50 Reasons You Despised George W. Bush's Presidency

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RICKAMAVEN
Herf-A-Holic Topic Starter

13 years ago

A Reminder on the Day of His Presidential
Library Dedication
He's one of the worst presidents ever.

On Thursday, President Obama and all four
living ex-presidents will attend the
dedication of the $500 million George W.
Bush Presidential Library at Southern
Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. Many
progressives will remember Bush as a
contender for the "worst president ever,"
saying he more aptly deserves a multi-
million-dollar prison cell for a litany of war
crimes.

Amazingly, the Bush library seeks to ask
visitors "What would you have done?" if you
were in this president’s shoes. The ex-
president’s defenders are betting that the
public will reconsider their judgments after a
hefty dose of historical amnesia. Bush has
been absent from political debates in recent
years, instead making millions in private
speeches. Today, his popularity is even with
Obama's; both have 47 percent approval
rating.

Let’s look at 50 reasons, some large and
some small, why W. inspired so much anger.

1. He stole the presidency in 2000. People
may forget that Republicans in Florida
purged more than 50,000 African-American
voters before Election Day, and then went to
the Supreme Court where the GOP-
appointed majority stopped a recount that
would have awarded the presidency to Vice-
President Al Gore if all votes were counted.
National news organizations verified that
outcome long after Bush had been sworn in.

2. Bush’s lies started in that race. Bush ran
for office claiming he was a “uniter, not a
divider.” Even though he received fewer
popular votes than Gore, he quickly claimed
he had the mandate from the American
public to push his right-wing agenda.

3. He covered up his past. He was a party
boy, the scion of a powerful political family
who got away with being a deserter during
the Vietnam War. He was reportedly AWOL
for over a year from his assigned unit, the
Texas Air National Guard, which other
military outfits called the "Champagne
Division.”

4. He loved the death penalty. As Texas
governor from 1995-2000, he signed the most
execution orders of any governor in U.S.
history—152 people, including the mentally
ill and women who were domestic abuse
victims. He spared one man’s life, a serial
killer.

5. He was a corporate shill from Day 1. Bush
locked up the GOP nomination by raising
more campaign money from corporate
boardrooms than anyone at that time. He
lunched with CEOs who would jet into
Austin to "educate" him about their political
wish lists.

6. He gutted global political progress.He
pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol which set
requirements for 38 nations to lower
greenhouse gas emissions to combat
climate change, saying that abiding by the
agreement would “harm our economy and
hurt our workers.”

7. He embraced global isolationism. He
withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile
Treaty, over Russia’s protest, taking the U.S.
in a direction not seen since World War I.

8. He ignored warnings about Osama bin
Laden. He ignored the Aug. 6, 2001 White
House intelligence briefing titled, “Bin Laden
determined to strike in the U.S.” Meanwhile,
his chief anti-terrorism advisor, Richard
Clarke, and first Treasury Secretary, Paul
O’Neill, testified in Congress that he was
intent on invading Iraq within days of
becoming president.

9. Ramped up war on drugs, not terrorists.
The Bush administration had twice as many
FBI agents assigned to the war on drugs
than fighting terrorism before 9/11, and kept
thousands in that role after the terror
attacks.

10. “My Pet Goat.” He kept reading a picture
book to grade-schoolers for seven minutes
after his top aides told him that the World
Trade Centers had been attacked in 9/11.
Then Air Force One flew away from
Washington, D.C., vanishing for hours after
the attack.

11. Squandered global goodwill after 9/11.
Bush thumbed his nose at world sympathy
for the victims of the September 11, 2001
attacks, by declaring a global war on
terrorism and declaring “you are either with
us or against us.”

12. Bush turned to Iraq not Afghanistan. The
Bush administration soon started beating
war drums for an attack on Iraq, where there
was no proven Al Qaeda link, instead of
Afghanistan, where the 9/11 bombers had
trained and Osama bin Laden was based. His
2002 State of the Union speech declared that
Iraq was part of an “Axis of Evil.”

