Scathing Condemnation of George W Bush- How George W. Bush Helped Osama Bin Laden Win His War

[malaise]

http://guardianlv.com/2013/01/george-w-bush-helped-ossama-bin-laden-win-his-war/
<snip>


For America, the 2000 Presidential election was a beginning of the end of the United States of America. Action by the Supreme Court gave George W. Bush the Presidency. Al Gore, who had won the popular vote by over a half a million votes, was denied an accurate re-count in Florida, and consequently lost the electoral vote.

Today, from his watery grave, Osama Bin Laden is giving thanks to Bush. His real goal was to destroy the United States, to punish it for occupying Arabic land and debasing the religion of Islam. Bush guaranteed his success.

This all continues today. Republicans continue to refuse to blame Bush for where we are today economically. They love to blame a President who inherited the worst economic situation since the great depression. De-regulation of the banking industry, and Wall Street, allowed greed to place working class Americans in desperation. Those who caused the problem experienced no change in their lifestyle, and no banking executive has ever been prosecuted for their criminal acts.

I don’t believe Bin Laden could have ever dreamed that his cowardly attack on innocent people, simply doing their jobs, would result in such a success. All he needed was one ignorant man, who should never been in a position to lead a country, to take action to help him win his war.

Bush doesn’t deserve all the blame. The red states elected him and gave him power. The plight of America is on their hands as well.

[Coyotl]

1. First REC

[JaneyVee]

76. <---REC 168!

[JI7]

2. .

[malaise]

3. Bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah for that graphic

[Canoe52]

11. OH My

That is just so funny And such a downer all at the same time

[lastlib]

13. Stealing that for posterity....

...and for the edification of a few neo-con chickenhawks I know........

[7wo7rees]

21. Dynasties work in harmony

[Berlum]

38. Oh my...

...then comes the grossly sobering realization that the .gif illustrates such an ugly truth.

[maddiemom]

45. Great!

[jpak]

49. LOL!!!11

[dwigthreeD]

50. Wow that's excellent!!!

[UTUSN]

4. R#10 & K for, my assessment of him started before, like when he became Weak Governor n/t

[progressoid]

5. "Bush doesn’t deserve all the blame...."

"

Bush doesn’t deserve all the blame. The red states elected him and gave him power.

"

And the Democrats that enabled him...

[Cha]

6. puppet bush and a bunch of blood/oil thirsty pnacers.

[HughBeaumont]

7. The Filthy Five were the main culprits.

The "Brooks Brother's Riot" (an illegal act even if it weren't staged) played a part.



Jeb Bush. Kathy Harris. John Ellis Bush at Fox. Jack Welch at GMNBC. Ken Blackwell continued the madness in 2004.

Bewsh 43 was a corporate coup.

[BlueNoteSpecial]

8. Nixon-Ford-Raygun-Boosh1-Boosh2

Every gawddamned one of 'em are complicit, doing the 1% dirty work, behind the curtain of "values". If any one of 'em had real "values", I'm a Mau Mau fighter pilot.

[Duval]

9. Our Media is also to blame. n/t

[KansDem]

12. Not one "crack investigative journalist" has asked Bush...

Why he initially said he saw the first plane hit:

Then said he was "notified" about the first plane hitting (0'50&quot :

Well, which is it? No one has asked him to clarify his conflicting remarks.

[RedstDem]

15. Sometimes

playing the dumb ass has benefits

[Unknown Beatle]

83. Playing the dumb?

He wasn't playing, he was and still is a total dumb ass. One of the less intelligent presidents in US history. A total psychopathic dunce.

[RedstDem]

93. You wont get any argument from me.

i revise that to Being the dumb ass.......

[samsingh]

10. kick

also the supreme court helped him steal the 2000 election

[malaise]

14. The Supreme Court stole it for him

They must never be forgiven

[Little Star]

16. Truer words were never spoken!

[samsingh]

25. agreed

[The Wizard]

64. Scalia and Thomas should have recused

themselves for conflicts of interest. Scalia's son worked for the Baker law firm representing Bush and Thomas' wife was on the bush transition team. Both should have been impeached already.

