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Obama or Bush?

Obama or Bush?

  • Total voters
    36
Boo Radley said:
Nor do I. I think he's responsible for what he did. He invaded two countries, one on a pretext. Iraq has always ultimately been up to the Iraqis. If Iraq is better, it is because of Iraqis, paid for with their blood. And if it falls apart, that too will be their legacy and not Bush's.
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Then we agree where I thought we originally disagreed. :confused:
 
They are about equally mediocre in my eyes. They both fall in the lower half of the middle as far as presidents go. Just because I don't think eitehr of them are/were very good doesn't mean I have to buy into the hysteria that they are "the worst president ever".
 
Boo Radley said:
I remember LBJ, and while not a fan, I would not rate him worse than Bush.
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Explain please. Not for debate, simply for learning points. Not to make you feel old lol, but I wasn't around for LBJ and would like to hear the perspective of someone who was. Thanks in advance.
 
Boo Radley said:
Iraq has the potential to be even more devastating on a few levels. And as I understand it, Johnson was lied to, whereas Bush was part of the lie. Though close I might accept.
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Do you have proof of your Bush claim or is that just your opinion?
 
MarineTpartier said:
Do you have proof of your Bush claim or is that just your opinion?
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His words for one. No evidence supported a growing and gathering threat. What everyone believed was some left over wmds.
 
MarineTpartier said:
Explain please. Not for debate, simply for learning points. Not to make you feel old lol, but I wasn't around for LBJ and would like to hear the perspective of someone who was. Thanks in advance.
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I grew up during the VN era, and you could not be involved in that and not look at LBJ. Nearly everyone had an opinion, and he was a household name. I served just as the VN war ended, and he was a hot topic. So, I remember LBJ and I even studied him when I studied the VN. The Bay Of Tokin was big in that. LBJ was told the incident happened, and latter learned that it had not. He held a gruge over that as I understand it. Many considered him jerk (nice way of putting it). Listening to his tapes was interesting. Don't know if you can get those on the internet, but if you can they are worth listening to.
 
Boo Radley said:
His words for one. No evidence supported a growing and gathering threat. What everyone believed was some left over wmds.
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I think that to believe Bush lied (using the literal definition of the term) is to believe a conspiracy. What most likely occurred is that Bush pushed forward faulty intelligence because he was a careless president. Lying requires an intent to deceive.
 
Mensch said:
Then, by that logic, and by using collateral damage numbers, Reagan was arguably better than Clinton, given that Clinton's bombing campaign against Iraq led to a half a million Iraqis losing their lives (most of them under the age of 15). Iraqis are still suffering from the effects from that campaign.
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500,000 dead Iraqis at the hands of Clinton? You'll have to refresh my memory.
 
Hikertrash said:
500,000 dead Iraqis at the hands of Clinton? You'll have to refresh my memory.
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Though the exact number is difficult to find, the UN noted that Iraq was being bombed on a weekly, sometimes daily, occurrence from 1993 till 2003. I couldn't find the number, but the deaths from bombing alone amounted to the hundreds of thousands. If you add the deaths as a result of sanctions, the number jumps to over a million. The widespread rate of increased birth defects is well documented. Do you remember Madeline Albright's controversial statement about the deaths being "worth the price"?
 
Bush wasn't trying to destroy America. He might not have done a great job in some areas but his intentions were certainly better than the current clown in the Oval Office
 
MarineTpartier said:
Explain please. Not for debate, simply for learning points. Not to make you feel old lol, but I wasn't around for LBJ and would like to hear the perspective of someone who was. Thanks in advance.
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Imo, LBJ set the standard for the sleazy crooked Texas politician. I grew up in Texas, where politics is dirty, and so are many of the people who gravitate toward the political world. There's probably nothing negative you could tell me about the man that I wouldn't believe.
 
TurtleDude said:
Bush wasn't trying to destroy America. He might not have done a great job in some areas but his intentions were certainly better than the current clown in the Oval Office
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Fact: We were losing 750K jobs when Bush left office. And the stock market was incredibly low. You can't blame that on Obama no matter hard you try.
 
pbrauer said:
Fact: We were losing 750K jobs when Bush left office. And the stock market was incredibly low. You can't blame that on Obama no matter hard you try.
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Go back to 1999 and lay the blame at the source.
 
