the ground to keep order.
Military doctrine is a constantly changing and fascinating field. I wish I knew more about it -- I am only a military chaplain. Are you a student of modern warfare? Tactics?
So Bush had a good first few days? In the best case, the guy had no plan. He didn't listen to a word Colin Powell told him, letting Cheney and Rumsfeld neuter the state department. He made a bet that the people of Iraq would love him for the invasion and he lost bigtime. Yes, there should have been enough troops to keep law and order in Baghdad. No, he shouldn't have just gone to the craps table with a stack of chips thinking it was his lucky day. He left Iraq in a state of chaos and didn't give a damn what his military commanders told him. What does it tell you when every general in the invasion thinks your strategy is stupid and quits?
In the most favorable analysis of the situation (for Bush), he was gullible, easily manipulated, and was in way over his head. You don't go to war on a hunch; you better have a damn good reason why you're putting Americans in the line of fire. There's no way going to war based on the alleged yellowcake was anything more than a hunch, because everyone was telling him that bad intel was bad. Any history that paints him as anything other than an incompetent president is major revisionist propaganda.
BTW, what's up with the dig on ES? Do you have these childish names for everyone? Am I baseline ? Or baseless s ? Either way, none of those are as insulting as calling someone Bud Light. That's uncalled for and deeply offensive to anyone who likes beer in the least.
You need to look at the record to see just how badly Bush dropped the ball on terrorism that was handed to him by the Clinton administration.
Just compare the frequency of cabinet meetings regarding terrorism of the last eight months of the Clinton administration and the first eight months of the bush administration.
Let us all know what you find, and then lol if you can.
Yes, dumbass. That's exactly what we would have preferred if we were going to invade.
Calling don a dumbass is lame. Guy is one of the nicest and most cordial people around.
Well, since he pretty much described a Powell/Shinseki invasion plan to a T without realizing it, I see little to apologize for.
what's not to laud about invading a country and shoving a political style down their throats telling them it's good for them.
I don't think Bush was stupid, per se. I think he is weak in character. I think he can be easily led into doing something that he 'feels' is right, without doublechecking the facts on how successful it can be. Sometimes that leads people in the right direction... people who win in the stocks game, inventors, etc. But sometimes it goes horribly wrong.
1206? That's it? Shoot, I maganed to get a 1360 on my SAT... though if I took it today, it'd probably be something like 1200... I haven't done high school level math in quite a while lol
Puh-lease. Don't try to weasel your way out of it like that.Originally Posted by RandomGuy
Don't make me drag up that thread where you swore up and down that teen pregnacies today are more prevalent than 30 years ago, and I found a compilation of data that showed the exact opposite.
It makes you look worse than copping up to the fact that you were talking out your ass and got caught doing it.
And THIS is the post in which I put up an egregious typo... *facepalm*
Cmon Randomguy... you know that "unplanned pregnancies" are well do entedlol
"Just one last question before we help deliver your baby ma'am... did you plan to have this child? Just doing this survey, ya know...."
Actually the main problem was that US troops didn't know what to do after the shooting stopped, because they had no orders/training/guidance about it.
It wasn't the fact that there weren't enough troops, it was simply the fact that those that were there essentially stood around waiting for orders.
The Bush administration had A1, absolutely, positively, without a doubt, no clue as to what to do in Iraq after the shooting stopped, and that confusion began on day one after the war, when the ONLY security force in the country, the US military, didn't know what it was supposed to do.
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