in hindsight, how bad was he really?

He was pretty fucking bad if you lost a loved one on 9-11, Afghanistan, or in Iraq
I disagreed 100% with Iraq war and wall street bailout
but I never felt like he was a traitor to America or a con man

I see 45 as my enemy and a threat to the security of myself and my family
on some personal shit
I was a kid during Reagan
in middle, HS, and college for Bush and Clinton
(became "politically aware" during his 2nd term)
and for Dubya I was in the struggle/call center life/fucking around aimless BS

We laughed at "nu-cu-lar"
said he was Cheney's puppet
believed and were proved right that Iraq was a mistake
disagreed with just about everyone of his policies
except for that tax rebate check, but even that was some pandering BS

I mean, by the time Obama took over, Dubya was the scum of the earth
now?
sheeeeeeeeeiiit (c)
I'd vote for him twice

Bush Jr. comes off as a charming, respectable guy when compared to Trump.

I'd shake Bush's hand, take a photo with him and tell my grandkids about the time I met the president.

Meanwhile, I don't respect Trump at all, and wouldn't even set foot in the white house while he's president. I disavow EVERYTHING about Trump's presidency. Fuck this shit.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-trump-purple-heart-george-bush-perspec-20160803-story.html


I wouldn't go so far as to say I miss him, I think it is clear that we were all wrong when we thought he was the worst thing that could happen to America.

I think he was a spoiled rich guy who was in over his head who was duped by neo-cons into a war they wanted but he seems to be a decent person with a conscious.


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

And we were right.

People sounding like they missed the first pimp they were punched by because the new pimp beats you with a coat hanger.

I thought it could get no worse than an intellectually incurious rich kid who surrounded himself with holdovers from the Regan era. I was wrong.


>And we were right.
>
>People sounding like they missed the first pimp they were
>punched by because the new pimp beats you with a coat hanger.


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

and Trump is worse than Bush.

but at the time we were correct.

that Trump has turned out to be more horrible doesn't mean Bush was alright.

Trump is/was unimaginably terrible. back then who'd have thought this kind of shit would be going on?

but back then who'd have thought Obama was gonna be the next POTUS?

Trump's presidency doesn't make sense w/o knowing Obama's preceded it. w/that info it starts to make much more sense. sadly.

but let's not allow this Trump bullshit to make us lie to ourselves about history.

in a way 45 will never be
that's what I mean
I miss a decent human being as president

I didn't like his politics, I didn't vote for him
but Dubya was an American and a decent human being
I can't say the same about 45

45 is so deplorable that saying W is a better human being than 45 ain't really saying much.

for me, i mean.

there are still things W did that no amount of foolery from 45 will erase.

>in a way 45 will never be
>that's what I mean
>I miss a decent human being as president
>
>I didn't like his politics, I didn't vote for him
>but Dubya was an American and a decent human being
>I can't say the same about 45
>
>

yall niggas need to get out of your feelings and really remember what W was like as President.

you could argue that he destroyed one part of the world and helped save another. human beings are complicated, I don't think he has a bad heart.

Trump is an asshole but W and his crew were the worst. We would be in another war and have tax cuts and ACA would be gone if W was in office.

Don’t let the horrible tweets fool you.

W and them were a whole months level of evil.

http://theweek.com/articles/555720/how-george-w-bush-dick-cheney-brought-torture-america

How George W. Bush and Dick Cheney brought torture to America
May 19, 2015

Ryan Cooper

Tonight, Frontline will air a documentary called Secrets, Politics, and Torture, directed by Michael Kirk, about how President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney institutionalized torture in American politics and government.

Three major developments explored in detail by Kirk drive home the extent to which Bush and Cheney worked to ingrain torture in the American state.

The first was the crushing ideological pressure to torture that came from the top of the Bush administration. The most striking example of this came directly after 9/11, when al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah was captured. Since the CIA had zero personnel with experience in interrogation, the FBI was initially brought in. Ali Soufan, a highly experienced interrogator and Muslim who speaks fluent Arabic, took charge of the questioning. He deployed the traditional police model, which focuses on building rapport and a criminal case. Almost immediately, Zubaydah gave up Khalid Sheik Mohammad as a member of al Qaeda.

