I’ve never seen you post anything that wasn’t grade-A pro-Bush. Ever.

Provide a single quotation where I endorse or defend a specific Bush administration policy. Just one…..
Go ahead…..
Keep looking…..
I’m waiting…..

The fact that I entirely agree with almost everything else in your comment provide an additional problem for your claim that I am “grade-A pro-Bush”.

Maybe if you spent a little time reading what I actually wrote instead of proceeding from the assumption that the only people who could ever criticize “your side” must by definition be Bushies, you would be able to respond to their actual arguments instead of a false caricature based on a crude stereotype.

I’ve never seen you post anything that wasn’t grade-A pro-Bush. Ever. Posts like your earlier one where you say there are things to criticize about his administration are the closest I remember.

Is Bush really 100% responsible? No. But a truth that the conservatives fail to admit is that his policies have in fact done more good for the terrorists than harm. This is not a war against another nation or nations. Bush policies are like ammunition for the ideological war that the Islamist extremists wage against us in the Muslim world. Just the other day he spoke of how we were attacked, implicitly tying it to Iraq. When he lies and twists the truth like that it isn’t only Americans who see it. It isn’t only his political base. He isn’t preaching just to his choir.

In addition things like Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and the Bush administration’s support for torture cost us friends in the non-Islamic world. So he and his must bear a great deal of blame for where we are and how long the situation will remain bad because what has been done with his approval is a giant years-long recruiting ad for the fanatics.

On the other hand, today we are the military and economic linchpin of the west. When we blow it now, we have the influence to really blow it for not just ourselves but many other countries as well. This appears to be what Bush has succeeded in doing. After this is over we will have done the following:

a) Handed Iraq to either Iran or terrorists. Or both.

b) Inflated the deficit to the point where so much is owned by foreign nations we lose our influence over them. See China and our permanently stalled trade negotiations for a great example.

c) Brought global energy prices thru the roof. This affects directly takes power from western nations and gives it to regimes in the middle east. Also, to China and Russia who appear to be increasingly establishing themselves among smaller nations in the post war on terror world.

d) Side note, but a lot of people were killed in the process.

AQ in particular and Islamofascists in general are morally reprehensible people who want to kill you, I and our children.

Then it must also be true that Bush is not “entirely” (your word) responsible when they do it.

I know that I am preaching to the deaf and blind here, but GWB does not get a pass for creating a crucible for these cretins to carry out their dastardly deeds and be so well established in Iraq four-plus years into your hero’s war that they are now exporting those deeds elsewhere in the region and God knows where else.

And here we see it again — when confronted with a disagreement over his excesses, Shaun’s first response is to claim that his critic must automatically be pro-Bush.

Shaun, as you well know, I have never once argued that Bush should “get a pass”. I’ve endorsed some criticisms of Bush administration policies, including above on this very thread. Your constant efforts to misrepresent the beliefs of those who criticize your excesses is transparently dishonest.

Make no mistake: AQ in particular and Islamofascists in general are morally reprehensible people who want to kill you, I and our children.

I know that I am preaching to the deaf and blind here, but GWB does not get a pass for creating a crucible for these cretins to carry out their dastardly deeds and be so well established in Iraq four-plus years into your hero’s war that they are now exporting those deeds elsewhere in the region and God knows where else.

can we agree on worst in 20th century?

Umh.

Bush invaded Iraq.

In.

2003.

That’s the 21st century.

Not the 20th.

I think there is a lot to legitimately criticize about the Bush administration and the Iraq war policy and a lot of other things. But there is also a lot to criticize in Shaun’s obsessive, hysterical and repetitively over-the-top rants on those subjects. Criticism of Shaun Mullen’s excesses does NOT equate to support for Bush or his policies, no matter how frequently Shaun and his friends try to cast it as such.

Since when is continued support for a failed policy considered a “moderate position”?

