Now that the dust has settled, was the Bush administration really all that bad?

>the badly bungled relief effort after hurrican katrian, and the generally ill prepared state of FEMA
>the (potentially willful) ignoring of the plethora of intelligence about 9/11, then the way that tragedy was exploited by neo-cons to accomplish unrelated long term goals they had held for decades, like invading Iraq to reprivatize its oil
>invading afghanistan instead of going after AQ
>invading Iraq when they had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11
>deregulating the banking sector which had a very clear cause and effect to the 2008 crisis

Bush's direct role in any of these things doesn't really matter, they all either happened because of his policy or during his administration meaning the buck MUST stop on his desk.

>Worthington’s chapter on Kandahar is worth reading in its entirety to get a sense of the complete abandon that MPs, Special Forces and CIA operatives exercised in their treatment of detainees. Prisoners were indeed raped, and made to watch others being raped. Wounds, including one in which a piece of shrapnel protruded from a man’s leg, went untreated. Men like Juma al-Dossari were forced to walk barefoot across barbed wire on the way to “interrogations” and had their faces pushed into broken glass. “Three brothers were blinded” this way, al-Dossari told Worthington.
>For the most part, the beatings and torture went on outside the interrogation room. Oddly, the interrogations themselves were usually conducted in accordance with the procedures outlined in the US Military Field Manual, perhaps because the military interrogators had different instructions than the regular guards. There were many exceptions, however. Al-Dossari describes brutal interrogations, including one in which interrogators poured a boiling liquid on his head and put out cigarettes on his foot and wrist. On another occasion, interrogators forced petrol up al-Dossari’s anus.
>Other prisoners describe similar treatment at Kandahar, along with what would become the familiar litany of sleep deprivation, stress positions, and lengthy exposure to extreme cold, often while soaking wet, in addition to the use of sexual humiliation, death threats, and electric shocks. For many of them, life actually improved once they were sent to Guantánamo.

imagine being a parent immensely proud of your daughter fighting for freedom in Iraq

then this photo of her surfaces

>
Our disaster relief was bad, but eventually adequate. Literally can't blame it on the president.
>
Well, to spread the blame, there was a bombing of that exact spot during the previous administration. But the pushing of the globalist agenda was pretty stupid
>
Wtf? We destroyed AQ to the point that ISIS thinks they're grandpas
>
yep
>
Nope. It was an ignored sector that you could blame their shittiness of helming on it, but the previous administration was the one that opened the floodgates.

By the way, I haven't had a president I've liked in my entire lifetime.

Is this a bad thing?

Bush Admin's treatment of AQ was brilliant. The first thing he did (Other than bombing shit) was go after their money, and that severely crippled them.

>Wtf? We destroyed AQ to the point that ISIS thinks they're grandpas
sorry, what I meant to say we should have just gone after AQ instead of the Taliban. Afghanistan is a war that simply cannot be won. We've been fighting there for 16 years, and I've seen no indication that once we do eventually leave (if we ever do) anything of permanence will have been accomplished for all that effort.

At best it fuels anti-Americanism and makes the US look hypocritical, at worst it's downright evil.

yes it most certainly is, intelligence gained through torture is almost always worthless as tortured prisoners will say anything they think the torturer wants to hear to get it to stop, whether its true or not. This was particularly a problem since so many tortured prisoners didn't know anything and made discerning real intelligence harder.

Also there's the whole, you know, human rights thing and violation of the Geneva Convention, of which the US is a signer.

We literally had it won until the war in Iraq gave the Taliban a chance to rebound.

Afghanistan is extremely separated and tribal. We initially set up camp and destroyed the tribals we didn't like, and then it got all fucked up.

Also, hey Mister Taliban, tally me banana

No.

youtube.com/watch?v=_CSPbzitPL8

youtube.com/watch?v=x7OCgMPX2mE

youtube.com/watch?v=btkJhAM7hZw>Katrina
State was woefully unprepared and Kathleen Blanco (Democrat) fucked up as much as Bush did.
>9/11
Bush is as much responsible for 9/11 by ignoring one intelligence report as Clinton is for not killing Bin Laden: latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-bill-clinton-osama-bin-laden-20140801-story.html
>Afghanistan War
We kicked Al Qaeda's ass.
>Iraq War
theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/feb/26/iraq-war-was-justified

We achieved our goals. Mistakes were made, but the current Iraq is the product of the Obama administration, not the Bush administration. Saddam was not a "stable" leader: theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/06/iraq-war-saddam-monster-chaos-britain-chilcot-report

>2008
Bailouts produced a $75.1 billion profit for the government and ensured the stability of the financial sector. Land prices started rising in 1996, not 2000: bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-06-14/how-i-helped-inflate-the-housing-bubble

>badly bungled relief effort
The state had a lot of responsibility, it wasn't just the federal government involved.
>reprivatizing iraqi oil
Most oilfields are owned today either by Chinese, European, or the National Iraqi Oil Company. pic related.
>invading afghanistan instead of going after AQ

Invading Afghanistan meant going after the only country willing to shelter AQ. The Iraq War further decimated AQ with the Sunni Awakening.

