Comments on: History's First Draft Of The Bush Legacy

Historians, Journalists, Bush Aides Discuss How They Believe The 43rd President Will Be Judged

[rhs648]

Hooray! Our national nightmare will be over in nine days!


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Posted by briannorwood

Well folks, it appears that Obama is backtracking on many of his promises. Catch phrases such as "Believe", "We Can Do It", and "Change" got Obama elected. The inauguration has even taken place and Obama is already telling us that some of the campaign promises won''t happen and some media paundits are accepting this without question. Have we been hoodwinked again?

[briannorwood]

mavnomore:

That''s why I like Leon Panetta as CIA Director. He hasn''t been part of that cabal of torturers (Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, etc.) and will be able to open the closets on the torture issue.

[briannorwood]

Hooray! Our national nightmare will be over in nine days!

[jeannettelj]

And just what legacy would that be? Looks to me like a legacy of corruption, death and destruction.

[mytoosense]

Bush will go down in history as the Anti-Midas; Everything he has touched has turned to *****.

[edjohn66]

Too bad there wasn''t more of this anti-Bush sentiment in 2004, when it actually mattered. There seem to be a lot of late-comers to the anti-bush wagon. I just wish people had paid closer attention earlier.... Oh well.

[matrixrx2003]

This Morning on NPR Radio President BUSH gave his LAST News Conference in the White House to the Press Core.

THANK GOD AMERICA IS DONE WITH HIM, good Ridance !

The worst President & Vice President in US HISTORY !

Next Tuesday after work I am going to the Bar for a Cocktail / a Jack and Coke because Bush is Gone Out of OFFICE once again GOOD RIDANCE !

[matrixrx2003]

This Morning on NPR Radio Presiden BUSH gave his LAST News Conference in the White House to the Press Core.

THANK GOD AMERICA IS DONE WITH HIM, good Ridance !

[mavnomore]

The Bush Administration''s Most Despicable Act
By Joe Klein, TIME

"This is not the America I know," President George W. Bush said after the first, horrifying pictures of U.S. troops torturing prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq surfaced in April 2004. The President was not telling the truth. "This" was the America he had authorized on Feb. 7, 2002, when he signed a memorandum stating that the Third Geneva Convention %u2014 the one regarding the treatment of enemy prisoners taken in wartime %u2014 did not apply to members of al-Qaeda or the Taliban. That signature led directly to the abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. It was his single most callous and despicable act. It stands at the heart of the national embarrassment that was his presidency.

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[mavnomore]

cont

The details of the torture that Bush authorized have been dribbling out over the years in books like Jane Mayer''s excellent The Dark Side. But the most definitive official account was released by the Senate Armed Services Committee just before Christmas. Much of the committee''s report remains secret, but a 19-page executive summary was published, and it is infuriating. The story begins with an obscure military training program called Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape (SERE), in which various forms of torture are simulated to prepare U.S. special-ops personnel for the sorts of treatment they might receive if they''re taken prisoner. Incredibly, the Bush Administration decided to have SERE trainers instruct its interrogation teams on how to torture prisoners. (Read "Shell-Shocked at Abu Ghraib?")

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[mavnomore]

cont

It should be noted that there was, and is, no evidence that these techniques actually work. Experienced military and FBI interrogators believe that torture leads, more often than not, to fabricated confessions. Patient, persistent questioning using subtle psychological carrots and sticks is the surest way to get actionable information. But prisoners held by the U.S. were tortured %u2014 first at Guantanamo Bay and later in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Armed Services Committee report details the techniques used on one prisoner: "Military working dogs had been used against [Mohammed al-] Khatani. He had also been deprived of adequate sleep for weeks on end, stripped naked, subjected to loud music, and made to wear a leash and perform dog tricks."

cont

[mavnomore]

cont

Since we live in an advanced Western civilization, there needs to be legal justification when we torture people, and the Bush Administration proudly produced it. Memos authorizing the use of "enhanced" techniques were written in the Justice Department''s Office of Legal Council. Vice President *** Cheney and his nefarious aide, David Addington, had a hand in the process. The memos were approved by Bush''s legal counsel, Alberto Gonzales. A memo listing specific interrogation techniques that could be used to torture prisoners like Mohammed al-Khatani was passed to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. He signed it on Dec. 2, 2002, although he seemed a bit disappointed by the lack of rigor when it came to stress positions: "I stand for 8-10 hours a day," he noted. "Why is standing limited to four hours?"