13. Attacked United Nation weapons
inspectors. The march to war in Iraq started
with White House attacks on the credibility
of U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq, whose
claims that Saddam Hussein did not have
nuclear weapons proved to be true.

14. He flat-out lied about Iraq’s weapons. In a
major speech in October 2002, he said that
Saddam Hussein had the capacity to send
unmanned aircraft to the U.S. with bombs
that could range from chemical weapons to
nuclear devices. “We cannot wait for the
final proof—the smoking gun—that could
come in the form of a mushroom cloud,” he
said.

15. He ignored the U.N. and launched a war.
The Bush administration tried to get the U.N.
Security Council to authorize an attack on
Iraq, which it refused to do. Bush then
decided to lead a "preemptive" attack
regardless of international consequences.
He did not wait for any congressional
authorization to launch a war.

16. Abandoned international Criminal Court.
Before invading Iraq, Bush told the U.N. that
the U.S. was withdrawing from ratifying the
International Criminal Court Treaty to protect
American troops from persecution and to
allow it to pursue preemptive war.

17. Colin Powell’s false evidence at U.N. The
highly decorated soldier turned Secretary of
State presented false evidence at the U.N. as
the American mainstream media began its
jingoistic drumbeat to launch a war of choice
on Saddam Hussein and Iraq.

18. He launched a war on CIA
whistleblowers. When a former ambassador,
Joseph C. Wilson, wrote a New York Times
op-ed saying there was no nuclear threat
from Iraq, the White House retaliated by
leaking the name and destroying the career
of his wife, Valerie Plame, one of the CIA’s
top national security experts.

19. Bush pardoned the Plame affair leaker.
Before leaving office, Bush pardoned the
vice president’s top staffer, Scooter Libby,
for leaking Plame’s name to the press.

20. Bush launched the second Iraq War. In
April 2003, the U.S. military invaded Iraq for
the second time in two decades, leading to
hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths and
more than a million refugees as a years of
sectarian violence took hold on Iraq. Nearly
6,700 U.S. soldiers have died in the Iraq and
Afghan wars.

21. Baghdad looted except for oil ministry.
The Pentagon failure to plan for a military
occupation and transition to civilian rule was
seen as Baghdad was looted while troops
guarded the oil ministry, suggesting this war
was fought for oil riches, not terrorism.

22. The war did not make the U.S. safer. In
2006, a National Intelligence Estimate (a
consensus report of the heads of 16 U.S.
intelligence agencies) asserted that the Iraq
war had increased Islamic radicalism and
had worsened the terror threat.

23. U.S. troops were given unsafe gear. From
inadequate vests from protection against
snipers to Humvees that could not protect
soldiers from roadside bombs, the military
did not sufficiently equip its soldiers in Iraq,
leading to an epidemic of brain injuries.

24. Meanwhile, the war propaganda
continued. From landing on an aircraft
carrier in a flight suit to declare “mission
accomplished” to surprising troops in
Baghdad with a Thanksgiving turkey that
was a table decoration used as a prop, Bush
defended his war of choice by using soldiers
as PR props.

25. He never attended soldiers' funerals. For
years after the war started, Bush never
attended a funeral even though as of June
2005, 144 soldiers (of the 1,700 killed thus
far) were laid to rest in Arlington National
Cemetary, about two miles from the White
House.

26. Meanwhile, war profiteering surged.The
list of top Bush administration officials
whose former corporate employers made
billions in Pentagon contracts starts with
Vice-President ****** Cheney and Halliburton,
which made $39.5 billion, and included his
daughter, Liz Cheney, who ran a $300 million
Middle East partnership program.

27. Bush ignored international ban on
torture. Suspected terrorists were captured
and tortured by the U.S. military in
Baghdad’s Abu Gharib prison, in the highest
profile example of how the Bush White
House ignored international agreements,
such as the Geneva Convention, that banned
torture, and created a secret system of
detention that was unmasked when photos
made their way to the American media
outlets.