>deregulating the banking sector which had a ver clear cause and effect to the 2008 crisis

housing bubble began in 1996 (see link above), not 2000.

The Bush administration was also responsible for locking up the savages of Abu Ghraib.

Obama heavily escalated the Afghanistan War, while under Bush most of the focus was placed on Iraq.

>is the land of the free and brave capturing and torturing people who didn;t face trial a bad thing
I'm a Briton, and even i can say that if you acting like that to any human being is acceptable then you're not a fucking American.

>Patriot Act
heritage.org/terrorism/report/30-terrorist-plots-foiled-how-the-system-worked

heritage.org/homeland-security/report/the-patriot-act-and-the-constitution-five-key-points

>heritage.org

literally Pravda

Liberty should not be sacrificed in the name of security, espeically when facing an enemy so utterly inept, The largest empires on earth tried and failed to defeat America, and she held fast in her values, why should psychopaths with the tactical cunning of an explosive lemming be worthy of striking a blow against core American values? Terrorists should hold no power over descision making in America.

wonkette.com/227054/we-actually-won-the-iraq-war-hooray

washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2003/08/24/in-defense-of-the-patriot-act/82446c70-fa16-4ab8-a335-bd2d4303fe4b/

Do I really need to post the Ben Franklin quote?

weeklystandard.com/no-oil-for-blood/article/16662

We were guarding opium plots and paying tribal militias not to shoot our trucks. Coincidentally the recent spike in heroin addiction, even if atm doesn't appear assertablely connected to what takes place in Afghanistan, it might end up being so in the long run.

>Dubya would have been a good peacetime president.
he purposely chose not to be a peacetime president if he chose to keep a cool head on 9/11

Afghan heroin doesn't generally go to the US.

The US buys lower grade Colombian and Mexican grown heroin, the Afghan stuff does to Russia, Iran, and Europe.

>On the subject of terrorism prevention, Mac Donald has defended the Patriot Act and argued a case for secrecy and speed in handling problems as well as the sharing of information between departments within the intelligence community, and advocated that the benefits of government power be balanced against the risks of abuse.[6] She has advocated for religious profiling by the police on the grounds that "you cannot be an Islamic terrorist unless you're a member of the Muslim faith".[8] She has said that the Abu Ghraib prison scandal's fallout was overblown and that opponents of then-President Bush used it to construct an exaggerated "master narrative"; she said that Abu Ghraib was "torture lite" compared with more brutal atrocities such as those of Pol Pot.[5] She defended using torture as an interrogation technique as being necessary in selected circumstances.[5]

>your author is edgy so her arguments aren't legit

ad hominem

Your appeal to human rights argument over Abu Ghraib is pretty amusing, as you defend not toppling Saddam Hussein and attack the person responsible for punishing the Abu Ghraib atrocities ;)

A 2003 article by a neocon shill is a poor argument for the Patriot Act.

Yes, it was.

>Now that the dust has settled

Lol it's been like less than a decade, get some fucking perspective

>ad hominem again about neocon shills

looks like the system worked pretty well post 9/11

>In November 2005, Business Week reported that the FBI had issued tens of thousands of "national security letters" and had obtained one million financial records from the customers of targeted Las Vegas businesses. Selected businesses included casinos, storage warehouses and car rental agencies. An anonymous Justice official claimed that such requests were permitted under section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act and despite the volume of requests insisted "We are not inclined to ask courts to endorse fishing expeditions".[10] This didn't just include financial records, but credit records, employment records, and in some cases, health records.

>Furthermore, this information is databased and maintained indefinitely by the FBI. Previous legislation required that federal law enforcement destroy any records harvested during an investigation that pertained to anyone deemed innocent. The Patriot Act superseded that and now the records are maintained indefinitely. According to the legislation, they may be "shared with third parties where appropriate" yet nowhere in the legislation does it define who these third parties are or what conditions would be deemed appropriate for the sharing of such records.

>The large scale wiretapping and tracing of calls to and from foreign countries also falls under this. Millions of phone records were harvested, fed into a database and were searched for patterns of calling to and from numbers of known terrorists. To date, there have been no announced arrests from this program.