[Martin Eden]

17. The OP mischaracterizes what took us to war in Iraq

The invasion launched in March 2003 wasn't about a dumb cowboy president avenging his father; it was the war the neocons were salivating over before the SCOTUS placed Bush in the White House. 9/11 provided the "new Pearl Harbor" they needed as a pretext for their Project. GW was the junior partner to Dick Cheney, and the rest of the administration was a who's who of PNAC operatives. Dim Son was merely the frontman.

The OP is correct in poiting out they are to blame for the ongoing collapse of the late great United States. Getting mired in two long term extremely costly wars of occupation was exactly what Osama bin Laden wanted in response to 9/11; like all weaker adversaries, the key was to provoke his enemy into using its own strength against itself.

Blaming it all on Shrub provides cover for what really happened -- and for the neocons who still infiltrate Washington (and were going to be key members of the Rom,ney administration).

Our country is a long way from coming to grips with what happened and how we got to where we are now.

[malaise]

19. Valid point re the neo-cons although it could be both n/t

[Danascot]

22. There were a number of posts on DU

a while back citing neo-con speculation about how they might go about invading Iraq even before Boosh was selected.

[patrice]

28. Agreed. See #27

[Drunken Irishman]

29. Agreed. It's must more sinister than revenge.

These are the same people who wanted his father to go through all the way to Baghdad. They saw Iraq as the epicenter of the Middle East and if they could control the land there, essentially control the region - the population, and, especially, the oil.

[tavalon]

31. Yeah, let's not forget to put PNAC in the list of blamed

They deserve it only too much.

[Berlum]

39. PNAC

[malaise]

73. and then some

[BetterThanNoSN]

81. The only problem...

Obama has NOT purged the neo-cons from his Administration. To just name one you have guys like John Brennan who was completely down with the torture program, not to mention is responsible for expanding of the drone program. He'just one of many Bushies that Obama kept around after winning the election.
Granted, things would've been infinitely worse had Romney won but Obama has not made pro-Dem choices for many positions of power, especially in the area of foreign policy(where most neo-cons think their dirty thoughts).

[malaise]

20. I suggest you read Spitzer's Valentine's Day Op Ed

That is all

[dreamnightwind]

67. Good response, and here's the link to it:

Predatory Lenders' Partner in Crime - Eliot Spitzer

[malaise]

71. Thanks - I have that saved

It was one of the more important moments because Bushco used that to bring down Spitzer although his own stupidity helped. It explained much of what was coming later in 2008.

[dreamnightwind]

74. Absolutely

The honey pot is the oldest and possibly most frequently used method of taking down an opponent. If not that, they'd have found some other way to take down Spitzer.

[malaise]

79. What Spitzer exposed has never been discussed

in enough detail. Funny how all the States rights advocates allowed Bushco to get away with that.

n 2003, during the height of the predatory lending crisis, the OCC invoked a clause from the 1863 National Bank Act to issue formal opinions preempting all state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative. The OCC also promulgated new rules that prevented states from enforcing any of their own consumer protection laws against national banks. The federal government's actions were so egregious and so unprecedented that all 50 state attorneys general, and all 50 state banking superintendents, actively fought the new rules.


But the unanimous opposition of the 50 states did not deter, or even slow, the Bush administration in its goal of protecting the banks. In fact, when my office opened an investigation of possible discrimination in mortgage lending by a number of banks, the OCC filed a federal lawsuit to stop the investigation.

[BetterThanNoSN]

84. Indeed

Spitzers op-ed is a must read for every conservative asshat who continually blame the poor for the mortgage melt down.
The story goes, it was those poor banks, who, because of congress, were forced to give loans to everyone regardless of qualifications.
Spitzer blew that argument away(which, not coincidentally, is why i believe he was taken down)

[malaise]

86. It is true that Deregulation starting with the removal of

Glass-Steagall set the stage but what Bushco did to the states Consumer protection was criminal wrongdoing on behalf of the big banks

[jimlup]

23. I regret that I have but one rec for this post!

[wildbilln864]

24. k&r #83! nt

[colsohlibgal]

26. A Disastrous Eight years Enabled By A Stolen Election in 2000

Down the road Dubya will be seen as the worst president ever. We will pay dearly for decades.

