What would it take for George W. Bush to mend his reputation?

Great Debates
101

Actually he needs to provide evidence, which he’s done. Proof doesn’t exist outside of math.

In any case, you’re looking at it wrong. When saying that WMDs are the cause for war, you need to provide evidence that the WMDs exist, not the other way around. The Bush evidence for WMDs were very flimsy and questionable.

And as an aside, since you haven’t addressed it, the blog you posted as evidence for Democratic complicity in the war is still wrong for two reasons. 1. It’s an uncited blog. 2. It doesn’t say what you said it said.

Bush was a car wreck. Obama is still fixing the damage he caused to the nation. Even so, there has been a huge amount of successes for this administration.

As for calling the first lady a queen and clucking at her trips, I suppose you’ll need to just learn to live with it. Just because you think you’re better than her and deserve more doesn’t mean that either is true.

102

So, what you require then is an affidavit from God Almighty co-signed by the Archangel Gabriel?

You fall back onto the last bunker of the unreasonable defense: the lack of absolute proof that someone knew something. You miss the point. Or, more exactly, you evade the point. He should have known, that was his job, the one he was very nearly elected for. The one he claimed to be adequate for. A daunting standard? Yes, but he wasn’t drafted, he put himself forward for that task.

You should have been here, it was quite the long slog. Starting with the nukes, which case, you will recall, turned to shit before our very eyes. Lies. Forgeries. You do remember, right? Then they deftly (or deafly) segued to WMD, of which nukes was merely a subset, and yes, maybe, there was some question about the nuke program, but never mind that, lets talk about all the other stuff he maybe was thinking about possibly doing. We went over it all, day by day, lie by lie, with Bushivik partisans fighting a furious, rearguard defense.

And one by one, they fell away. A pity you weren’t here.

He claimed to know something to be certain, something he could not know because it wasn’t true. And upwards of one hundred thousand innocent Iraqis were shoveled into the hungry jaws of war. For nothing. And you want us to say well, gosh darn it, it was a mistake, slaughter happens.

No. Just no.

103

Nah. That’d just be evidence that Vince Foster arrived at the pearly gates with “Do what we say or you’re next, Jehovah” stapled to his lapel.

We had a doper who pretty famously flamed out. Alleged intelligence guy - remember him? Quite a dick about it, too. He knew something us BLIND LIBRULS didn’t know. He’d show us all in the end!

-Joe

104

How could Bush fix his legacy? Well - here’s how Powell tried:

In speech to the UN Security Council

In an interview from 2005, asked whether his Security Council speech would tarnish his reputation:

As an aside - I hate that these debates always hinge on the mere presence of WMDs. To me, the presence of WMDs themselves was still not sufficient to justify war. That is, even if Iraq really did have boatloads of these things. Tons even. Oh, I don’t know - maybe 100 to 500 tons of chemical weapons agent (to just pull numbers out of thin air) - even that alone should not be sufficient to justify war.

105

I’m not sure I require anything. All I request is, if you (the generic, lefty ‘you’ I suppose) think that he KNEW that Iraq DEFINITELY didn’t have WMD, it would definitely bolster your argument if you had a memo or smoking gun (as I said upthread). Otherwise it just comes across as whining and useless attempts to further a liberal meme. It’s the equivalent, in many ways, to the birther argument: it’s something that just everyone knows, of course, and if you don’t go along, well you’re just an idiot because all my friends know this and… and… the other side is just completely unamerican don’t you know. (then insert snark).

The long piece that Gonzo posted went for quantity over quality, evidence-wise. Not that I’m unhappy that it was posted; just that it isn’t what was claimed, evidence that Bush and Co. knew that there were no WMD there. If you read the whole thing, it suggests that most of the IC actually felt that there was a) WMD there, and b) dev programs to get more.

Anyway, I guess we’re done beating this issue to death.

PS: When you say he should have known… huh? He was listening to what his IC told him. What was he supposed to do, fly over there and go skulking around himself?

106

The interesting thing is, the seeds of the 2008 mortage meltdown were sown under Clinton-the “Community Reinvestment Act”.
That was when the Dems decided that every deadbeat who could breath should get a $500,000 mortgage.

107

It’s called diligence. Good president’s do diligence before sending our fungible assets* into harm’s way.
Rather than do his job, Bush complained about how hard it was to be president.

*in the Rumsfeldian sense.

108

That’s what you get when you elect right wingers to anything. Republican or Democrat.

109

You don’t understand the issue you’re complaining about.

Why don’t you read up on it and find factual reasons to complain about Democrats?
From: Community Reinvestment Act - Wikipedia

There is much more at the page.