Despite that quick success, word came down from Washington: Use violence. A man named James Mitchell convinced the Bush brass that he had a better way. The CIA eventually paid his company — co-founded with another psychologist, Bruce Jessen — $81 million. The two had been psychologists in the Air Force, where they oversaw the mock interrogators in the SERE program, which trained Navy SEALs what to do in case they were captured or tortured by the enemy.

Mitchell did not speak Arabic. He had no experience whatsoever in Islamic extremism generally or al Qaeda in particular. And he had never even interrogated anyone. That is who replaced Soufan, who was without question one of the finest al Qaeda specialists in the entire country at the time. That is the level of competence the Bush administration was willing to flush down the toilet to validate its iron belief that non-violent interrogations (soft, weak, liberal) could never work, despite Soufan's proven success. They would have put an ice cream truck driver in charge of interrogations, so long as he had some crackpot scheme about freezing detainees half to death in soft serve.

It took a terrific fight with much of the professional bureaucracy — Soufan at one point considered arresting the CIA agents torturing Zubaydah — but torture eventually prevailed.

The second development occurred when the torture bill came due. The Abu Ghraib torture scandal was a colossal stain on Bush's legacy, and by late 2005 much of the administration had turned against the CIA program. Then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice led a push inside the administration to announce an official stop to the program. At a high-level meeting in the White House, everyone but Cheney agreed with Rice, and she seemed to have won. A speech was arranged.

But as happened so often in the Bush administration, Cheney went to Bush personally afterward, and convinced him that Rice was wrong. Rice went to the speech expecting Bush to disavow "enhanced interrogation," but instead he embraced it, and claimed it had produced valuable intelligence (it hadn't).

This is "one more example of the long shadow Cheney casts over the American government," Kirk said in an interview with The Week.

This was probably the key moment when the torture disease could have been expunged from the American government, but was instead left to take over the host. Once Bush, the leader of the Republican Party, embraced torture as affirmatively good policy, the rest of the conservative ideological apparatus swung into place behind him, and torture became a partisan matter. Instead of Jose Rodriguez (who destroyed the tapes of the CIA interrogations) being a criminal conspirator, he became a loyal conservative.

So when Barack Obama came to power, attempting to uphold previous norms would have required an unprecedented legal fight against practically the entire top echelon of the previous administration. It's understandable, though still inexcusable, that Obama has been utterly mealy-mouthed about torture, and that he declined to prosecute any torturers or their enablers. Trying to do so would have paralyzed his entire agenda.

Finally, unrepentant and unpunished CIA torturers, defensively looking to clear their names and reputations, inserted pro-torture agitprop into the Hollywood blockbuster Zero Dark Thirty. Acting on extensive CIA interviews, director Katherine Bigelow conveyed the strong impression that torture is what led to the killing of Osama bin Laden:

As a result, it's very likely America will torture again.

As with so many Frontline productions, Secrets, Politics, and Torture does not contain that much new information, but is instead a judicious and well-crafted summary of a long and complex story. When it comes to the CIA torture program, and the Senate report documenting it, this is as good a single source as you'll find.

...doesn't mean Dubya wasn't bad. I don't care if you could have a beer with him or talk football with him or whatever, he was a shit president who was unqualified to be there. He made HORRIBLE policy decisions, put all the wrong people in positions of power, got us into two wars, fucked up the environment, screwed the middle class at the expense of the rich. Even though Drumph has done all those things and more in less than a year, Dubya never should have been president either, much less for two terms.

not based on these 2 posts and my own memories of his time in the WH.

i'm not falling for the okey-doke.

Trump is filth and that doesn't mean W is a good guy b/c Trump is so awful.

W is less awful than Trump.

yay?

Dubya. Campaigning as a contrast to Trumps failures

Trump wouldn't be on that "The president deserves my silence" and go finger paint.