And since when is ANY criticism of excesses from the anti-war side assumed to be “continued support for a failed policy”?

Isn’t it possible in your world to criticize some elements on both sides?

President Bush, of course, is entirely to blame for this state of affairs because, quite simply, he has been in charge, has always said he knows best and has been deaf to advice, let alone criticism, that runs contrary to his mantra that those dastardly terrorists were there before the U.S. was.

What a remarkably bigoted statement. These sorts of sentiments strip away all human agency and moral personhood from members of groups like al-Qaeda by reducing every single one of their actions to a cause-effect relationship set thousands of miles away in Washington D.C. In the course of trying to just bash Bush, you inadvertently make it so everyone else in the world isn’t even a human being anymore, they are just cogs in Bush’s evil machine.

Even most anti-Bush and/or anti-war people have retained enough perspective to recognize that even Bush’s enemies are capable of making SOME of their bad choices without his or Cheney’s malevolent influence forcing them into it.

But for the true BDS victims, well, literally every bad thing in the world must be because of Bush.

Of course hindsight is 20/20 and maybe the Iraq war will be a shining star of accomplishment to historians in 100 years, but we don’t have the luxury of hindsight, and still have the responsibility to make judgment calls on events as the happen. Such judgment is sane and good as long as you can look back later and say, ‘ok, I was wrong, and here is why…’

Sorry, but I can not agree with “this is the US worst foreign policy mistake in our history.” I will reference one of my earlier comments:

From a historical perspective and despite his many other achievements, the President with the worst foreign policy record has to be James Madison. He swayed public opinion towards the necessity of war but seemingly ignored the fact that the U.S. was woefully unable to prosecute a war at that time or even defend its own borders. This, of course, led to British occupation of American land, the blockade of U.S. ports, and the burning of Washington, D.C. Pursuing a war from a point of weakness that places citizens at risk of foreign occupation has to be among the biggest foreign policy mistakes in U.S. history, and is arguably the worst. While the outcome of the War of 1812 was just a return to the pre-war status quo, the intervening years brought the U.S. nothing but lost lives and economic turmoil. Madison’s decision to go to war is especially vexing considering the British offered to end trade restrictions immediately after the U.S. declaration of war (trade restrictions among other grievances supposedly being the main reason for war).
In reality, picking the worst foreign policy decision in U.S. history is up to infinite debate. Madison’s War of 1812, Wilson’s intransigence on the Treaty of Versailles …. the list goes on. What can be said, however; is that it is impossible to create a historical comparison when one event is still in the present tense. One can not judge the outcome of the War in Iraq when one does not know the outcome. Any speculation as to the outcome is just that, speculation.

I am not offering an opinion for or against the War in Iraq. I simply disagree with your broad assertion that in reference to the War in Iraq: “this is the US worst foreign policy mistake in our history.”

At the time, many people believed that America’s involvement in WW I was the United States’ worst foreign policy decision of all time. Evidence of this fact can be found in America’s isolationist attitude which led to the Neutrality Acts.

My main problem, Iraq may very well be the worst foreign policy decision in U.S. history.

However, how do you come to that conclusion while the conflict is still in the present tense?

If 70% no longer support the war, that must include liberals, moderates, independents and even a few conservatives.

If you mean “moderate” as in the Clemensian “moderation in all things” something this Administration sorely lacks, then yes. If you mean “Moderate” in your defenition of the word being boot-licking UltraCon toady, then no. We are as fed up with the extremes on both sides- just remember when the pendulum stops , gravity will bring it back to center and all of you haters can go back to your trailer park, Bud drinking, plastic lawn chair caucuses. Not that there’s anything wrong with that ( though many of your ilk revel in finding wrong where there is none.) Intolerant codswallop.

I agree with Carter, Gore , Brezinski and others who have said that this is the US worst foreign policy mistake in our history. So much worse than Vietnam. Unimaginable. Bush/Cheney are a dangerous combo.