>National Security Letter can be issued by any FBI agent with the rank of Field Supervisor or above, at their discretion. It does not require a judge or probable cause, as does a search warrant.

Five minutes of googling and it isn't looking good.

Are you seriously taking a utilitarianist approach to war and toppling governments? I'm not sure you realize the argument you're starting.

Tell me user, how many Iraqi civilians have died violently since the US invaded Iraq to today? How many were killed by Saddam in the same number of years before that?

Tell me how many of the civilian deaths were the product of the US military's "brutal" bombing campaign and how many were the result of Iraqis slaughtering each other with Iranian-built IEDs?

>we only have to obey laws when it's convenient

Literally a useful idiot for Al Qaeda

How many of those were picked up by Patriot Act surveillance instead of 'sheer luck'?

G.I. Joe apologist
>We kicked Al Qaeda's ass
>Saddam was not a "stable" leader.
More stable than the puppet leaders you installed.
>but the current Iraq is the product of the Obama administration
Iraq actually had higher deathtolls and casualty rates during sectarian violence. Plus it's not like everyone and their grandma didn't believe that chaos was what was going to happen whenever the U.S. pulled out but it's the Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld gang's fault for putting us there in the first place.

on the other hand, with the amount of soldiers we lost in Iraq that same amount probably wouldn't have been killed by terrorists had no freedoms been curbed. something like 100 or so deaths have been from terrorism since 9/11. its fucking nothing

wut?

Terrorists don't cause problems, they can't cause problems.

Opportunists and alarmists are what make terrorism work. They enable a small non-state actor to force a knee jerk reaction and change the policy of a much bigger power.

There literally wouldn't be an Al Qaeda or an IS without stupid cunts freaking out and taking the b8

That's called a force multiplier.

Are you trying to state that allowing terrorist attacks without any response would end the actions of radicalized individuals? Because that's fucking stupid.

You have to be at least 18 years of age to use this site.

>if you fight your enemies, then they win

go home Trudeau

Remind me again- what spurred Muhammad's followers to invade all of the Middle East and invade Europe constantly from the 600s to the 1600s?

Was it Abu Ghraib and the Iraq War? Our support for Israel? Boots on the ground in Saudi Arabia?

Yeah might be true but you never know how it might end up affecting us in the future. Along with oil this may be a long term plot.

it would, you literally just censor the media so nobody hears about it

>Obama heavily escalated the Afghanistan War

thanks to McChrystal. There was also escalation during Bush's last year.

>it would, you literally just censor the media so nobody hears about it

Terrorists barely cause any damage in western powers because they are on the leash of their American and Saudi handlers on the other hand the bulk of their efforts are centered on middle eastern countries where they've actually managed to seize territory and assets from the replacement regime's forces. The oil flow is just enough to keep the market the way it is and keep revenue flowing into certain people's pockets but not to benefit the people of the oil producing states in any way.

the civilian deaths were the product of the US military shattering a stable nation ruled by a brutal autocrat

if more people died from that chaos than would have died from the autocrat by your logic it wasn't justified

you didn't address his point at all

Erm, first world terrorists and militarized political forces are not the same thing.

You think that democrat Bernie faggot was paid to go shoot republicans on that baseball field? Or dipshit euro muzzies were paid to drive U-HAULs on Bastille day? And they're the same as ISIS regulars?

Not even the same fucking thing.

If it was so stable, why is it still in chaos today?

Fucking deal with it, Mohamed. Get arrested for hates speech, faggot.

Umm yeah actually. And how does bombing a country thousands of miles away do anything but agitate the domestic and foreign lunatics even more or stop them from flocking to the West?

Wrong.

By killing the ones who were deemed hostile and having border security?

>heh they just bomb civilians
No you fucking retard, we have become so legalistic that we have ROE that is many times dangerous to our own soldiers

Yeah sure quite the border security you got there causing them to spill over like ants. Coincidentally we didn't have any attacks before the consolidation of Saudi and Wahabbi influence in the region.

Yes, our border security should be better, but the "workplace violence," Ft. Hood, fag nightclub shooting in Orlando, Hustband/Wife Christmas party shit in Cali, and Boston kettle cookers were all home-grown.

Are you saying that if we didn't bomb brown people in the interests of our shady global hegemony, they would magically not want to kill our countrymen?

Because that's fucking stupid.

>moving the goalpost
It's actually true though as there weren't equatable rates of violent attacks connected to Isamic ideologies as there are now. Otherwise people wouldn't be complaining about it.

>goalposts
You're all over the fucking board m8, not even a singular argument to move goalposts from.