He'd dedicate his life to trolling and sabatoging Obama and the country any way he could while trying to rewrite his own legacy

https://i.imgur.com/RYgqqnr.gif



**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

but fuck both those dudes

Bush is a reminder how consequential a horrible president can be

You can look at iraq decision alone, and how the world is still feeling its effects. including the rise of nationalist trump style politics spreading through europe.

Bush was a horrifically unqualified simpleton in way over his head, but for all Bush's fuck ups. I never looked at him as a vile human being in the same way i look at Trump. Cheney, for sure, but even Cheney wasn't a moron. just pure evil.

Imagine Trump's post 9/11 speech, or Trump responding to the world being on the brink of financial collapse. Not to say Dubya responded with greatness... i'm saying just imagine how much worse...

I'm no Trump fan but I think folks are taking his trolling tweets a little too serious.

Dude ain't really passed much yet and hopefully the worst we have is a few soundbites and tweets and congress never passes any of his bullshit.

W tho? We are still dealing with his fuck ups.

Trump and his people show up at the bar and talk loud and make terrible jokes... W and his gang tho, they actually take over the bar and smash bottles on peoples heads.

He's unstable, petty and incapable of basic empathy or human decency.

Insert Trump in any of Bush's crisis, the result is much scarier

Fuck both of them for different reasons. Yeah there are shades of terrible, both just happen to be on a spectrum of people that utterly disgust me.

https://retentionscience.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Confused-Baby-Meme-Blank-20.jpg



yeah Nahhh ....I'm good on him, his brother and father

1. https://youtu.be/MxbT11QlCe8?t=36

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OM3Z_Kskl_U (where in THE hell was Secret Service here?)

3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntwdH3Q54ZY

he was drunk-uncle funny at least

shit would've been JOOOOOOOOOOOOKES.

i was conflicted about that shoe thing

i ain't into "patriotism" (but still love my country cuz dis mine, nahmeen) and give less than a what about dubya

but that was some disrespectful (yet funny/bold in the - yo you got balls kid - kinda way) stuff b

all that said, if he had a gun....

**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

He stood there at the podium like a QB standing the pocket w/ blitzers rushing.

defintitely thought "yo, ol drunkle got moves"

b/c fuck all the bullshit - that's the POTUS right there. and i was stunned that respect for the office had sunk so low that a guy would dare throw a shoe at him. like, damn.

similarly when that fool shouted 'YOU LIE!' at Obama. i was like, 'oh really???'

then half the country elected a clearly unqualified reality tv star b/c they're like 'fuck it'.

no respect.

to do it.



>b/c fuck all the bullshit - that's the POTUS right there.
>and i was stunned that respect for the office had sunk so low
>that a guy would dare throw a shoe at him. like, damn.
>
>similarly when that fool shouted 'YOU LIE!' at Obama. i was
>like, 'oh really???'
>
>then half the country elected a clearly unqualified reality tv
>star b/c they're like 'fuck it'.
>
>no respect.


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

and Obama was a divider simply because he won and made white folks feel inferior with his intelligence and grace

and he tanked the economy, which led to the financial ruin of millions of American citizens. His regime re-popularized torture. He also appointed Alito and Roberts to the Supreme Court, which led to Citizens United, which led to most of the epic fuckery we see in politics today. Oh yeah, Katrina too. Dude was evil or incompetent at almost every turn.

He had slightly better manners and was more charming, I guess, but either he was a huge dupe or he was a vile piece of shit. Maybe a mix.

Do i think of him as somewhat better than Trump.. i guess, but i can't rewrite history like he was at all acceptable to my world view.

>He also appointed Alito and Roberts to the Supreme
>Court, which led to Citizens United, which led to most of the
>epic fuckery we see in politics today.

just arbitrarily struck down an important piece of a congressional/executive mandated law that immediately led to increased voter suppression in states like north carolina and texas.

Trump was coming down the street in some parade type thing. I put 2 middle fingers up the whole time he was approaching, and when he passed by me I spit on the ground.

That's an actual dream I had about my President.