Boo Radley said:
His words for one. No evidence supported a growing and gathering threat. What everyone believed was some left over wmds.
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Eh, thats shaky. I think Bush was speaking in the confidence of the info given to him. Its not like he's an intel analyst. I think he has the same excuse LBJ has in that regard. I believe he was told by people he trusted that there was a threat. He did what most Presidents do, he trusted his advisors and made a decision. In that case, it was the wrong one. I do hold him responsible because it was on his watch. But I don't think the mistake was his interpertation of intelligence info. It was his trusting of an untrustworthy subordinate or group of subordinates.
 
pbrauer said:
Fact: We were losing 750K jobs when Bush left office. And the stock market was incredibly low. You can't blame that on Obama no matter hard you try.
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My progressive mother always used to say that republicans will blame the current problems on the preceding democrat and give the future credit to the previous republican. Who would have thought the lines go both ways!?
 
lizzie said:
Surely you understand how the mortgage crisis came to be, no? A little Republican and Democratic back-scratching in the late 90's? Ring any bells?
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I'm interested in hearing this. Go on please.
 
lizzie said:
Surely you understand how the mortgage crisis came to be, no? A little Republican and Democratic back-scratching in the late 90's? Ring any bells?
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MarineTpartier said:
I'm interested in hearing this. Go on please.
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Yeah, I'm also curious to know what singular event in '99 created the housing bubble.
 
Mensch said:
Though the exact number is difficult to find, the UN noted that Iraq was being bombed on a weekly, sometimes daily, occurrence from 1993 till 2003. I couldn't find the number, but the deaths from bombing alone amounted to the hundreds of thousands. If you add the deaths as a result of sanctions, the number jumps to over a million. The widespread rate of increased birth defects is well documented. Do you remember Madeline Albright's controversial statement about the deaths being "worth the price"?
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UN sanctions during the Clinton years caused deaths in the hundreds of thousands in Iraq but civilian deaths due to bombing was much lower.

War casualties under Clinton and Bush | Technoccult
 
Hikertrash said:
UN sanctions during the Clinton years caused deaths in the hundreds of thousands in Iraq but civilian deaths due to bombing was much lower.

War casualties under Clinton and Bush | Technoccult
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The number of civilian deaths is unknown, a fact that even your source recognizes. I only brought up the 100k+ figure because I remember reading it from the UN. I have tried to recover the statistic but am unable to do it. I do know that it was a contentious figure that some leftists, such as Michael Moore, have used.

Regardless, Clinton is likely partly (or primarily, depending on how you view things) responsible for the mass deaths, whether they be by bombings or sanctions.
 
Mensch said:
The number of civilian deaths is unknown, a fact that even your source recognizes. I only brought up the 100k+ figure because I remember reading it from the UN. I have tried to recover the statistic but am unable to do it. I do know that it was a contentious figure that some leftists, such as Michael Moore, have used.

Regardless, Clinton is likely partly (or primarily, depending on how you view things) responsible for the mass deaths, whether they be by bombings or sanctions.
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For what its worth, I do remember an inordinate number of maimed civilians when I went in to Iraq in 2003. A lot of people with no arms, legs, scarred faces. We thought it was due to the brutal nature of the regime though. We were just dumb kids. Kind of deflated us a little when someone told us it was from our bombings over the previous years. Its very disheartening when you have these deformed children thanking you for liberating them when you know it was your country that deformed them to begin with.
 
Mensch said:
The number of civilian deaths is unknown, a fact that even your source recognizes. I only brought up the 100k+ figure because I remember reading it from the UN. I have tried to recover the statistic but am unable to do it. I do know that it was a contentious figure that some leftists, such as Michael Moore, have used.

Regardless, Clinton is likely partly (or primarily, depending on how you view things) responsible for the mass deaths, whether they be by bombings or sanctions.
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I've heard anecdotally that Iraqis detest Bill Clinton much more than Dubya. The common narrative is that Clinton's economic sanctions were responsible for the deaths of around 1 million Iraqi children. How accurate that number is, I don't really know, but they really blamed Clinton for that.
 
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