Part of the debt the R's like to crow about is due to rampant war profiteering from an unnecessary war. More people would know that if network news was still news instead of infotainment and false equivalencies.

[patrice]

27. Don't forget 100K Evangelical End Timer phone calls pressuring GW to protect Israel

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington also documented about a year's worth of personal one on one White House lobbying, from an FOIA request on White House Visitors' Logs, by national religious leaders (I would guess orchestrated by Ralph Reed) in the year preceding March 19, 2003.

http://www.citizensforethics.org/

And, then, there was also Project for a New American Century and the Committee on the Liberation of Iraq, of which our own WilliamPitt has reminded us all once again just this evening:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022164528

No. George Bush Did not do this by himself. He had plenty of help and some of that help calls themselves "Us".

[malaise]

34. Add them to the list

Agreed

[MrSlayer]

30. Ah yes, the cover story. Bin Laden had nothing to do with this.

What horseshit. This is exactly what the neo-con oligarchs have wanted for years. A perpetual war to feed the MIC pigs at the taxpayer trough, tax cuts for those self same oligarchs which take enough money out of the treasury that we have to destroy the social safety net simply to continue our basic functions. The strangulation of revenue also allows for the scapegoating and subsequent destruction of public unions and causes long term unemployment designed to drive down wages and destroy the power of the working class.

Claiming some jackass in a cave had anything to do with this is ludicrous.

All of this was designed and executed by the captains of industry and the PNAC neo-cons who wanted that New Pearl Harbor and got it, so they could do just as they have done.

NONE of this was a "cunning trap" laid for a bumbling imbecile. Say what you want about them, Dick Cheney is no idiot and neither is Poppy Bush or their partners.

[uballing]

32. In other words, a "CONSPIRACY"

In every single aspect of the the word, without the theory as very intelligent investigators from every field have documented. This NEW PEARL HARBOR was not started by no cave dwellar in Afghan.

[lunatica]

41. Welcome to DU!

We mustn't forget PNAC. It pretty much spelled it out for everyone to see.

[malaise]

33. I have long had my doubts about the meme

Good post

[gasser85]

48. Someday

the world and hopefully the US will acknowledge the truth behind 911. Incompetent flight school failures with box cutters had nothing to do with 911. But it will be a long time before these truth's will be accepted.

[BetterThanNoSN]

85. Don't hold yer breath...

Remember, Oswald still killed Kennedy. If nearly 50 years later we still haven't had light shed on the matter, then those who were involved with 9/11 may never come to light.
As a country we were told to accept that a 47-story building could simply fall down on its own. Sadly, wittingly or not, most have.

[Selatius]

35. Osama won when the Patriot Act was signed into law. Destruction of the Bill of Rights was key.

Today, we have a government that has engaged in warrantless wiretapping of its own citizens, engaged in torture, has within its vaults secret kill lists that have included American citizens (essentially extra-judicial killing power), the power to detain people indefinitely with no charges or trial, and has used the practice of rendition to transfer suspects to countries that routinely torture if it didn't want to torture the suspect for itself.

Nobody went to prison who advocated, sanctioned, or participated in torture, the spying on Americans, or the killing of Americans. This isn't a Republic if we start poking holes and weakening protections found in the Bill of Rights.

[malaise]

36. Excellent post

[leftstreet]

51. +1

[whatchamacallit]

77. Somebody won

Judging by the beneficiaries of the gift that keeps giving, I'm not so sure it was the boogyman.

[wildbilln864]

95. and it was already written and ready to go on 911! nt

[MaeScott]

37. Kick. nt

[amuse bouche]

40. Bush was a nightmare

I never thought would end and in many ways it hasn't...yet.

