Tag Archives: George W. Bush

Intgernational news, national news, political news

Bush seeks to dodge 9/11 responsibility

attack

CNN’s Jake Tapper might have asked the most incisive and insightful question of the 2016 president campaign.

Over the weekend on “State of the Union,” Tapper asked former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush the following question: “Obviously Al Qaeda was responsible for the terrorist attack of 9/11, but how do you respond to critics who ask, if your brother and his administration bear no responsibility at all, how do you then make the jump that President Obama and Secretary Clinton are responsible for what happened at Benghazi?”

Gov. Bush answered this way: “Well I ā€” the question on Benghazi which, is hopefully weā€™ll now finally get the truth to, is was the place secure? They had a responsibility, the Department of State, to have proper security. There were calls for security, it looks like they didnā€™t get it. And how was the response in the aftermath of the attack, was there a chance that these four American lives could have been saved? Thatā€™s what the investigation is about, itā€™s not a political issue. Itā€™s not about the broad policy issue, is were we doing the job of protecting our embassies and our consulates and during the period, those hours after the attack started, could they have been saved?”

Did you follow the former governor’s answer? I had trouble getting the connection.

Bush once was thought to be the favorite for the Republican presidential nomination next year. He’s no longer the front runner, based in part on the stumble-bum answers he’s given to questions regarding whether President Bush — Jeb’s big brother — was responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

Gov. Bush said his brother “kept us safe” during his presidency. Hmmm. TheĀ loved onesĀ of the 3,000 or so Americans who died on that terrible day might disagree with that view.

The attack occurred nine months into Bush’s presidency. He had been briefed by national security advisers about the threat that al-Qaeda posed. He was warned in advance about the possibility of an attack. The massive intelligence apparatus that we employed did not do its job in protecting the nation.

Is that the president’s responsibility? Well, gosh, it seems that the commander in chief ought to be held accountable. However, Gov. Bush chooses to avoid holding his brother accountable for that breakdown.

As for Tapper’s question, it still requires some clarity in the answer.

If George W. Bush doesn’t deserve blame for the tragedy that befell us on 9/11, how can Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama be held responsible for the Benghazi attack that occurred 11 years later to the day?

Is there a double-standard being applied?

 

national news, political news

What’s happened to the budget deficit?

BudgetDeficit

Remember the federal budget deficit?

Do you also remember how Republicans used to rail against it and how Democrats used to ignore it? Republicans said the deficit would keep growing and would bankrupt the nation. Democrats insisted that the government needed to “invest” public money on public projects.

Flash back to the 1980 presidential campaign.

  • GOP nominee Ronald Reagan’s campaign ran TV ads that parodied House Speaker Tip O’Neill and the Democrats in Congress as wasteful spenders. President Carter oversaw a deficit that “ballooned” to about $40 billion.

Reagan won the election in a landslide.

What happened then? President Reagan fought for tax cuts and exploded defense spending. The result: the federal deficit effectively tripled.

Let’s move ahead to the 1992 election.

  • Democratic nominee Bill Clinton ran against President George H.W. Bush, proclaiming “It’s the economy, stupid.” The nation was struggling through a recession. Clinton won the election. Then the Republicans took control of Congress after the 1994 mid-term election.

What happened after that? The Democratic president, working with the Republican-led Congress, balanced the budget. Clinton left the White House in 2001 and the budget was running a hefty surplus.

  • Republican George W. Bush was elected in 2000. Then came the 9/11 terrorist attacks. President Bush pushed through more tax cuts, but then took the nation to war against terror groups overseas. The result of that effort? The deficit returned and exceeded $1 trillion annually.

But the argument evolved into something else. It didn’t matter that the deficit was exploding, the president and his allies contended, because it constituted a minuscule portion of the Gross Domestic Product. Didn’t the vice president at the time say, “Deficits don’t matter”?

Well, I guess they did.

  • OK, now we come to the 2008 election. The economy has tanked. Financial institutions are going under. The housing market has crashed. So has the auto industry. The deficit was exploding.

Democrat Barack Obama won the election. He got Congress to kick in billions of dollars to jump-start the economy and bail out some of the leading industries.

