What people think of W. Bush

[Zakalwe]

A post to see what people think of America's glorious leader

 

[Zack]

I put down effective and Inteligent

...and before I am bashed for it

Bush puts on an odd front, comming off as someone who may not be as well educated as his opponents but that works in his favor. It portrays the image of being a bit more average.

Behind the cameras Bush is a cunning bastard. He has at his disposal one of the most devistating political attacks in a long time and knows how to stay in his little safe zone without offending to many people (slightly christian and not uber gay basher). His attack isn't exactly new but it is relentless. Constantly dropping bad press like water on a rock (reguardless if it is true or not) has worked very well for him in the campain to be governer of Texas and to a lesser extent in his campain for president. (I still say Gore would have been better)

In the presidency he did move fast during the 9/11 thing and handled Iraq in the same way most of us would with the infromation and intelligence he had.

Tax cuts and cutting back on spending don't do that much for the economy. While he hasn't helped it he also hasn't hurt it.

Two words: Condoleezza Rice

Personally, I think Bush could have done more to clean out the CIA, DIA, NSA, and all the other IA organisations inside of the US. the CIA has dropped way to many balls and replacing a few people just isn't enough in my opinion.

Bottom line: Bush isn't a magnificent president like Washington, Regan, Kennidy, Coolage, and whoever else you'd like to throw up there but he isn't a shame to the presidency.

 

[SensualCoder]

I second that opinion, because I have no opinion of my own... :lol:

 

[Zakalwe]

No opinion? Oh go on, you must have at least a little opinion, I'm not even American and I have all sorts of opinions on George W. Bush, previous false president of America (I say previous because I don't know whether the last elections where rigged or not).

 

[Zack]

Florida was close, but Bush had won it. The election was not rigged but it did have the same ammount of error as any other election. Normally a lot of the votes aren't counted because even if they were they wouldn't effect the outcome of the results in that state because of the electoral college system. At one point it was so close that these odd votes actually mattered thus a big thing was made about the recount, counting every vote yadda yadda. Besides, the republicans are powerful but they are not THAT powerful.

 

[Zakalwe]

Okay, just repeating some of the facts I read in that book of Michael Moore's (I do now realise that this thread is going to become a discussion on the nature and quality of Michael more *shrugs*). I do find the amount of oil companies his familly is connected to, and the whole oil line through Affganistan intresting though, and that Iraq is one of the worlds largest oil producers. Not to mention that Bush said his favourite book was the "Hungry Catapilar".

 

[Zack]

Hungry Catapilar was a masterpiece, a book so perfect it outshines ANYTHING any human mind has produced sense the dawn of time.

Anyways...

Michael Moore is someone who you have to take with a grain of salt. He makes millions of dollars producing propoganda that people will go see, like bowling for colombine and F 9/11.

Bush is smart, and wouldn't start a war over oil. If the united states wanted more crude oil we would have either sent more food to Iraq and got more oil out of the food for oil program (which Iraq was abusing) or pressured OPEC to increase production. If bush was trying to disrupt the middle east oil supply to deepen his own pockets he would have tried to go through the UN to implement sanctions on oil producing countries.

The US as is has enough crude oil to go around. That isn't the problem. The problem has been that oil refineries haven't expanded properly to meet the demands of the united states. Thus a shortage of refined oil products starts. These companies are now trying to play catch-up with their refineries.

The bottom line of this is:
The fact that Iraq produces oil had nothing to do with the choice to invade.

The fact that the bush clan is connected to various oil producers does not really matter much either. Of course he is going to look out for his friends (as would you or any other decent American) but its not like Gore or any other Democrat would be any different. They are connected with all sorts of busnesses and organisations just like the GOP.

 

[Zack]

Click

The final word on Mr. Moore

 

[Zakalwe]

It does seem unfortunate that all presidents, presidential candidates and so forth all seem to come from wealthy backgrounds, and are all connected to large buisness.

In Britain this has never been the case to my knowledge, in the old days (circa 1940ish) the higher class had significant control, but now the rich are not in politics as much. An example might be Lloyd George who was born in a mining village (one of the most important politicians of the 20th century and the motivating force besides Churchill in the Liberal reforms), or Margret Thatcher (you must know her), who was the daughter of a butcher (or grocer, doesn't make much differance). Their are no connections with large industries. The fact that Tony Blair is now going on holidays paid for by corrupt Itallian Prime ministers is a source of distaste for me, but he doesn't have any connections to buisness.

By the way what do you think of the Patriot act?

 

[Zack]

Ah yes, the euro-angle

promptly to be answered by the ultimate counter used whenever someone brings up the euro-angle

We saved your ass in WW2

The patriot act is something that any nation does when responding to an attack like the alien and sedition acts of old times. Some rights are supressed for the greater good of the society at large. Brittan, france, ect, have all done the same thing when they have come under attack in the past.