28. Created the blackhole at Gitmo and
renditions. The Bush White House created
the offshore military prison at Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba, as well as secret detention sites
in eastern Europe to evade domestic and
military justice systems. Many of the men
still jailed in Cuba were turned over to the
U.S. military by bounty hunters.

29. Bush violated U.S. Constitution as
well.The Bush White House ignored basic
civil liberties, most notably by launching a
massive domestic spying program where
millions of Americans’ online activities were
monitored with the help of big telecom
companies. The government had no search
warrant or court authority for its electronic
dragnet.

30. Iraq war created federal debt crisis.The
total costs of the Iraq and Afghan wars will
reach between $4 trillion and $6 trillion,
when the long-term medical costs are added
in for wounded veterans, a March 2013
report by a Harvard researcher has
estimated. Earlier reports said the wars cost
$2 billion a week.

31. He cut veterans’ healthcare funding. At
the height of the Iraq war, the White House
cut funding for veterans’ healthcare by
several billion dollars, slashed more than
one billion from military housing and
opposed extending healthcare to National
Guard families, even as they were repeatedly
tapped for extended and repeat overseas
deployments.

32. Then Bush decided to cut income taxes.
In 2001 and 2003, a series of bills lowered
income tax rates, cutting federal revenues as
the cost of the foreign wars escalated. The
tax cuts disproportionately benefited the
wealthy, with roughly one-quarter going to
the top one percent of incomes compared to
8.9% going to the middle 20 percent. The
cuts were supposed to expire in 2013, but
most are still on the books.

33. Assault on reproductive rights.From the
earliest days of his first term, the Bush White
House led a prolonged assault on
reproductive rights. He cut funds for U.N.
family planning programs, barred military
bases from offering abortions, put right-wing
evangelicals in regulatory positions where
they rejected new birth control drugs, and
issued regulations making fetuses—but not
women—eligible for federal healthcare.

34. Cut Pell Grant loans for poor students.
His administration froze Pell Grants for years
and tightened eligibility for loans, affecting
1.5 million low-income students. He also
eliminated other federal job training
programs that targeted young people.

35. Turned corporations loose on
environment. Bush’s environmental record
was truly appalling, starting with abandoning
a campaign pledge to tax carbon emissions
and then withdrawing from the Kyoto
Protocol on greenhouse gases. The Sierra
Club lists 300 actions his staff took to
undermine federal laws, from cutting
enforcement budgets to putting industry
lobbyists in charge of agencies to keeping
energy policies secret.

36.. Said evolution was a theory—like
intelligent design.One of his most
inflammatory comments was saying that
public schools should teach that evolution is
a theory with as much validity as the
religious belief in intelligent design, or God’s
active hand in creating life.

37. Misguided school reform effort. Bush’s
“No Child Left Behind” initiative made
preparation for standardized tests and
resulting test scores the top priority in
schools, to the dismay of legions of
educators who felt that there was more to
learning than taking tests.

38. Appointed flank of right-wing judges.
Bush’s two Supreme Court picks—Chief
Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice
Samuel Alito—have reliably sided with pro-
business interests and social conservatives.
He also elevated U.S. District Court Judge
Charles Pickering to an appeals court,
despite his known segregationist views.

39. Gutted the DOJ’s voting rights section.
Bush’s Justice Department appointees led a
multi-year effort to prosecute so-called voter
fraud, including firing seven U.S. attorneys
who did not pursue overtly political cases
because of lack of evidence.

40. Meanwhile average household incomes
fell. When Bush took office in 2000, median
household incomes were $52,500. In 2008,
they were $50,303, a drop of 4.2 percent,
making Bush the only recent two-term
president to preside over such a drop.

41. And millions more fell below the poverty
line. When Bill Clinton left office, 31.6 million
Americans were living in poverty. When
Bush left office, there were 39.8 million,
according to the U.S. Census, an increase of
26.1 percent. The Census said two-thirds of
that growth occurred before the economic
downturn of 2008.

