Yes, how stupid of him to answer the question you actually asked, instead of psychically divining what your intent was.
I may have missed something but as far as I can recall he is the 1st person to go on record saying this, who is not in the business of politics. I know that in order to make some of his deals he has to play ball with politicians but his business is Real Estate, he is not in the politics business.
I know that he is a self important blow hard, but he is a high profile self important blow hard.
I’m thinking a jackass-grizzly bear hybrid with opposable thumbs and a nasty disposition.
And please, no Cheney jokes.
**xtisme, ** what do you think will happen in Iraq?
I was twenty-four in 1964 and while I can’t claim that I KNEW what Vietnam would become, I did have a damn good idea and so did plenty of other people. As it turned out, we were correct. I see no reason to believe that Iraq will turn out okay and plenty of reasons to believe it will not. I believe history will prove us right; the same history will prove GWB wrong.
You are being too hard on him…the only stupid thing was in not ‘thinking about it’. 
Look, it seemed obvious to me…if it was unclear, I appologize. Or did you want to flog me somemore? Get it out of your system bro…I aim’s to please…
-XT
I guess I have a reflexive ‘don’t care’ gene when it comes to famous people. I don’t give a shit what Trump thinks…and I’m genuinely puzzled why anyone else would.
-XT
Not even one? Even if its apt? Please??
-XT
I think its likely to be a long, drawn out clusterfuck that will span multiple administrations before…I don’t know. At this point most of my hope for anything positive (or even just slightly negative) have been beaten out of me. I also don’t think that, even if a Dem gets the top slot in the next election, we will be pulling out of Iraq anytime soon. Its just too vital to our interests to leave completely fucked up. Its in the worst possible place for us to cut and run…at least as long as we are dependent on all that oil stuff to make our cars go.
Perhaps people are right and Bush will now and forever wholely own this mess…but perhaps not too. Because frankly we have no idea what will happen with the next administration…its wishful thinking to just assume this will be the case and that everything will be magically resolved when Bush et al are happily out of our road for good.
IMHO anyway, FWIW.
-XT
If you knew in 1964 what Vietnam would become, all I can say is…you should go into the psychic business. Oh, and tell me what next weeks lotto numbers are so I can retire to the lifestyle I want to become accustomed too.
BTW, just to clear something up…I never said ‘Iraq will turn out okay’…gods, far from it. I must have done a singularly bad job of making myself clear in this thread (which is saying something for me, as my posts are famous for being clear as mud 
). Nor do I think GW will somehow be cleared by history in some magic fashion. My POINT was that we don’t KNOW that GW will now and always have exclusive ownership of the whole thing…just like we didn’t KNOW that Kennedy would simply be kicking things off and that both Johnson and Nixion (hell, and even Ford) would get their piece of the shit sandwich.
-XT
I agree. I find myself continually astonished that endorsement are still considered to matter in election campaigns. Back in the bad (or good) old days when professional politicians picked candidates and were scratching each others backs I can understant it. But now?
I notice in a post above that you somehow managed to drag Clinton into the discussion, re Saddam’s violations of UN mandates. Please enlighten me. Did the UN ever come to the US and ask that we enforce their sanctions? And would it be our place to jump in if we weren’t asked.
It seems to me that Iraq was well contained and a danger to no one pre GW’s adventurism. Now it seems like a danger to the whole Mid East.
I knew Vietnam would become the mess it did become in the same way I know Iraq will inevitably get worse and I knew/know those two things in the same way I know a horse cannot dial a telephone or climb a tree. During my lifetime our beloved leaders have started a War on Poverty and a War on Drugs; both Wars have been going on for longer than I can remember and, so far as I know, are ongoing today. We haven’t come close to winning either one of them and we won’t win the War on Terror or whatever we are calling it now. And, after all, Iraq is just the front line in that war. Something about the mentality of our elected officials just will not let them admit that they screwed up in a big way nor will those who follow these. In my view the War on Terror will go on and on and on and Iraq will suffer as a consequence and will suffer more the longer we continue to fight a war that is no more winnable than the other two.
Um…I did? Could you tell me where I mentioned Clinton? Because I have to tell you…if I did I didn’t mean to. He was about the furthest thing from my mind with that post.
-XT
Er, ah, um, it was Shodan in this post.
Shodan, xtisme - virtually identical spelling and pronounciation. Could have happened to anyone. :smack:
Not to mention that Bush had the precedent of Vietnam - and those of Somalia, and Lebanon, and the Russians in Afghanistan - to tell him what an ocupation of an unwilling country would be like and still did it. And his own father wrote a book detailing precisely what would have happened had he gone into Iraq, and he still did it. But as he has the memory span of a guppy all this escaped him.
Truly, the only thing we learn from history is that we don’t learn from history.
Quite a few people were pretty damned sure that Vietnam was going to be a very stupid thing to get involved in. Quite a few people (not you) were pretty damned sure Iraq was going to be a very stupid thing to start.
Are you so defensive about Iraq because you once supported this war or is there a part of you that still thinks it wasn’t a complete fuckup in every way? At this point, I can’t name a single good thing that came out of this war, including removing Saddam. At least the vast majority of the public there had a sense of security when going about their day to day business.
Sure we do. A whole shitload (hundreds of thousands or more) of people will die, for no good reason. About the only thing we don’t know is how much worse it will get.
Got it. *Both * Saddam’s lies about still having WMD’s, and Bush’s lying about their thereby making Saddam a “grave and gathering threat”, are Clinton’s fault.
Ingenious. :rolleyes:
To the contrary, it was a complete screw-up right from Eisenhower’s dabbling. What, you think there was something “winnable” there that somebody *else * screwed up? It’s only a question of degree, and always was.
Anything imaginary can be made to be analogous if you apply enough imagination. You have enough to preemptively blame the loss of Iraq, not on Bush, but on the Democrats’ imagined *impeachment * of him, so the rest shouldn’t be hard.
Earth to Shodan: Tet was in 1968. Nixon wasn’t even President yet.
That’s one. Duomente, Saddam, did, in fact disarm. Why do you think no one found any WMD’s?
Scott Ritter was right. Remember that. That’s the single most important takeaway from Iraq.
Why remember that? Isn’t that another one of those “inconvenient truths?”
They did find huge amounts of illegal weapons , one of which- a special SCUD-type missle modified for longer (read “Isreal”) range was specifically illegal and considered by some to be a WMD (but it was more of a WMD delivery system to be completely accurate).
Those aluminium tubes thought to be parts for a Nuclear reactor? They were for motars, which were also illegal for SH to buy.