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[mavnomore]

cont

It would be interesting, just for the fun and justice of it, to subject Rumsfeld to four hours in a stress position %u2014 standing stock still with his arms extended, naked, in a cold room after maybe two hours'' sleep. But that''s not going to happen. Indeed, it seems probable that nothing much is going to happen to the Bush Administration officials who perpetrated what many legal scholars consider to be war crimes. "I would say that there''s some theoretical exposure here" to a war-crimes indictment in U.S. federal court, says Gene Fidell, who teaches military justice at Yale Law School. "But I don''t think there''s much public appetite for that sort of action." There is, I''m told, absolutely no interest on the part of the incoming Obama Administration to pursue indictments against its predecessors. "We''re focused on the future," said one of the President-elect''s legal advisers. Fidell and others say it is possible, though highly unlikely, that Bush et al. could be arrested overseas %u2014 one imagines the Vice President pinched midstream on a fly-fishing trip to Norway %u2014 just as Augusto Pinochet, the Chilean dictator, was indicted in Spain and arrested in London for his crimes.

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[mavnomore]

cont

If Barack Obama really wanted to be cagey, he could pardon Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld for the possible commission of war crimes. Then they''d have to live with official acknowledgment of their ignominy in perpetuity. More likely, Obama will simply make sure %u2014 through his excellent team of legal appointees %u2014 that no such behavior happens again. Still, there should be some official acknowledgment by the U.S. government that the Bush Administration''s policies were reprehensible, and quite possibly illegal, and that the U.S. is no longer in the torture business. If Obama doesn''t want to make that statement, perhaps we could do it in the form of a Bush Memorial in Washington: a statue of the hooded Abu Ghraib prisoner in cruciform stress position %u2014 the real Bush legacy.

[cariboubarbi]

Bush''s Legacy:


Corruption
Incompetence
Failure

[chitownfire1]

We will all have fond memories of the Bush administration and we will all miss the good times and prosperity we had under his gallant leadership.


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Posted by mrs_zambesi

Yeah we should all be singing to Dubya the old Bob Hope tune, ''Thanks for the Memories''

[ellenviby]

Sunday morning''s review of the Bush "legacy" allowed the Bush administration to co-opt CBS as part of this administration''s continuing spin - no facts about failure to find perpetrators of 9/11, no facts about the promotion of torture and renditions and the loss of respect for the US in the world, no facts about Bush''s use of an ideology that denied scientific facts on global warming for 8 years, no facts about the lack of oversight of financial markets, and failing to calculate the consequences of waging an unjustified war while cutting taxes of the wealthy, etc., etc. Somehow the media has accepted Bush''s misguided notion that the US has the right to "spread democracy" in the Middle East. Where is this written in the constitution? The current disaster in Gaza is connected to a premature attempt to promote a "vote" -which resulted in the Hamas election, etc., etc. CBS also accepted without question the Bush 11th hour designation of a marine sanctuary in the middle of the Pacific. Perhaps a laudable effort to enhance a tragic environmental record, but does the US own the Pacific? Do other nations - Japan, China, Russia - support this ban? Once again a unilateral decision.. that assumes that Bush is above ordinary international legal considerations...
The spokesmen CBS chose to suport the Bush "legacy" in your report were employees of the administration - hardly objective voices that could provide balanced historical perspective.

[jsl45]

Shrub the Dumbnificent can think anything he likes, but 80% of the American Public wouldn''t want to have a beer with him.....he''s been a disaster and I hope Shrub stays on the Crawford ranch out of sight and out of mind.....I''d like to forget that he ever existed.

[chitownfire1]

ALL I KNOW ABOUT GEORGE W. BUSH IS THAT NOT A SINGLE AMERICAN HAS BEEN KILLED IN THIS COUNTRY BY TERRORISTS SINCE 9/11/2001.

CONSIDERING HOW VULNERABLE THIS COUNTRY IS, THAT IS ONE HELL OF AN ACHIEVEMENT!




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Posted by KristianInAL

Yeah, if we just overlook the huge fact that Bush allowed the worst attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor to happen on his watch, then yeah youre right, thats one hell of a achievement. To bad he failed in protecting us from the 9/11 attacks from ever happening in the first place.......

[jodyrae4]

Karma is a ***! remember that haters