But anyway, Islamic-inspired terrorism is on the rise. The fuck did Britain do to deserve their attacks? Because they sure as fuck didn't have a big hand in the middle east.

Should handle it 80s KGB style and where castration was a (successful) negotiation method.

By the way, what the fuck is your horse in the game Muhammed? They're not going to stop, and although some are being inflamed by our collateral damage, that's not the source of the fucked up violent ideology of Islamists.

>Saddam was not a "stable" leader
Let me guess, Gaddafi wasn't either? And neither is Assad?

The UK has fought ISIS in Iraq and Syria alongside the US.

Yeah really handing it to them hard....

>Because they sure as fuck didn't have a big hand in the middle east.
>what is Libya, Iraq, Syria and Yemen

And it keeps on moving. Actually Britain or rather their citizenry are collateral for US/Anglo-Wahhabi commercial relations. It gives angry Ahmeds a chance to let off steam and gives the government an excuse with the public for continued intervention.

Both Bushes are objectively in the top 5 worst presidents in history.

Bush Sr and his "Deregulate!" and "No new taxes!" shit set up the recession in the 90s and the Great Recession of 2008 due to housing.

Bush Jr let it all happen before his eyes and then destroyed America's reputation and credibility abroad with his stupidity and his willingness to go to war for the warmongers in his cabinet, and Cheney, who were using him for their own personal gain.

Don't forget that Bush only beat Gore because of Jeb rigging the Florida election as well. Gore won. Then the vote got challenged and ruled for Gore. Then that got challenged and ruled for Gore. And Jeb knew Gore would keep winning, so he made the unprecedented decision to throw the decision to the Supreme Court, to let IT settle the election in Florida instead of letting anyone in Florida do it, including its state supreme court, legislature, or voters. And the national Supreme Court, of course, ruled for Bush Jr.

So we have a dynasty of incompetence and stupidity. And its name is Bush. Sr, Jr, and Jeb "Please Clap" Bush together did more damage to the United States on ALL fronts than any other president in modern memory aside from perhaps Reagan and his Reaganomics, or Trump, if his presidency continues its current trajectory.

>Blaming the weather on a president.
Wew lad.
Wew.

>Gore won.
no

you realize of course that the Supreme Court stopped the recount, right? Meaning the original vote was called for Bush.

iirc the recounts kept finding more Gore votes and the GOP realized it had a problem so it escalated the issue, but the next two deciding factors were both Democrat, so they had to skip them and the only higher authority they could possibly appeal to was MAYBE the US Supreme Court, which should have declined to make a decision and send it back to Florida, but chose instead to subvert democracy and aid in steering the country off of the cliff that was the stupidest presidency in history before Trump got elected.

I remember thinking every time Bush fucked up so badly, "Surely conservatives will see this and learn. Surely they won't make this mistake again." And then they voted for Bush again, and the same shady shit happened again, but this time Kerry got bullied out of contesting by accusations that he was gonna "pull a Gore." Then all through that presidency, Bush fucked up and conservatives were surely watching, right? Surely they realized the party was the literal opposite of what it claimed to be, right?

Nope! They votes for Romney even though he was overtly, explicitly contrary to every conservative ideal! He was the greedy city slicker businessman fucking poor mom and pop shops out of business personified. They didn't care. They voted for him and spewed retarded garbage about Obama being a Kenyan Muslim Socialist.

But surely they learned, right? They saw Obama turn the economy around and fix most of Bush's mistakes, right? Nope! They actually got pissed he fixed anything, so they punished us all by electing a reality TV show host with an IQ of 40 and the temperament of a child.

And thus all faith in democracy was lost. Humans can't handle the burden. They're too fucking stupid.

>the recounts kept finding more Gore votes
where were they hiding? Shady shit happens on both sides you know.

>stupidest presidency in history before Trump got elected.
No invasions or shady acts passed yet. Sure I may not like the shoddy commercial deals and labor laws that might be passing in order to appease his corporate sponsors but it's a little better than what we have been doing.

>George Bush did 9/11
This is Veeky Forums not /x/ or /pol/.

>Why was this Dem candidate losing votes in the state his Republican opponent's brother ran?
>Why was he gaining until a phone call was made to the Bush complex, at which point Jeb got on the phone and everything flew into chaos as rules began being reinterpreted on the fly?
>Why was procedure and common sense violated repeatedly to make sure the decisive state was handed to the brother of the guy who ran that state?

