Two out of three:The Washington Post's national security editor, Carlos Lozada, has a short
entry where he says that maybe Bush won't be viewed as a terrible president. That history will judge him "more gently than many of his critics might imagine".
He cites three people's views on Bush. That of:
- Fareed Zakaria (was in the neocon camp, but then changed to a mixed view of the Iraq War and other issues)
- David Frum "the next Republican president can expect to hear from pundits and academics alike that he falls far short of the high standard set by [Bush]"
- Robert Kagan "the war on terror has been by far Bush's greatest success"*
How about that? Frum and Kagan say Bush is actually a pretty good president!
* Kagan is jazzed because the unique and irreproducable 9/11 attack by people with zero military resources wasn't duplicated after security vulnerabilities were addressed (securing cockpit doors).
posted by Quiddity at 8/17/2008 12:28:00 AM
Attacks like that on 9/11 never succeeded before Bush got into office in the first place.
Can you imagine if Clinton was on a month-long vacation on a ranch when he got a Presidential briefing warning about possible attacks a month before the first WTC hit?
The fact that this president hasn't been run out of office lends credence to the idea that fluoridated water and radio waves are part of some kind of mind control conspiracy. Obviously, I say that tongue in cheek, but the reality of things seems just about as crazy.
Depends what you mean by "like" I guess.
Apparently you don't consider the previous World Trade Center bombing to be "like" it. Intent was the same, and it "succeeded" in that it was executed, it just didn't have the same result.
Four people are serving life sentences in connection with the 1993 bombing, whereas Osama bin Laden remains at large. Barack Obama's willing to go into Pakistan to chase bin Laden down, but McCain isn't. Apparently for McCain, "the gates of hell" end at the Pakistani border.
Took me a week to get the courage to look at Fareed Zakaria's latest screed in "Newsweek" magazine "What Bush Got Right -
For the next president, simply reversing this administration's policies is not the answer". Once you read past the headline you find Bush's absolutist policies of his first and part of his second term were such a disaster that the admin had to mollify their policies to make them somewhat stomachable.
A ringing endorsement indeed!
@ j. goodwin..
Clinton also didn't get a briefing titled "Bin Laden determined to strike in US", or take record days of vacation, or get slammed by a Republican Congress when trying to fight back, or have personal family dealings with the bin Laden clan.
Me? I was talking about 3000 dead with not one hint of what Dubya did after reading that prescient August 2001 briefing.
I guess those 3000 are only important when lining the pockets of Halliburton or Blackwater. And just a footnote when put into true perspective.