110

Cheney went into the intelligence agencies and baby sat the workers until he got what he wanted. They broomed anyone who did not go along . Careers were put in jeopardy. There was lots of evidence that there was no WMD. On the other hand they had a cab driver(curveball) who said he had personal knowledge of WMD, The neocons were looking for an excuse to get Saddam. They said in “the center for a new American Century” that they wanted to remove the Iraqi government. They planned on wars because they thought they would be short, easy and profitable. They had designs on us running the world. Kristol, Cheney,Wolfowitz and many other signed on to the scheme.

111

If a law was passed that forced banks to lose money, and that law was passed at nine in the morning, by ten that morning CitiGroup and BankAmerica would call their purchased Congresscritters, and that law would be gone by noon.

112

And people wonder why apathy is becoming endemic.

113

Fighting ignorance is easy, fighting the apathy of the well-informed is a lot harder.

114

Nobody ever thought that. Nobody. But mortgages that were oversold, were sold by mortgage originators. They were sold to people who did not know better. They trusted the mortgage pros to steer them properly.
Clinton did not say 500 thousand dollar mortgages should be sold to poor people. He did see that many people were not creating personal wealth. Buying a house was a way to change that. But overbuying was never part of the program. that falls in the laps of the bankers.

115

While I am sure that you will dismiss the following points, (much as birthers would :p), there is a substantial body of evidence that Bush knew that his claims were weak and that he clearly did not care.

The “IC” from which he received information was the Office of Special Plans, set up by Wolfowitz and Feith that was composed of about 18 public relations types with no intelligence experience, established to pore over actual intelligence reports and cherry-pick factoids that sounded good. It is all very well to say that Bush “didn’t know” that, but that simply means that he chose to ignore genuine intelligence reports.
Colin Powell noted that the “information” that he was given to present to the UN was “crap,” and if Bush was not aware of that, he was either blithely or deliberately ignorant.
Bush deliberately chose to launch a war after the UN inspection teams had gone back into the country and were consistently sending back information that indicated a lack of WMDs.
When Bush ordered Richard Clark to find a link between the WTC/Pentagon attacks and Iraq, Clark prepared a document correctly noting that there was no connection, which Bush sent back for not showing what he wanted to see.
When the invasion started, not one unit was ordered to seek and protect suspected WMD sites, clearly indicating that the military was aware that there were no WMDs–a point of which Bush could only be ignorant through stupidity or malfeasance.

No. He could have listened to actual intelligence reports instead of papers specially prepared by a public relations outfit to bolster his desired claims. He could have noted that every time one of his OSP factoids was published, it was debunked, (often within hours), by the international news media. He could have noted that the UN inspectors that were actually in country were finding nothing. He could have done his job.

116

Thing is, we know for sure that Saddam used chemical weapons against the Kurds. Chemical weapons are WMDs. So it surely wasn’t unreasonable to think that Saddam had a bunch of leftover chemical weapons stashed out in the desert.

It’s my belief that the Bush administration believed that it was certain we’d find some sort of chemical weapons stash once we controlled Iraq, plus a bunch of other stuff. So finding proof of these weapons before we invaded was a waste of time–the weapons were there, all we need is enough evidence to get congress and the UN to vote the right way, and it doesn’t matter if the particular evidence we give is incorrect or misleading, because even if that particular evidence was wrong, we’re sure to find lots of other stuff after the war is over.

Except, it turned out not to be true. Of course, Saddam could easily have started producing chemical weapons again, once the heat was off, and of course, Saddam wanted a bit of strategic ambiguity.

And of course, since Saddam was a hated dictator, the war would be short and pretty bloodless (we’d be welcomed with flowers), and we’d demonstrate the power of the United States military to some of the other assholes around the world. Well, it turned out to be correct that the war was short, and pretty bloodless, and while we weren’t welcomed with flowers we did manage to drive to Baghdad and scatter the Iraqi army in no time.

Only problem was, what next? And that’s where we get to the failures of the Bush administration. Sure, no WMDs, which they were sure were around there somewhere. Yeah, they lied about that. Except, that’s not so horrible. Sure they lied, but so what? We had a short relatively bloodless war, we ousted an undeniably horrible dictator. So balanced against that, a few misstatements about WMDs is pretty minor. A footnote, really. Nothing anyone would really care about, fog of war and all that. And the thing is, I agree. Lying about the WMDs really was a pretty petty deception, and it’s something I’d give a pass to as being a dick move, but not monstrous.

Except, the problem is what came after the short bloodless war and ousting of the horrible dictator. And the WMD deception is irrelevant to this. It wouldn’t matter if we really had dug up an operational chemical weapons lab in the desert. What matters is that after we occupied Iraq and triumphantly lowered the flags on the presidential palances, things went to hell. If lying about WMDs would lead to a quick victory and ousting an odious dictator, go ahead and lie. It’s just one of those things.