What happened then? The economy began to recover. The jobless rate, which zoomed to 10 percent, began inching its way back down. Today it stands at 5.1 percent.

Oh, the deficit? It’s been cut by two-thirds.

It’s still too great. It’s a long way from the surplus delivered by President Clinton and his friends in the GOP-controlled Congress.

However, the traditional argument delivered by Republicans that deficits are bad and that Democrats are to blame for spending us into oblivion no longer is relevant.

Just think: The presidential campaign that’s unfolding before us has been called one that defies all conventional wisdom.

I believe the history of the federal budget deficit suggests conventional wisdomĀ got tossed aside long ago.

 

national news, political news

GW Bush kept us safe? Umm, not entirely

President_George_W__Bush_discussing_Social_Security

Jeb Bush took up for his big brother, the 43rd president of the United States.

He said tonight: “When it comes to my brother, there’s one thing I know for sure — he kept us safe.”

Let me think about that for a minute.

OK. Actually, he didn’t.

What about 9/11?

Unless, of course, you don’t count the 9/11 terrorist attacks that occurred about nine months in George W. Bush’s presidency.

Hey, I get that the former Florida governor wants to stick up for his brother. Family ties are unbreakable in most instances.

However, the record shows in graphic detail that the worst single hostile act to occur on American soil took place on President Bush’s watch.

Was he to blame personally for the immense national security failure that resulted in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon? No. However, he did assemble a national security team that he charged with keeping the nation alert to signs of trouble.

But if the president is to assume responsibility for protecting the nation against those who intend to do us harm, well … then he must be held responsible when harm arrives.

Which it surely did on Sept. 11, 2001.

 

national news

Emergencies often build lifetime friendships

airman

This picture speaks volumes to me, and I’m sure it does to others.

The young man is Michael Maroney, who in 2005 was serving as an Air Force pararescue jumper.

The little girl is LaShay Brown. She’s hugging Maroney’s neck because the jumper had just saved LaShay and her family from Hurricane Katrina’s savage onslaught in New Orleans.

A decade later, Maroney and LaShay have hooked up again. He found the girl who’s now a teenager living in Mississippi.

ā€œI was a single father trying to raise two boys. I had just gotten back from Afghanistan, and New Orleans was under water,ā€ Maroney, now 40, told The Washington Post. ā€œWhen she hugged me, everything went away. There were no problems in that moment. That meant everything to me.ā€

Little girl hugs with joy

As it should.

These are the kinds of stories that have been told and retold in the decade since the Katrina disaster. President Obama went to New Orleans this past week to salute the city’s return. Former President Bush went there as well to pay his tribute to the strength of the residents who endured nature’s wrath.

Yes, we have talked in recent days about some of the failures of government at all levels to do right by those who suffered.

But an Air Force serviceman, Michael Maroney, did his part to deliver a little girl and her family from the storm. ā€œI canā€™t wait to meet her to tell her how important she is,ā€ Maroney told People magazine.Ā ā€œIn my line of work, it doesnā€™t usually turn out happily. This hug, this moment, was like ā€” everybody Iā€™ve ever saved, that was the thank you.ā€

They have become friends for life.

It doesn’t get any better than that.

 

International news

Who’s in charge of U.S. foreign policy?

cotton

U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., thinks it’s OK to travel abroad and to meet with a foreign head of government for the purpose of undermining a key foreign policy initiative.

It’s not OK. At least it’s never been acceptable … apparently until now in some circles.

Cotton went to Israel and Is meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to figure out a way to torpedo the Iran nuclear deal brokered by the United States and five other great powers.

Cotton’s meeting with NetanyahuĀ now has become the norm, it seems, for critics of President Obama. They forget what they said when then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi traveled to Syria to meet with dictator Bashar al-Assad. Vice President Dick Cheney reminded us then that only the president can conduct foreign policy.

Except that Pelosi coordinated her visit with Bush administration officials and had made sure she didn’t interfere with what President Bush’s goals were as they regarded U.S. policy toward Assad.

Cotton said: ā€œTodayā€™s meeting only reaffirms my opposition to this deal. I will stand with Prime Minister Netanyahu and Israel and work with my colleagues in Congress to stop this deal and to ensure that Israel has the means to defend itself against Iran and its terrorist surrogates.ā€

We’ve only got one president of the United States at a time. And at this moment, itĀ isn’t Tom Cotton.