Gee, I wonder.
youtu.be/qcz6NSyxrfQ

i even forgot the hanging chad bullshit.
Basically, the actual method of voting was rigged to be confusing, especially for people selecting Democratic candidates, and the single Democrat who was supposed to review the ballots and make sure they were acceptable to the Dems just signed off on them assuming they were normal ballot. They didn't suspect Republicans would've fucked with them

So one reason Gore was gaining votes was because people counting were themselves learning to count the confusing ballots properly, and repeated handling was causing ballots that had previous NOT been counted due to "hanging chads" to lose those chads and become eligible for counting. Because if you punched a hole 90% of the way but did not pluck off the chad, your vote was often not counted. It was considered incomplete. But shuffling the ballots around wore chads off, making those votes count again.

Yeah, I'm making an assumption based on how mind numbingly stupid his campaign was and how bad his first 5 months were.

The American Dream Downpayment Assistance Act which was formed by a republican House and Senate and signed by Bush exacerbated the fuck out of that situation.

JEB

>actual method of voting was rigged to be confusing
hehe yeah right. Fucking chads.

It was a moot point when the Supreme Court decided to crown Bush president (I think it was 3 or 5 weeks after the election when they made their ruling) so that the US would know who their president is and not have it go on for a year (like it did) before figuring out who actually won

good point, now run off there, shill

Bait or underage but il take it anyway. When Bush is shit on for Katrina its not for the weather, its for how he retardedley handled the situation.

Nah, Scalia was blatant in his favoritism. They made a big deal about halting the recount because it was going to Gore and everyone knew it. They didn't even allow it to continue on hypothetical grounds after the ruling, iirc. They put a full stop to it. Scalia gloated about it later. How pleased he was to get to overrule the state and swing an election for "his guys".

youtu.be/RjaB3cxH-XE

He's also lying his ass off and knows it.
He said in many interviews, "Gore brought it to the courts! He wanted this!" but notice how he specifies "Florida courts." He's shitting legalese out of his mouth. He's implying Gore wanted the US Supreme Court to decide on the case and then got upset when it didn't go his way, but clearly Gore wanted the Florida State Supreme Court to handle it, and the case was instead sent to the US Supreme Court because the Florida court was Democratic but could not very well overrule the national court.

Scalia also criticizes the Florida court for "scheming" and being biased while being transparent about his own scheming and bias.

He stole the election and knows it. And he was glad to have done it, because it benefited his personal interests and his political party.

If only he'd gotten to suffer more before he died.

>butterfly ballots

oh so those massive arrows pointing to the punchholes didn't clue you in?

>designed by a Democrat elections director
hahaha wow you're beginning to sound like a conspiracy theorist m8

...

Even prouder now.

>oh so those massive arrows pointing to the punchholes didn't clue you in?
The average voter's not the brightest. The arrows also don't point right at the holes. Many voters thought the Dem hole was gonna be right there next to the GOP hole. They didn't expect a third party, who did get way more votes than anyone expected, but only in Florida, to be interjected between the two main parties.

>hahaha wow you're beginning to sound like a conspiracy theorist
My recollection was that it was designed by a Republican but signed off on by a Dem.

And you're beginning to sound a lot like an idiot, m8.
Consider: I just spoonfed you paragraphs of justifications for my points. I just linked you to one or two decent sources on the topic. I proved my assertions fairly well. You seem to take issue with my conclusions, yet you're dancing around the issue, nitpicking trivial details and trying to troll me. Why?
The only answer I can think of is you're buttmad enough to feel obliged to reply to me, but you can't actually contradict most of what I'm setting before you.

Sad.

they literally mention that it was a Dem who designed it in the video you posted from CNN
>I proved my assertions fairly well.

you made lots of assertions

Considering his foreign policy (with the humility a broken nose gives you) was carried on by Obama, apparently not.

What does it feel to be that much of a nigger you're blatantly ignoring the 25 year rule, despite the very first post being polite enough to point it out in case there's a din dun like you stumbling across it?

Only thing I'd say was out of control of sitting president is the 9/11.

Others are well within the president's powers. The financial crisis was created by the president and his legislative or rather removal of loan regulations and predatory practices. The Iraq war was carried out by a lie. The Afghan War was avoidable. The Patriot Act was unnecessary removal of fundamental privacy. Hurricane Katrina was a failure of leadership, before and after the event.

>that one guy who is saying ISIS and Islamic terror are direct responses to western intervention in Muslim countries

It's like you don't listen to what they say or preach.

Fantastic bait

Weak bait desu

>The fuck did Britain do to deserve their attacks? Because they sure as fuck didn't have a big hand in the middle east.

Top kek

>terrorist attacks explode in popularity over the last two decades
>this coincides with increased intervention in Muslim countries

really makes you think