[lunatica]

42. Don't forget the Dick Cheney

We're living the culmination of his wildest dreams

[malaise]

43. he must really be very ill

since he hasn't crawled out to attack Hagel

[Bluenorthwest]

44. But we keep promoting all the Senators who voted for the war, and dumping on those who voted no.

"Bush doesn’t deserve all the blame. The red states elected him and gave him power. The plight of America is on their hands as well. "
That is a hell of a thing to say about voters when at the same time the people they elected are being elevated to run the entire military. Who gave Bush the power to invade Iraq? The Senate. Who voted Yes, let's drop bombs? Chuck Hagel.
Who voted NO, let's not drop bombs? 23 Senators, none of whom are up for so much as a 'thanks for being right when others were wrong'.
So it is a bit foul to blame voters while giving the war supporter they elected vast rewards for that war support. How can it be the fault of the voters, but not of Hagel?
Whatever. All who voted Yes on war are now in charge. Obama called it a 'stupid war' but he adores those who constructed it and voted for it. Rejects those who voted no.
Those who are now supporting Hagel are on the side of those who thought there were WMD in Iraq 'cause Cheney said so. Congratulations!

[malaise]

47. Interesting post

but remember Hillary also voted for war

[mike dub]

55. Looking ahead a few years, I can't help but think that

if Hillary decides to run in 2016, that her vote for the war will end up helping her. The MSM love to get behind politicians who made key, hawkish votes.

[malaise]

92. Contrary to their sense of self importance

MSM does not decide elections. If it were not so Rmoney would have won after the first debate - for they all said so.

[George II]

46. It really all started during his father's administration....

...against expert advice, Daddy Bush insisted on sending troops to Saudi Arabia for the first Gulf War in 1991. That was considered sacriligious to many islamics. Even bin Laden at the time was an "ally" of the US, but by disrespecting islamic holy land turned him and many others against the US.

[Rozlee]

60. You're right.

I remember in Desert Shield when we first arrived in Saudi Arabia, the Saudis were mostly friendly and smiled and waved at us when we'd go to the Saudi Mall in Dhahran. But, I'll never forget once when I was in line trying to speak in halting Arabic to a merchant at an open market and a man spoke up behind me and practically spat, "Oh, you think trying to speak Arabic will make your presence in my country more acceptable?" He spoke flawless English with a Brit accent and was strikingly handsome and had two other men and they were all glaring at us with so much hatred that it left us speechless. Then, he added for effect, "You women should be in your country, married and inside your homes." He was lucky they turned and stomped away, because one of our gals was always spoiling for a fight, and damn it! We were married! I made a note after that to really look at some of the Saudis around us but it was hard to tell. After a while, they pretty much took us for granted. But, it did make me realize that there were some of them out there that totally hated our being in their country, even if we had come 6,000 miles to keep their asses from being invaded by So Damn Insane. Not to mention "restore 'democracy' to Kuwait." Hah! That one always cracked me up.

[dreamnightwind]

72. Interesting story

"But, it did make me realize that there were some of them out there that totally hated our being in their country, even if we had come 6,000 miles to keep their asses from being invaded by So Damn Insane. Not to mention "restore 'democracy' to Kuwait." Hah! That one always cracked me up."

This part also cracks me up: "we had come 6,000 miles to keep their asses from being invaded by So Damn Insane". We usually spin opposition leaders as insane, or unstable, or "more dangerous than Hitler", etc., to justify an invasion. And somehow I doubt that keeping Saudi Arabia safe from him is why you were sent those 6,000 miles (sorry you had to go through that). Anyway, that's too much kool-aid for me to drink.

But we agree on the important point here, that our presence on Saudi soil put a target on our backs.

[Rozlee]

80. "What if Kuwait's main product had been broccoli?"