Also keep in mind that the US is home to some of the largest and most powerful corporations on the planet, holds a large ammount of he worlds wealth, and has a larger population. 281,421,906 compared to 58,800,000. Its a much harder job to control the United States which has a larger population and more land which it is spread across along with many organisations that would resist goverment control as opposed to a small island with a smaller population.

As for the actuall people in charge of your goverment I can't comment because I've never really looked into that.

 

[Zakalwe]

That video really was not all that good. I mean I'm sure it took I while to make and it had a few good punchlines etc. etc. however, I'm just not sure about what it was saying, no no I understood it, but I don't think Moore hates America, he doesn't hate Americans, he certainly doesn't like Bush or in fact any of the politicians other than Nader. And I'm afraid that I haven't been to America, so I can't judge your quality of intelligance, the Candians seemed quite nice though, and it has to be said that the typical English person isn't that bright, but I do have to quote what an American said to my freind James while he was at Las Vegas

How do you say hello in British

I don't think the video really made very many points, and also I wouldn't say that America's won the war in Iraq, more people have died since America declared the conflict was over than during the conflict and their are still terroist attacks and kidnappings, and they will likely continue untill your troops leave, the 'resistace' as Michael called it is still their and the films 'Heellllo' to the image of the falling statue does nothing to change that.

 

[Zack]

You do know that it is statisticly safer to be an american soldier in Iraq than be living in your home? People have been saying that we will loose millions of men and suffer horrible losses ever sense we went into Iraq and even as we entered bagdad. The pentagon preformed one of the most spectacular assults in the history of the world and are doing an amazing job. Resistance isn't nearly as bad as it is portrayed on the Telivision. Most of the fighters are not from Iraq itself, Iraq had an amazing voter turn out (over 65%, better than here in the US) and US casualties have been kept to a minimum.

This invasion may seem like a disaster to those who blindly follow what they hear on TV but compare Iraq to soviet occupied Afganistan, Checosovacia (or however you spell that) ect, ect. What people can't seem to understand is that this 'resistance to the united states being evil' has been around in Iraq for a very long time. There were gurrella wars going on before Sadam, during Sadam's rule, and are continueing on now to a lesser extent. Even if we were to leave Iraq would still be facing years of that kind of war reguardless of what type of goverment or presense other goverments maintain in the area.

To summerise:
Moore makes his money off of being a propogandist so you shouldn't take anything of his at face value

We did win the war in Iraq and amazing progress is being made after the war when compared against other similar actions taken by other nations in the past.

 

[Zakalwe]

A small Island with a smaller population? England is one of the most densely packed countries on the planet, oh we may not have even nearly as large a population as America, but for the amount of land we have it's impressive.

And as for saving our arses (yes arses) in World War II, yes I suppose you did, although to be fair it would have been very hard for Hitler to take our little Island, and without us their as a landing point and base of operations, you would have found it very hard to win the war. And the UK still had a very large part to play in the war, and the Blitz was terrible, their was one ONE bombing raid on American Soil (I mean america, not Pearl harbour or somewher like that), while tens of thousands of people died in their beds or in their homes due to the bombing. Thanks for helping us, and for waiting untill you where actually attackted to do something about it.

And as for laws to be brought in times of crisis the nearest thing would be DORA (Defense of the Realm Act) taken in WWII, and yes that gave a huge amount of power to the government, but if you think that the current terroist threat is anything on the scale of the Second World War you may have to rethink it. Now their are laws trying to be passed to allow terroist suspects to be imprisoned without trial, not giving evidence, and to monitor their phones and internet access while still free, but all intelligant people are opposining this.

As for the people in charge of our government, don't bother yourself, there usualy incompetant and make bizare decisions without the excuse of light corruption, rocked by scandle every week by are accursed thrill media of "The Sun" and the "Daily Mirror" owned by capitalist, poiliticly minded Murdock. It's depreessing, and it's not getting better. Worse we have a leader who seems to be devoted to liking the boots of W. Bush, and would like agree to turn Britain into a state of America if asked.

 

[SensualCoder]

George Bush is a great man. He may not be the best, but when compared to morons like Al Gore and John Kerry, he is much more competent. Tht is the extent of my reasoning, along with the points brought up by Uso Tasuki (still don't know anyone's names).

 

[Zakalwe]

Czechoslovakia, and it doesn't exist anymore, it became the Czech Republic and Slovakia quite a while back. Anyway I have an aupair who comes from their, and whose family lived through the Communist regime, and compared to that, Iraq does actually seem quite bad. And I actually read the Independant newspaper when I read anything which is the best when it comes to giving an impartial view, and the BBC (which is the news service I watch) is also surprsingly impartial.

