But most of the list you supplied is debatable at least and laughable and absurd at worst.
Sure, if you live in a fantasy land of selective memory.
Torture, wire tapping and due process? not americans, not even soldiers of an actual enemy state, but terrorists
Ah, so torture is okay because they're not us and they're bad people. Which one of Christ's teachings or the alleged tenets of American government is that pearl of wisdom lifted from?
By the way, the Taliban fighters in Guantanamo were soldiers of an actual enemy state, as admitted by even
the Bush administration itself when it said they would treat them according to the rules of the Geneva Convention, which they chose not to apply to the al-Qaida fighters in Guantanamo and abroad. However, they still held many Taliban fighters indefinitely without due process thus leading to such wonderful moments as when we held a Afghan anti-Taliban hero for over five years until he died of cancer in Guantanamo, all because he couldn't (and we wouldn't) call witnesses to clear his name:
Prisoners With No End in Sight
But poppy eradication is not the only area where the Bush Administration is the prisoner of its own brain-dead rhetoric. Detainee policy, which even its authors now regularly label “disastrous” is an even more convincing case for the proposition. And the New York Times offers a distressing story out of Guantánamo, but the report comes from Carlotta Gall and Andrew Worthington out of Kabul:Abdul Razzaq Hekmati was regarded here as a war hero, famous for his resistance to the Russian occupation in the 1980s and later for a daring prison break he organized for three opponents of the Taliban government in 1999. But in 2003, Mr. Hekmati was arrested by American forces in southern Afghanistan when, senior Afghan officials here contend, he was falsely accused by his enemies of being a Taliban commander himself. For the next five years he was held at the American military base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where he died of cancer on Dec. 30.
The fate of Mr. Hekmati, the first detainee to die of natural causes at Guantánamo, who fruitlessly recounted his story several times to American officials, demonstrates the enduring problems of the tribunals at Guantánamo, say Afghan officials and others who knew him.
Afghan officials, and some Americans, complain that detainees are effectively thwarted from calling witnesses in their defense, and that the Afghan government is never consulted on the detention cases, even when it may be able to help. Mr. Hekmati’s case, officials who knew him said, shows that sometimes the Americans do not seem to know whom they are holding. Meanwhile, detainees wait for years with no resolution to their cases.
Illegal wiretapping is not being done to Americans?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_controversy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_call_database
The funny thing is that the same types of people who feel they need guns to rise up against a potential oppressive future US government also tend to be the same ones who are the least concerned with or actually approve of the current government violating the rights of our own people and foreigners. So what oppressive government is it that these people intend to rise against? Because they sure as hell didn't seem to give a shit as our rights and the rights of others were eroded away by the Bush Administration. I'm not saying that it should be a call to arms, because it isn't, but at the very least show some damn concern and a desire to change things by working within the law.
USS Triumphant quite eloquently dealt with a number of your points below, so I'll just pick a couple I want to comment on as well.
damaging diplomatic ties abroad? we have the greatest relationship with India and South America than we have ever had. Germany and France, our supposed offended allies, now have conservative executives.
What does their own internal political situations resulting in more conservative administrations have to do with Bush's diplomatic policies?
Are you talking about the same South America with Chavez in Venezuela and the American-backed corrupt and oppressive Columbian government launching illegal attacks into Ecuador to go after FARC? Yeah, they love us down there.
Then there's his alienation of Spain - a long-term and loyal ally and fellow NATO member - after they were attacked and then their newly elected Prime Minister lived up to his campaign promise to withdraw troops from Iraq.
Hey, and how about his handling of the Georgia/Russia conflict. That went well, didn't it? We didn't drop the ball on that one at all.
Or how about his indirect comparison of Obama and the Israeli government to Nazi appeasers on the floor of the Knesset because the Israelis were negotiating with Syria and Obama wants more diplomacy in the Middle East instead of hardline tactics? That went over well.
We had to face complete chaos in Iraq and the 2006 midterm elections here for Bush to realize the failure of his policies there, which is why he got rid of Rumsfeld and started piggybacking on the successful initiatives to work with the Sunnis that some of his underlings started despite his opposition to them. The Anbar Awakening and other improvement took place before the Surge and in spite of his initial opposition to those policies, despite his taking most of the credit for it.
While our relationship with India had been strengthened, that's partially come as a result of our complete failure in Pakistan, so it's kind of a win-lose situation.
Our standing amongst the world from government to populace level has never been worse than it has under Bush.
environmental damage? where? cutting brush at his ranch in crawford?
You should read more.
Timelines of Bush anti-environmentalism:
http://www.nrdc.org/BushRecord/
http://www.motherjones.com/news/featurex/2003/09/we_531_04.html
How about cutting hundreds of feet off the tops off of numerous Appalachian mountains and dumping the excess dirt in streams across the region? He's literally completely altered the landscape:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99493874
Even some conservatives oppose this:
http://www.repamerica.org/opinions/press_releases/release08-12-4.html
Then there's all the negative environmental policies he rushed into action once Obama won the election so that they would be fully active by the time Obama took office and all that much harder to reverse (you can just overule them if they aren't activated yet, but once they're already going it gets much harder to do so):
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE4A117D20081103?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=10112
dropping the ball on 9/11 planners? last I checked most of the planners were dead or in prison and there has not been another terrorist attack on US soil since, sounds like he passed that one.
I love how you guys say "Bush kept us safe" as if the worst surprise attack in US history didn't occur on his watch. Now it's not all his administration's fault, and there's plenty of blame for dropping the ball to go around, but you can't give him a passing grade when 9/11 went down on his watch. And that's not even counting terror attacks in other countries, which is pretty standard al-Qaida (and other terrorist organizations) practice. They come after us, lie low for a while, bomb someone else, and so on. Eventually it will swing back our way.
Since the issues are often overblown or over done, all of this leads back to what I said. Bush by no means one of our greatest Presidents somehow manages to catch the ire of people every where. It is something beyond the issues.
No, it's the issues. Like I said before when you made this ridiculous assertion, his verbal gaffes, bumpkin-like behavior, and general ignorance are the subject of ridicule, not anger or hatred. The ire comes from his policies, and is completely warranted unless, like you, people choose to ignore his "greatest hits." If the ire was not related to his policies and was instead related to the frivolous things you mentioned, he would not have enjoyed the approval rating he did post-9/11 and before Iraq, because those same factors were still there.
Because like an earlier poster noticed, Obama is already going along with many of Bush's policies.
Obama's not even in office yet.
For example: Gitmo: Obama wants to close it but has the same problem Bush has, where are you going to put those people? Obama will have to do something, try them like Bush was going to do, try them some other way, release them... it is very complicated.
Yes, because having to try and resolve the numerous giant clusterfucks the previous administration left you to deal with in a practical and reasonable manner that doesn't give rise to greater problems in the future is of course indicative of "going along with Bush's policies."
He can't just step in on the 20th and wave his magic wand and solve all the problems of the country overnight. Some of them are going to have to take precedent over others, and some of them require a gradual approach to make sure they're done right.
But it is not nearly as complicated to say "I hate Bush, because he tortures and violates due process.".
It's not complicated because it's the truth.
We'll see how the frogs like their king.
What does that even mean?
The subtly of my insult goes unnoticed by such a great mind as yours. How dissapointing.
Read the story "The Frogs Desiring a King."
In his defense, most of your posts are just rambling nonsense, so it's understandable if he missed the rare gem lying beneath the giant pile of bullshit.