I don't remember who said that, but I didn't go in with blinders on. Hussein had been our golden boy before he screwed up. I don't know why our uniforms even have unit patches and insignia anymore. Our ACUs should just be covered with symbols from Exxon Mobile, Valero, NuStar, Conoco, Tesoro and Koch Industries.

[dreamnightwind]

87. Agreed

If we ever manage to get military funding down to the levels that other country's taxpayers pay, we may see exactly that, corporate forces that make no pretense of whose interests they are serving. Scary thought, though our military is mostly serving those interests now and they somehow get U.S. citizens to pay for it.

[malaise]

75. Yep

but it worked out quite well for them for eight years.
It will take longer than eight years to recover.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

52. This line was the best...

Marriages, families, and friendships crumbled because of disagreement over Bush’s policies and misguided actions.

We ALL know people who we once regarded as friends who went nuts with all the "Democrats and Liberals are traitors" talk.

Some of us lost their job over it.

The pure POISON put out by Rove and his ilk at the time was insane. How many actual DEATHS were there between our own people over the campaign to paint those opposed to the invasion of Iraq as "terrorist sympathizers"?

I don't care what anyone says, Rove and the Republicans used the NAZI playbook. They USED 9/11 the same way Hitler used the Reichstag fire to take over and silence their critics. They defined themselves as the heroes who would keep us safe and Democrats as the enemy within the same way they did during the Cold War. They defined loyalty to America as being the same as loyalty to Bush.

Then they laughed at the STUPIDITY of their base for believing in them as they saw this country tear itself apart.

[malaise]

90. A more desperate Rove is still spewing his poison

albeit to great public shame on election night

[Spitfire of ATJ]

94. The difference now is that people are getting wise to these guys.

[Octafish]

53. The traitor should be prosecuted.

Why isn't he on trial?

[HughBeaumont]

57. He and Gunga Dick just plain disappeared.

Oh sure, Cheney pops out of his hospitalized hidey-hole every so often to say something incredibly stupid, but for the most part a former VP and President have never been THIS absent from post-term limelight. Not even the mentally collapsing puppet Reagan vanished once his two shams were done. Curiouser and curiouser . . . .

[Octafish]

59. Amazing act, theirs.

Continuity of BFEE Gubmint. A plan, BTW, Bush n Cheney never shared with the Democratic leadership.



Somehow seems so natural to be like vampires forever haunting a nation.

[HughBeaumont]

70. That Armageddon Plan's an eye-opener.

Considering how utterly gung-ho American leadership appeared to be in terms of wanting to get into a gunfight with the U.S.S.R. in the 80s, I really wouldn't put it past them to devise a plan to suit their extreme paranoia, bitterness and stupidity.

. . . in fact, knowing what we know now about the ReaGone years, I wouldn't put this unfortunate mishap out of the realms of "foul play":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samantha_Smith
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_Harbor_Airlines_Flight_1808

[Octafish]

78. I've never forgotten that amazing child. She'd be 41 or so, today.

Amazing spirit, hers.

Thank you for the heads-up on the circumstances of the "accident."

The crowd which would do something to a child considers children -- including citizens -- expendable.

Did the U.S. Military Plan a Nuclear First Strike for 1963?

Recently declassified information shows that the military presented President Kennedy with a plan for a surprise nuclear attack on the Soviet Union in the early 1960s.

James K. Galbraith and Heather A. Purcell | September 21, 1994

During the early 1960s the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) introduced the world to the possibility of instant total war. Thirty years later, no nation has yet fired any nuclear missile at a real target. Orthodox history holds that a succession of defensive nuclear doctrines and strategies -- from "massive retaliation" to "mutual assured destruction" -- worked, almost seamlessly, to deter Soviet aggression against the United States and to prevent the use of nuclear weapons.

The possibility of U.S. aggression in nuclear conflict is seldom considered. And why should it be? Virtually nothing in the public record suggests that high U.S. authorities ever contemplated a first strike against the Soviet Union, except in response to a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, or that they doubted the deterrent power of Soviet nuclear forces. The main documented exception was the Air Force Chief of Staff in the early 1960s, Curtis LeMay, a seemingly idiosyncratic case.