And a spectacular assualt? Would that include suddenly baraging a city with bombs with no warning, many of which hit residential areas, and following through with such brilliant leadership that's led to all sorts of alogations of creulty to prisoners, and that case of the aircraft pilot being ordered to shoot at civilians. This isn't to mention the caravan of peace workers and diplomats that was mistaked for combatants and blown to kingdom come.

 

[Zack]

The bombing was known by Iraq well in advance with virtually no loss of civillian life when compared to the ammount of damage done. The majority of the military targets were in residential areas and the attack was so precise we were able to gut entire military buildings without bringing them down.

As for prisoners, its a shame that something like that happened. But it was a more or less isolated incident conducted by individuals not by the army as a whole.

And yes.... the BBC is soooo impartial

Britan may be dense, but the small ammount of land, no borders, fact that the US kept brittan alive by producing weapons and food for it even though in the first world war Britan virtually stole its supplies from the US by taking out loans and not repaying them, makes brittan a lot easyer to govern than something like the US.

 

[Tim]

You think someone ordered those people to torture prisoners?

There are sadists in this world, sadly those ones were put in charge of other people. It has nothing to do with their leadership, they are just bad people.

You make it sound like 100 or even 1000 civilian deaths is unacceptable losses. It is a war, people die. We (the united states military) try not to kill civilians as much as possible, sometimes mistakes are made. Do you know how many people died in vietnam, or WW1, WW2, or korea, or afghanistan? All those wars had far more civilian casualties and soldier casualties alike. The only war I can think of with less deaths would be the Spanish American war, and i'm not even sure about that. :|

The greater travesty here imo is that more people die from smoking or violent crime, or alcohol in a month than died from this war, and nobody is up in arms about that ideologically screaming at smokers. Put in perspective the death toll, while saddening, is remarkably small.

 

[Zakalwe]

No I don't think they where ordered to do so (although in some cases their where very vague orders, and there's a scandal about some British troops at the moment), I don't think the American military does that sort of thing (by the way anyone ever seen the movie full metal jacket)

And yes I do know about the casualties of Vietnam, and the tragedies their, especialy those thanks to the massive scale bombing, the search and deastroy missions, the Napalm which stuck to people and burned them to the bones, and the agent orange that destroyed their livelehoods and then contaminated the ground with TCDD which has left it mark on the generations to come. And as for WWI now that was a travesty of terrible generalship, where some men decided it would be a good idea to make two sets of trenches and to shoot at each other for four years, and occasionaly force people to charge towards machineguns, and not to mention the Russian front, which so bad it caused a revolution. If Iraq was at all like that I'd be horrified. And the WWII with the Death Camps? I think you have to be doing something pretty amazing in Iraq to manage those kind of figures. You shouldn't compare one war to another, their all unique in their own horific way.

As for less deaths try this funny war that lasted 45 minutes and resulted in the English navy shelling a palace and pretty much nothing else, or the Cold War, not to many peopled died there (or at least not that we know about) (bay of pigs doesn't count).

And just to clarify I personally would scream at smokers and alcoholics, excpet it would do anything, and as for violent crime, I suppose the easy acess to guns really can't be helping that. Wasn't their another school shoooting case recently?

 

[Zack]

A lot of people died in the cold war, Korea, the USSR invasion of afganistan, Vitnam, ect were all products of the cold war.

And there was that funny little thing of Britan suddenly turning its back on the US when WW1 was over and trying to milk germany for all its work and then help set up a curropt leauge of nations that only led to another World War.

 

[Zakalwe]

To be fair the main thing that led to the second world war was that at Versailes none of the big three could agree what to do, so they made a compromise, which meant that it was not harsh enough to keep the Germans down, but harsh enough to keep resentment. Not that I go with either of the extremes of France (the vengance driven), or America (who wanted to forgive and forget). In fact it was only the English PM who wanted the middle path, and he was effectively ignored.

And actualy it was France that wanted to milk Germany for all it was worth, Britain wanted to make sure they got back on their feet so we could trade with them again, we where traders and imperialists, not warmongers. And the league of nations was your presidents brain child, lest you forget, and Britain was put in the unfortnate position of having to spread it's manpower all over the world trying to stop countries fighting each other, with no help from America, and very little from the fellow leader France. It's no surprise we stopped bothering.

And the league of nations was not corrupt, it was very weak and completely incompetent when it came to dealing with powerful countries, but it was not curupt. The problems it had where to do with it's organistation (designed by President Wilson), the lack of assistance by America which meant economic sanctions and military threats meant little, and the faliure of the leaders to care enough about people outside their empires (Britain did have 1/4 of the world to run, and hardly needed to help with the other 3/4).

Oh and the reasons behind the Second World War are really quite long and complex and really had very little to do with Britain being greedy, it was a combination of France and the USA.