42. Poverty among children also exploded.
The Census also found that 11.6 million
children lived below the poverty line when
Clinton left office. Under Bush, that number
grew by 21 percent to 14.1 million.

43. Millions more lacked access to
healthcare. Following these poverty trends,
the number of Americans without health
insurance was 38.4 million when Clinton left
office. When Bush left, that figure had grown
by nearly 8 million to 46.3 million, the Census
found. Those with employer-provided
benefits fell every year he was in office.

44. Bush let black New Orleans drown.
Hurricane Katrina exposed Bush’s attitude
toward the poor. He didn’t visit the city after
the storm destroyed the poorest sections. He
praised his Federal Emergency Management
Agency director for doing a "heck of a job"
as the federal government did little to help
thousands in the storm’s aftermath and
rebuilding.

45. Yet pandered to religious right. Months
before Katrina hit, Bush flew back to the
White House to sign a bill to try to stop the
comatose Terri Schiavo's feeding tube from
being removed, saying the sanctity of life
was at stake.

46. Set record for fewest press conferences.
During his first term that was defined by the
9/11 attacks, he had the fewest press
conferences of any modern president and
had never met with the New York Times
editorial board.

47. But took the most vacation time.
Reporters analyzing Bush’s record found
that he took off 1,020 days in two four-year
terms—more than one out of every three
days. No other modern president comes
close. Bush also set the record for the
longest vacation among modern
presidents—five weeks, the Washington
Post noted.

48. Karl Rove, ****** Cheney, Donald
Rumsfeld. Not since Richard Nixon’s White
House and the era of the Watergate burglary
and expansion of the Vietnam War have
there been as many power-hungry and
arrogant operators holding the levers of
power. Cheney ran the White House; Rove
the political operation for corporations and
the religious right; and Rumsfeld oversaw
the wars.

49. He’s escaped accountability for his
actions. From Iraq war General Tommy
Franks’ declaration that “we don’t do body
counts” to numerous efforts to impeach
Bush and top administration
officials—primarily over launching the war in
Iraq—he has never been held to account in
any official domestic or international
tribunal.

50. He may have stolen the 2004 election as
well. The closest Bush came to a public
referendum on his presidency was the 2004
election, which came down to the swing
state of Ohio. There the GOP’s voter
suppression tactics rivaled Florida in 2000
and many unresolved questions remain
about whether the former GOP Secretary of
State altered the Election Night totals from
rural Bible Belt counties.

Any bright spots? Conservatives will
lambaste lists like this for finding nothing
good about a president like W. So, yes, he
created the largest ocean preserve offshore
from Hawaii in his second term. And in his
final year in office, his initiative to fight AIDS
across Africa has been credited with saving
many thousands of lives. But on balance,
George W. Bush was more than eight years
of missed opportunities for America and the
world. He was a disaster, leaving much of
America and the world in much worse shape
than when he took the oath of office in 2001.
His reputation should not be resurrected or
restored or seen as anything other than what
it was.

Edited by user 13 years ago | Reason: Not specified

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ZRX1200
Herf-A-Holic

13 years ago

^ many truths, many half truths and some complete lib BS.

You realize he's not in charge now right?

TimFusco
Aficionado

13 years ago

So, are these your original thoughts or is this a "cut & paste" from a website. It is so biased and some points are just...wrong...

teedubbya
Herf-A-Holic

13 years ago

GWB WAS the worst prez of all time. Now he is simply tied for the worst. In time he might be like mississippi.... second to last!

HockeyDad
Herf-A-Holic

13 years ago

GWB's biggest failure was not rounding up all the Democrats and throwing them in the Halliburton-built FEMA-run reeducation camps.

teedubbya
Herf-A-Holic

13 years ago

True true.... even if Obama had still won he would have been too inept to close the camps....

Gene363
Herf-A-Holic

13 years ago

I think it has more to do with blind hatred, especially since your guy Obama has doubled down on Bush's policies and Bush didn't hate America like the current president so clearly does.