 

national news, political news

Open White House race = many candidates

alGore_1515233c

Here’s a fact of political life in America.

When there’s no incumbent involved in a campaign, you invite all comers to seek the office that’s being vacated. Everyone, or so it seems, becomes interested in the office at stake.

Such is the case with the White House. A two-term president, Barack Obama, is prohibited from running again. He’s bowing out in January 2017. The Republican field is as full as I’ve seen it in more than four decades watching this stuff; 16 men and one woman are running on the GOP side. It’s becoming quite an entertaining spectacle — to say the very least.

The Democrats? Well, until about two, maybe three weeks ago, it seemed that Hillary Clinton had that nomination in the bag. She still is the heavy favorite.

But she’s not going to anointed as the party nominee next summer, or so it appears. Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders has closed a once-huge gap. Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley is taking aim at Clinton, as is ex-Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee. We haven’t heard much yet from ex- Virginia U.S. Sen. Jim Webb.

But now we hear of a couple of big names — as in really big names — possibly entering the Democratic Party primary field.

One of them is Vice President Joe Biden.

The other? Get ready: It might former Vice President Albert Gore Jr.

Some media outlets are reporting that “insiders” are discussing the possibility of a Gore candidacy. My reaction? Holy crap!

He damn near was elected in 2000, winning more popular votes than George W. Bush, who was elected because he won a bare majority of electoral votes. What many folks have forgotten about that election is this: Had the vice president won his home state of Tennessee in 2000, there would have been no recount controversy in Florida, no “hanging chad” examination, no narrow Supreme Court ruling to determine who won that state’s critical electoral votes. Gore lost his home state to Bush. There you have it.

This election already is shaping as the most entertaining in at least a couple of generations. The thundering herd of Republicans is being overshadowed by a billionaire hotel mogul/entertainer/wheeler-dealer. The Democratic field is being dominated by a self-proclaimed “democratic socialist” drawing huge crowds and a former secretary of state with growing problems stemming from her use of a personal email account to conduct State Department business.

Will two men who’ve served a “heartbeat away” from the presidency now join the field?

We know that Vice President Biden is considering it. As for Al Gore? Stay tunedĀ and hang on … maybe.

 

International news, political news

ISIL’s rise: It’s Obama’s fault?

2 Comments

 

Jeb Bush

Jeb Bush is trying a remarkable misdirection play as he seeks the Republican Party’s presidential nomination in 2016.

The former Florida governor sought in a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library to blame former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama on the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and, I presume, in Syria as well.

Well now. Let’s look at the record for a moment.

The Iraq War began in March 2003 when President George W. Bush launched the invasion of that country, which at the time was governed by a Sunni Muslim tyrant, the late Saddam Hussein. (Hang with me for a moment; the Sunni reference is critical.)

Americans were told by those high up in the Bush chain of command that we’d defeat the Iraqis easily and we’d be welcomed as “liberators.”

Didn’t turn out that way.

Yes, we defeated the so-called “elite” Iraqi forces. We drove Saddam from power. We caught him later in that spider hole, pulled him, jailed him, put him on trial, convicted him and then hanged him.

All of this was done on Jeb’s brother’s presidential watch.

Then came the new government. Iraqis elected a Shiite leader, who formed a Shiite government.

Oh yes. The Sunnis hate the Shiites and vice versa. The Islamic State — aka ISIL — is a Sunni cult.

Thus, ISIL was born — on President Bush’s watch.

Now, though, the next Bush who wants to be president, says it’s Obama’s fault. It’s Clinton’s fault.

Why? We didn’t maintain a sufficient troop garrison in Iraq to keep ISIL in check. I ought to mention that the Bush administration set the deadline for full withdrawal from Iraq.

Jeb Bush now says he would send troops back into Iraq, in effect restarting a war that we shouldn’t have fought in the first place. Weapons of mass destruction? Hideous chemical weapons? The threat of a “mushroom cloud”? It was bogus.

I’m not yet ready to declare that the pretext for war was concocted deliberately by the Bush administration high command.