Except, the meatgrinder we found ourselves in–that is, the meatgrinder we created–wasn’t exactly a quick victory, was it? I’m morally certain that the Bush administration didn’t intend for us to be mired in a meatgrinder in Iraq for a decade. Except, they did mire us in a meatgrinder for a decade. Lying about WMDs is forgivable. It’s trivial. It is literally nothing. The WMD debate is a red herring. The other thing–that miring us in a meatgrinder thing?–that’s not so easily forgivable.

I don’t care whether we were justified in sticking our dicks in that meatgrinder or not. I don’t care if Saddam dared us to stick our dicks in the meatgrinder, and everyone would think we were cowardly if we refused to stick our dicks in the meatgrinder. It’s still a, you know, mistake to stick your dick in the meatgrinder. And the fact that the Bush administration didn’t expect the war to be so difficult and bloody and endless is not an excuse, it makes it worse.

This is the unforgivable sin of the Bush administration. Not whether they lied about WMDs, or whether they cut taxes too much, or a bunch of other stuff that was assholish, but just par for the course, and forgivable after shaking your head and thinking “what a dope, but we elected the guy after all, so what are you gonna do?”.

Oh, and another unforgivable sin? That whole, you know, torture thing. Which I don’t particularly feel like getting into right now, because of my blood pressure.

117

Actually, as I understand it that was unreasonable. The stuff decays. And on top of that, after Gulf War I pretty much everything was already accounted for and destroyed.

118

Depends on the type of ‘stuff’. Some of it can last quite a long time (IIRC, the Germans still had stockpiles from WWI that they COULD have used during WWII). Even when it does decay, though, it’s not exactly health food, or decaying into some non-toxic and inert material. It’s still pretty nasty stuff, and could still be dangerous, or at least that’s my impression.

Yeah, but two things…first is, you’d have to believe that Saddam et al gave an accurate inventory, and that all of what was on that inventory was directly examined and found, then destroyed. Secondly, you’d have to believe that Saddam et al weren’t building new stuff somewhere.

In retrospect, I think, both of those things were mostly true…most if not all of the stuff was inventoried and found/destroyed, and Saddam et al weren’t building (or buying) new stuff to refill their inventory. However, I don’t think that it was unreasonable, considering Saddam and friends track record, to disbelieve either or both suppositions.

That said, even if he had WMD, it wasn’t justification for an invasion (and even if we had justification, it wasn’t worth our while). Maybe justification of doing a Clinton-esque tossing of a couple Tomahawks, or a Reagan-esque air strike or three, but not a full blown invasion. JMHO there.

-XT

119

As I recall, they had a list of sites that they were darn sure and positive about, and the UN inspectors said “Well, OK, give us the list and we’ll check 'em out” and the Bushiviks said “Hell, no, you guys are the UN, you can’t trusted with secrets like that.” Anyway, eventually they caved and turned them over and the inspectors went to each and every one and found…nothing.

I don’t recall perzackly how they explained that one away, or even if they did. It was like the usual rules didn’t apply during recess.

120

I’m not doubting that there wasn’t an Office of Special Plans. I was referring to that mouth-breathing, right winger Gonzo’s link that talked to the makeup of the NIE. An NIE that received input from 6 Intel agencies, 5 of which (the State Dept was the dissenter) said that they probably had WMD.

So when you say that he should have not listened to the PR firm or whatever… I was referring to the NIE… which drew conclusions from the “actual intelligence reports”, as you say.

And again, using the UN’s conclusions that they didn’t find anything is hardly conclusive evidence that nothing was there to find. If I remember correctly, they were being shuffled around by their Iraqi hosts, refused entry into certain sites at times, and generally harrassed… hardly the behavior of a saint with nothing to hide, especially when he signed a treaty at the end of GW1 saying that those actions were allowed.

Now, to address your first sentence: do I think that W knew that his claims were weak, or at least not rock-solid? Absolutely. Do I think he read in the reports what he wanted to see? Yup. Do I think that the neocon advisors were feeding him this stuff? Sure. But that’s all besides the point, as hopefully you see now.

Without a smoking gun, proof, that W actually KNEW (not suspected) that there was no WMD anymore, how can an intellectually honest person not feel that there is at least some chance that he acted in the way he thought best to protect the nation? *(unless you’re just an out and out Bush hater, in which case, meaningful discourse is pointless) As were all the Dems who voted for the use-of-force authorization? (unless you think they were just craven puppies pandering to the jingoistic moment… in which case, why any reasonable person would still like/vote for them, I have no idea…)