Edited by user 13 years ago | Reason: Not specified

The escape pod: https://cigarbid.freeforums.net

jackconrad
Herf-A-Holic

13 years ago

() ()
‹^› (=0.o=) ‹^›
(")__(")

bobsnook
Connoisseur

13 years ago

oh yeah i bet dan dan would have been worse

RICKAMAVEN
Herf-A-Holic Topic Starter

13 years ago

#10

bobsnook

DAN WHO?

jackconrad
Herf-A-Holic

13 years ago

#11

(\|___|/)
‹^› (=0.o=) ‹^›
(")__(")

Seams ta me dere were lots more carrots ta go round

when good King George held down da crown...

RICKAMAVEN
Herf-A-Holic Topic Starter

13 years ago

#12

jackconrad

(\|___|/)
‹^› (=0.o=) ‹^›
(")__(")
= the square root of x squared

borndead1
Herf-A-Holic

13 years ago

#13

Rick, seeing as how Obama has continued nearly every one of W's policies, I don't understand why you aren't a Bush fan.

Obama has:

Continued the Wall St. bailouts and his administration is crawling with Wall St. goons

Signed an extension of the Patriot Act after promising to scale it back during his campaign

Signed the NDAA, authorizing the indefinite detention of Americans without charges

Appointed the former Vice President of Monsanto to the FDA Food Safety Dept.

Continued handouts of taxpayer dollars to wealthy corporations

Ramped up the war on drugs even MORE than Bush; Federal marijuana busts under Obama are 400% higher

Authorized drone attacks in Pakistan, Yemen, Afghanistan, Somalia, and The Philippines that have killed over 1,500 innocent people -- including almost 200 children

Not closed Gitmo, in fact it recently got a $30 million upgrade

Quietly allowed the continued use of torture against detainees (look it up)

Continued Bush's dictatorial Presidential authority policy with "signing statements" and Executive Orders

Authorized military action in Libya without a formal declaration from Congress

Continued Bush's centralization of Executive power with "Czar" appointments that answer only to the President with no Congressional oversight

......there are more comparisons to Bush, but my breakfast is ready.

HockeyDad
Herf-A-Holic

13 years ago

#14

borndead1 wrote:

Let's not forget the "Obama Cone of Protection" which is pretty much identical to the "Bush Cone of Protection" except more free money to green energy.

Brewha
Herf-A-Holic

13 years ago

#15

Let's not forget the "Obama Cone of Protection" which is pretty much identical to the "Bush Cone of Protection" except more free money to green energy.

HockeyDad wrote:

Thank you - I was waiting to see how 'the cone' was going to fit into this thread.

8trackdisco
Herf-A-Holic

13 years ago

#16

The main reason is he was such a reactionary idiot, and screwed things up so bad, the country actually chose 8 years of Socialism when given a choice of something different.

W sowed the seeds that grew Obama.

Now look where we are.

bloody spaniard
Herf-A-Holic

13 years ago

#17

^ Short & to the point- sweet. Couldn't agree with you more and to think I worked hard to get him AND his voodoo daddy elected. Idiot never learned much from serving Reagan...

Excellent points as well, Borndead.
Folks forget that this "friend of the troops" also endangered them by making them engage the enemy in sometimes unwarranted door to door combat under politically correct rules of engagement (don't fire unless fired upon, etc.)- giving enemy combatants unnecessary advantages. Yet he was always in the forefront to prosecute our troops first if they violated his "rules" of war. Thanks to him and Slick our boys also missed out on (cheaper to the taxpayer) KP, had to stand in long, designated lines for chow (making them better targets), and turned over laundry to contractors at $9 per load. What a deal.

Ehhh, it gets boring reciting dubya's flaws.
Obama is not even worth criticizing however. His inadequacies are off the chart.
Mr. Ego shoulda stayed on the streets organizing. He's not any good or smart at anything else.

Edited by user 13 years ago | Reason: Not specified