Let’s just say for now that “faulty intelligence” isn’t much of an excuse for sending thousands of American service personnel to their death in a war designed to overthrow a sovereign leader who we had kept in check through a series of tough economic sanctions.

Jeb Bush is treading on some squishy ground whenever he mentions the words “Iraq War.”

 

 

 

national news, political news

Where were you on Sept. 10, 2001, Gov. Christie?

Chris-Christie

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie needs to come clean on a statement he made during Thursday night’s joint appearance with nine other Republican candidates for president.

He said something about being “appointed U.S. attorney” on Sept. 10, 2001, a day before “the world changed forever” during the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Oops, governor.

Not so, sir.

President Bush appointed Christie to be U.S. attorney in New Jersey on Dec. 7, 2001. But to make some kind of argument against U.S. Sen. Rand Paul during the Thursday night “debate,” he said he’d been named to the job the day before those attacks and that on the day of the attacks he was “hugging” family members of victims.

Look, I happen to like Gov. Christie. I hope he does well during the upcoming GOP presidential primary campaign. I like his no-nonsense approach to problem-solving, his sometimes-blunt talk, his can-do attitude — and I even like the fact that he hugged Barack Obama when the president came to the Jersey Shore to inspect the damage done by Hurricane/Super Storm Sandy on the eve of the 2012 presidential election.

However, he need not inflate his resume by putting himself a tad too quickly into a federal office just to score political points.

It’sĀ unbecoming.

 

political news

“Four more years!” for Obama?

There can be no doubt about this: Barack Obama’s critics went ballistic when the president said he could win a third term in the White House if he had the chance to seek it.

He reminded his hosts in Ethiopia today that the U.S. Constitution prohibits him from seeking another term. But then he said he’s been a “good president” and well might win in 2016.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/28/politics/obama-third-term-win-ethiopia/

Ah, yes. And he’d say anything about it if he thought he’d lose? Hardly.

The 22nd Amendment was enacted in 1947, spearheaded by a Republican congressional majority that was alarmed by the four elections won by Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. They feared an “imperial presidency.” An earlier Democrat, Grover Cleveland, sought the office over the course of three consecutive elections, but lost his bid for re-election to a second consecutive term in 1888; he would come back four years later and be elected to a second term.

I am not at all thrilled about the term-limits provision for presidents, although I understand that the stress of the office has persuaded almost all the men who’ve held the office to bow out after a second term.

Still, Barack Obama isn’t the only recent president to look wistfully at the possibility of a third term.

Republican President Ronald Reagan said as much as his second term came to an end in January 1989. Twelve years after that, Democratic President Bill Clinton also mused aloud over whether he could win a third term.

I don’t recall President George W. Bush ever broaching the subject in public, given that the economy was collapsing when he left office in January 2009.

Whatever the motive for bringing it up this time, President Obama well might have been talking way past his audience in Africa and sticking it in the ear of his foes back home.

I’m quite sure they heard him … loud and clear.

national news

Iran, nukes … and Bill Cosby

Well, that about covers it.

President Obama’s press conference today was meant to explain the details of the recently completed negotiation to stop Iran from producing a nuclear weapon.

Then the question turned to Bill Cosby and whether the president could revoke the comedic icon’s Presidential Medal of Freedom on the basis of the rape charges that have been leveled against him by several women.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/asked-about-cosby-obama-says-civilized-nations-cannot-tolerate-rape/ar-AAd1eHQ

Obama’s answer was deft and on point.

There’s no precedent for revoking such a medal and there’s no mechanism now to do it, he said.

Cosby received the medal in 2002 from President George W. Bush. The world didn’t know what it knows now of what Cosby allegedly has done. It’s been reported recently that court documents show that he admitted to giving Quaaludes to women and then had sex with them.

It’s all quite disgusting.

Obama then ventured his own view on what he considers to be rape. “I’ll say this: if you give a woman, or a man for that matter, without his or her knowledge a drug and then have sex with that person without consent, that’s rape,” the president said.

OK. By my understanding of what is known, I believe Bill Cosby has admitted to being a rapist.

Should the White House revoke his Medal of Freedom?

Leave the issue alone — and let Bill Cosby try to fend off the lawsuits that are going to bury him.