But beginning in 1957 the U.S. military did prepare plans for a preemptive nuclear strike against the U.S.S.R., based on our growing lead in land-based missiles. And top military and intelligence leaders presented an assessment of those plans to President John F. Kennedy in July of 1961. At that time, some high Air Force and CIA leaders apparently believed that a window of outright ballistic missile superiority, perhaps sufficient for a successful first strike, would be open in late 1963.

The document reproduced opposite is published here for the first time. It describes a meeting of the National Security Council on July 20, 1961. At that meeting, the document shows, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the director of the CIA, and others presented plans for a surprise attack. They answered some questions from Kennedy about timing and effects, and promised further information. The meeting recessed under a presidential injunction of secrecy that has not been broken until now.

CONTINUED...

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=did_the_us_military_plan_a_nuclear_first_strike_for_1963

Gangster Times. Bankster Times. Secret Government. Enemies List. Money trumps peace.

Whatever did happen to good ol' democracy, you know, where the People had a voice in the nation's affairs?

[malaise]

96. I wonder regularly

It's not good for the planet

[4Q2u2]

54. Neo cons

Saw Iraq as an incubator to test their theories of unbridled capitalism. They wanted to create a zone of zero government control and let the market set and build a Capitalist Utopia. Hey all it will cost is the lives of the real 1% we should be protecting (Service members). Visions from Ivory towers usually never come true. That was their primary purpose, bonus Saddam tried to kill my daddy. He was a corrupt sociopath that was destroying his people, of course he learned from the best, he was just not as subtle. Overt destruction of your people lends to discovery.

As for the banks, did we not see this quarterback keeper when Daddy was President. It was called the Savings and Loans. It worked out so well they ran it again and got an even bigger gain. At least some people went to jail for the S$L. None for the TOO BIG TOO FAIL. Is that also not one of the reasons for the Anti-monopoly laws.

[bvar22]

56. As much as I despise Republicans, especially Bush-the-Lesser,

this piece from The Guardian Express is full of internal contradictions and factual errors:

* "Action by the Supreme Court gave George W. Bush the Presidency."
But then, just 3 paragraphs later, "The red states elected him and gave him power."
This type of composition error would merit an immediate "F" in every class I ever attended.
Pick ONE, make your case, and stick with it.


*Then there is this:
"De-regulation of the banking industry, and Wall Street, allowed greed to place working class Americans in desperation."
Bush-the-Lesser can & SHOULD be blamed for a lot of things,
but de-regulation of the Wall Street & The Banking Industry is not one of them.
THAT was a bi-partisan scam championed by the conservative "Centrist Democrats" working with Republicans and signed by Bill Clinton in 1999 while W was still drunk down in Texas.

SEE: Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999



*There were many voices back in 2001 who pointed out the a Military response against the country of Afghanistan was exactly what Bin Laden wanted.
The sad thing is that the Democratic Party Stood With Bush almost unanimously.

Congresswoman Barbara Lee (Democrat, California) was the ONLY vote against giving Bush the power to militarily invade and occupy the country of Afghanistan, and deserves to be remembered for her courage and integrity.

"Lee is notable as the only member of either house of Congress to vote against the authorization of use of force following the September 11, 2001 attacks. This made her a hero among many in the anti-war movement. Lee has been a vocal critic of the war in Iraq and supports legislation creating a Department of Peace.


Lee gained national attention in 2001 as the only member of congress to vote "No" on the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists (AUMF), stating that she voted no not because she opposed military action but because she believed the AUMF, as written, granted overly-broad powers to wage war to the president at a time when the facts regarding the situation were not yet clear."

Bin Laden did indeed get every-fucking-thing he wanted by the USA's military over-reaction to the actions of a handful of international criminals hiding in the desert of Afghanistan, but blaming George Bush alone ignores history, and completely misses the target.

While there WERE some voices of dissent here,
they were, and still ARE, embarrassingly few.
The United States, Both dominant political parties (Democrats & Republicans), and our culture as a whole deserve the Blame & Shame for our actions in the Middle East.
George Bush did not act alone.

[hughee99]

58. I agree, but I don't think your banking industry example is all that good.

Much of the deregulation of the banking industry occurred before he came into office, and the financial collapse occurred at the very end of his run so it's not really fair to blame him for a lack of prosecutions.

[Kall]

61. So....

"This all continues today. Republicans continue to refuse to blame Bush for where we are today economically. They love to blame a President who inherited the worst economic situation since the great depression. De-regulation of the banking industry, and Wall Street, allowed greed to place working class Americans in desperation. Those who caused the problem experienced no change in their lifestyle, and no banking executive has ever been prosecuted for their criminal acts."

As far as I'm concerned, the real denial comes from those who like to blame only Bush for where the USA is economically, and turn a blind eye to what Democrats have done.

Does any responsibility fall to Obama for the fact that no banking executive has ever been prosecuted for their criminal acts? What about Clinton, who helped spearhead financial deregulation WITH the Republicans? Bush was a cretin, but the problems go much further than Bush. Ask someone who worked on a factory floor with GE in the USA in manufacturing how well Clinton's NAFTA, or permanent Most Favored Nation status for China, worked out for them. Then ask GE CEO Jeff Immelt how those things worked out for his corporate profitability.

[4Q2u2]

69. GE Profit

IN the late 90's GE was the worlds first Co have 10 billion in profits. Their response was that the American worker was overpaid. Their next response was to their suppliers, either move to Mexico or we will not buy from you. These were Blue collar jobs that paid 60k to 70k a year back then in manufactuing of Air Craft parts. Most of the impact was felt on Mom and Pop small businesses that employed 10 to 100 people, you know the kind of business the rePubs like to protect. All part of NAFTA, such a deal? But kind of off OP topic.

[Scurrilous]

62. K & R

[VOX]

63. A more likely watershed event was JFK's murder...

Although placing any date on the ascendance of the RW is tricky, they've been lurking about unbounded by time.

Without getting into conspiracies (although I do believe JFK was the victim of one), the military-industrial complex -- and the usual cast of characters: Bush,Sr., Cheney, Rumsfeld, Kissinger, et al -- got exactly what they wanted with JFK out of the way. This country has never recovered since 11/22/63.

Just my devalued nickel's worth.

[judesedit]

65. Bush removed the assault weapons ban, also. He helps Americans kill Americans. Is he too stupid,

vain, and evil to see what he helped his daddy, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, etc etc etc to create for this country he claims to love. I hope he feels the pain of every single soldier injured or killed, every mother and father who lost a child due to his ignorance and every child who's lost a parent, brother, sister, cousin. I actually hope all who helped to destroy the middle class and the peace of mind that went along with it, suffer the consequences eternally in the next dimension. It will take them each quite a while to get through each one. They are all fucking losers in the lessons of humanity.

[AgingAmerican]

66. GW Bush fulfilled Bin Ladens fatwa when he invaded Iraq

Bin Laden demanded that US troops leave Saudi Arabia as part of his 1996 fatwa against the USA. GW Bush silently removed our military presence from Saudi Arabia at the same time the Iraq invasion started, thus giving in to Bin Laden. Bush did this so that Bin Laden would not interfere with his plans to seize Iraqi oil fields.

[spanone]

68. funny how the american media hasn't gone near this topic....

well, not so funny.

[samsingh]

82. recommend

[lovuian]

88. History is going to Lamblast the Bush dynasty

and Jeb should forget it because he took part of placing Brother George in the whitehouse

[G_j]

89. K&R

[lark]

91. Disagree somewhat.

The red states voted for him, but didn't elect him. He was not elected, he lost the popular vote and the vote in FL was stolen. Bush was NOT elected, he was handpicked by the people that his dad and his dad's predecessor appointed to SCOTUS. SCOTUS violated the constitution and accelerated the destruction of our democracy.