animaux

WHY GEORGE W. BUSH CAN'T WIN
Thu Sep 4, 8:02 PM ET Add Op/Ed - Richard Reeves to My Yahoo!

By Richard Reeves

WASHINGTON -- It could be argued now that President George W. Bush (news - web
sites) cannot be re-elected -- not after screwing up most everything he touches.

Richard Reeves

If you doubt that, look at the record. The poor guy is a disaster. I'll just
list the first 10 reasons GWB looks like a lame duck -- or a dead duck:

1. GWB misunderstood the limits of the super power he inherited and over-reached
around the world. He learned a bit about far places -- Afghanistan (news - web
sites), Iraq (news - web sites), Iran, Syria, North Korea (news - web sites) --
and then personally declared war on them, war on the cheap.

A classified report being prepared for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "Operation
Iraqi Freedom Strategic Lessons Learned," obtained by Rowan Scarborough of The
Washington Times, discusses the search for weapons of mass destruction and
concludes: "WMD elimination and exploitation planning efforts did not occur
early enough in the process ... Insufficient U.S. government assets existed to
accomplish the mission."

2. In the process of going to war, GWB began mocking and pushing around old
allies like a school yard bully. Then he was surprised when they -- beginning
with France, Germany and Russia -- began pushing back.

3. Rushing in as fools are said to do, GWB has tied down the greatest military
in the history of the world. Ours. Half our combat-ready army is looking for
snipers and bombers in unruly countries that look as tribal as they were a
century ago when the British failed as imperialists in the same sand and
mountains.

4. GWB dissed the United Nations (news - web sites) (and, again, our allies) and
now is coming back to ask everyone else to help clean up the mess he made.

5. "He" -- we always overstate presidential power over the domestic economy --
has "lost" 2 million jobs here at home as the stock market went south.

6. GWB is presiding over the economic decline of millions of American families
-- and not only the poor ones left behind long ago. Take a look at the new book
"The Two-Income Trap" by Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi, published by
Basic Books. Comparing the early 1970s with the early 2000s, the authors report
that a typical family with only the husband working earned $38,700 30 years ago,
and after fixed expenses like shelter, food, transportation and taxes, had
$17,834 to spend for tuitions and other incidentals. Now, with both husband and
wife working (if they're lucky) and earning $67,800, the fixed expenses total
$50,755 and $17,045 is left to pay for everything else. (That's all in constant
dollars.)

7. GWB is a "big government" big spender, compared to, say, his predecessor,
Bill Clinton (news - web sites). The Center for Public Service at The Brookings
Institution, directed by Paul Light, has just issued a report indicating that
the number of federal employees and contractors is increasing for the first time
since the 1980s, led by a 43 percent increase in employees of defense
contractors feeding on federal contracts.

8. GWB is running a "borrow as you go" government, exploding the national debt
by hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars compared to Clinton-era
surpluses. Given the choice of "tax and spend" or "borrow and spend," he has
chosen to pass the bill on to new generations.

9. GWB's environmental record is comic, confirmed when Jon Stewart of "The Daily
Show" showed him walking through a national park filled with "future
two-by-fours."

10. GWB lies a lot.

At least, these are the things that Democratic candidates for president should
be saying. The one coming closest is Howard Dean (news - web sites), he of thin
credentials and not much to lose, and that has made him the Democratic
front-runner at this moment.

That shows Democrats are not totally clueless, but this moment is not yet
election time. Many Democrats, and some Republicans, too, might agree that Bush
has not been a very successful chief executive or commander-in-chief, but is he
more impressive and more trustworthy than whoever the Democrats finally chose as
his opponent? After all, assuming the economy begins to improve and there are
more jobs out there, the president may well look a lot better than he does at
the end of this summer of our discontent.


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=123&ncid=761&e=1&u=/030905/79/55wkd.html

nes

touches.

Oh, but we all know this is really Clinton's fault. He lied about *** - how
terrible!

Nes

daniel

when exactly did we declare war on Iran, Syria, and N.Korea?

no, half of our military is conducting "peacekeeping" missions in countries
like Bosnia, Kosvo, etc. thanks to Cliton.

the UN had 12 years to deal with Iraq. they failed.

cite.

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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=123&ncid=761&e=1&u=/030905/79/55wkd.html

z

I blame Taft!

animaux

On Fri, 05 Sep 2003 17:30:25 GMT, "Daniel" <sabot120mm@hot.rr.com> opined:

They did? Tell me, where are the WMD's then?

Can't do it, can you? Know why they aren't there?

Because they were gotten rid of by the UN inspectors.

What WMD Iraq had was sold to them by us, the USA. That's the part dubya and his
cronies conveniently leave out when they say "we know he (Saddam) had a weapons
program."