I never had such seething hatred for W that it crept into my subconscious and dreams. Or really anything else for that matter.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/920039016124252160

Trying to picture Trump here. She yells at him, he probably leaves the room mad, maybe has her removed, and if it gets out, starts tweeting about how no one cares about soldiers more than him, and how she's being ungrateful and that she's not even hot

That what makes him seem so much better than Trump.

But when you get into policies and actions, Bush and his crew were pretty destructive. Moreso than Trump (give him time though).

Id do with lawful/neutral evil as opposed to the chaotic evil we have in the white house now(shouts to my d&d heads).

go lay down.

http://a.abcnews.com/images/Politics/ABC_dick_cheney_jt_140622_16x9_992.jpg

He allowed 9/11 to happen. He's literally responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths.

we hear about the contested recount that gore was winning and the supreme court decision. but the reason it was even that close is rarely brought up.

florida purged 58k 'felons' from its voter registration list using some shady 3rd party vendor. black people made up 45% of that list. an estimated 12k of 'felons' were erroneously flagged and bush only won by 537 votes (1st count).

people were added to the purge list if they were even only 70% similar to a matched felon. when one county ran a test list with stricter matching criteria (dob, ss, sex, etc). their list of 600+ felons was actually more like 30. so the list was found to be flawed even before the election and they still went with it.

that same lax matching approach is still used today in multiple states that have anti-felon voting laws. it is also used to purge potential 'double registrants' (disproportionately flags minorities) in 27 states using the crosscheck program (kris kobach).

>in hindsight, how bad was he really?

smdh

>He was pretty fucking bad if you lost a loved one on 9-11,
>Afghanistan, or in Iraq
>I disagreed 100% with Iraq war and wall street bailout
>but I never felt like he was a traitor to America or a con
>man
>
>I see 45 as my enemy and a threat to the security of myself
>and my family
>on some personal shit
>I was a kid during Reagan
>in middle, HS, and college for Bush and Clinton
>(became "politically aware" during his 2nd term)
>and for Dubya I was in the struggle/call center life/fucking
>around aimless BS
>
>We laughed at "nu-cu-lar"
>said he was Cheney's puppet
>believed and were proved right that Iraq was a mistake
>disagreed with just about everyone of his policies
>except for that tax rebate check, but even that was some
>pandering BS
>
>I mean, by the time Obama took over, Dubya was the scum of the
>earth
>now?
>sheeeeeeeeeiiit (c)
>I'd vote for him twice
>
>

Damn Katrina, racism and you would vote for more.

>...as my enemy and a threat to the security of myself and my family
on some personal shit

and no, im not talking about us soldiers, im talking about the people they killed

he was just better on the mic
The Iraq Invasion ALONE is one of the worst decisions a western leader has ever made

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/20/george-w-bush-donald-trump-speech-blood-hands?CMP=fb_gu

supporting trump


trump is exactly the kind of person "they" would want


its got everyone completely polarized

got people like me willingly voting for hillary fucking clinton

got other people pining for dubya

environment


so he learned how to keep his head down and his mouth shut early on

jk but seriously he was horrible president. yes, much of the financial ruin and prison population explosion were seeds sewn under clinton (and reagan) but he accelerated those processes. terrible fiscal policy at home. an embarrassment as a diplomat abroad, pretty much on trump's level (could be argued slightly worse or slightly better). disaster on security that turned into overcompensation that created a disaster on individual liberties. two wars, neither of which should have been fought on the same scale and one of which shouldn't have been fought at all. the guy was a fucking nightmare and we shouldn't buddy up to him now just because he will save the obvious about Becheeto Mussolini. Honestly I think Trump's legacy has a decent chance of being superior to Bush's. He is incompetent in many ways but militarily he's actually put decisions back in the hands of the military and so far there hasn't been any huge economic crisis at home (it's early, I know). Strangely a GOP legislature under Trump has passed WAY less than a GOP legislature did under Clinton. There are a lot of rollbacks of Obama gains on social stuff and immigration but those were always tenuous. Lots of financial and environmental regulation going on which is potentially dangerous but he still has a ways to go match Bush on both ends there or even Clinton on the financial side.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAUcyfKESts