How has it been a bloody disaster? I concede that the initial handling of it was inept but we are slowly starting to see stability in the region, we've seen the fall of a dictator and, not only that, once we are able to leave, we'll hopefully have created another democracy in an area which lacks democracies.

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This is so pertinent to the current discussion I just have to paste the whole thing. It's timely. It's precious.

And so, SO typical:

FBI raids the Office of Special Counsel
Posted May 6th, 2008 at 2:20 pm

It’s been weeks since a corruption scandal humiliated the Bush administration, so I suppose we were overdue for news like this.

Federal agents raided the Office of Special Counsel, a government agency involved in several high-profile and politically sensitive investigations. The agents seized computer files and documents from its chief, Scott Bloch, and his staff.

More than a dozen FBI agents served grand jury subpoenas shortly after 10 a.m., shutting down the agency’s computer network and searching its offices, as well as Mr. Bloch’s home. Employees said the searches appeared focused on alleged obstruction of justice by Mr. Bloch during the course of an 2006 inquiry into his conduct in office.

The independent agency, created by Congress in the wake of the Watergate scandal, is charged with protecting federal employees and deciding whether their complaints merit full-scale investigation — a first line of defense against fraud and mismanagement in government. It also enforces a ban on U.S. employees engaging in partisan political activity.

This story has taken a few twists and turns, but it’s actually really interesting, and more than a little comical.

The Office of Special Counsel isn’t the most high-profile office in government, but it’s generally tasked with investigating whistleblower complaints. Bloch, however, has been ambitious — about a year ago, the OSC launched a broad investigation into Karl Rove’s political activities, with particular attention on the prosecutor purge, RNC emails, and fairly obvious Hatch Act violations (Rove’s office politicized various federal agencies). “We will take the evidence where it leads us,” Bloch said. “We will not leave any stone unturned.”

But while the investigator was investigating Rove, he was also facing his own investigation.

The Special Counsel looking into a potential cover-up appears to have been engaged in his own cover-up.

The head of the federal agency investigating Karl Rove’s White House political operation is facing allegations that he improperly deleted computer files during another probe, using a private computer-help company, Geeks on Call. […]

Recently, investigators learned that Mr. Bloch erased all the files on his office personal computer late last year. They are now trying to determine whether the deletions were improper or part of a cover-up, lawyers close to the case said.

Bloch claims that he contacted the private PC-help service — bypassing his own agency’s computer technicians — to deal with a virus that had control of his computer.

He apparently asked the technicians to do a “seven-level” wipe, which, as the WSJ reported, “makes it nearly impossible for forensics experts to restore the data later.” While Geeks on Call was there, he also directed the technicians to wipe laptops used by his two top political deputies.

Bloch used tax-dollars to pay for all of this, and the $1,149 receipt makes no mention of a virus. Jeff Phelps, who runs Washington’s Geeks on Call franchise, said it would be unusual to address a virus problem by wiping a hard-drive. “We don’t do a seven-level wipe for a virus,” he said.

Nothing suspicious here. No sirree.

This is, as David Corn put it a while back, “a dizzying situation.”

The investigator investigating officials who oversee the agency that is investigating the investigator. Forget firewalls. This looks more like a basement flooded with backed-up sewage — with the water rising.

I should note, by the way, that this probe was launched while Bloch was already under investigation for additional alleged wrongdoing.

Only with the Bush gang is this set of circumstances even possible — Bloch is ostensibly investigating the Justice Department for its political activities, and simultaneously the Justice Department sends the FBI to raid Bloch’s office and home. What’s more, everybody is probably guilty.

Thank goodness Bush was elected to restore honor and dignity to the executive branch of government.
Here's the source
Wall Street Journal Report

I agree that Congress has a hand in the budget at least equal to that of the President. But the President also has the power of the veto pen, which Bush didn't pull out of his pocket ONE TIME until he was in his second term. So if you're going to throw this at Congress, you also have to admit that Bush was an active participant in the soaring deficits. In fact, of the 9 vetoes laid down by Bush, 8 have come since the 2006 mid-term election.

Where Bush has exercised a distinct aspect of control on the economy has been extra-legislative. His use of signing statements and policy interpretations has been widespread and largely ignored. Basically, he has run his executive branch as he sees fit, Legislative and Judicial branches be damned. He is The Decider, and he has decided what the laws mean in terms of enforcement, enaction, and particularly policy. He has told his cabinet and department heads that the policies will reflect a certain stance or viewpoint. If that means interpreting the law in a creative way, so be it. All perfectly legal, and most Presidents have done it to a certain extent. But this appears to have been a normal course of business for the Bush II White House.

Bush is a fool. But he isn't a stupid fool.

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The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it. ~George Bernard Shaw

I reject your reality and substitute my own.

How has it been a bloody disaster? I concede that the initial handling of it was inept/

True. And it continued to be inept due to the lack of clear goals for the invastion. If you'll remember, it was initially about self-defense (WMD). Then it turned into toppling Saddam. Then it turned in to establishing Democracy. What is it now, anyway? Seems to be about saving face now.


but we are slowly starting to see stability in the region,

The region was much more stable before we invaded it. It might not've been democratic, but it was stable.

we've seen the fall of a dictator

And the rise of...what? Fundamentalist factions? How is this preferable? We've tolerated (even funded) other dicatators before. What made Saddam so special?

and, not only that, once we are able to leave, we'll hopefully have created another democracy in an area which lacks democracies.

You're ignoring history here. A strong Democracy demands, at its core, a strong middle class. You can institute martial law, you can set up a governmental style, but you can't create the economic conditions necessary for Democracy to work unless the indiginous people have a true stake in their country. Jobs, infrastructure, roads, businesses would do a LOT more toward reshaping the Middle East than a top-down military action. And since when is Democracy the next logical step toward prosperity? Many countries have historically prospered under strong, central (sometimes brutal) leadership. A progressive dictator might be preferable to a backwater, inefficient democracy. You might be able to at least establish strong national identity, an economy that fosters democracy, and eventually, a natural move toward the people gaining power. This idea that we have to spread democracy at the point of a gun is limited, at best. The bloody disastor was assuming that pointing those guns at the right people would foster democracy. I think we can safely say the results have often been disastrous, with much time, capital and human life wasted to achieve something that could've been brought about in other ways. Maybe slower ways, but more impactful and safer.

In an informal survey of 109 professional historians conducted over a three-week period through the History News Network, 98.2 percent assessed the presidency of Mr. Bush to be a failure while 1.8 percent classified it as a success.


Asked to rank the presidency of George W. Bush in comparison to those of the other 41 American presidents, more than 61 percent of the historians concluded that the current presidency is the worst in the nation’s history. Another 35 percent of the historians surveyed rated the Bush presidency in the 31st to 41st category, while only four of the 109 respondents ranked the current presidency as even among the top two-thirds of American administrations.


Here are some quotes by the people who study this stuff:

“No individual president can compare to the second Bush,” wrote one. “Glib, contemptuous, ignorant, incurious, a dupe of anyone who humors his deluded belief in his heroic self, he has bankrupted the country with his disastrous war and his tax breaks for the rich, trampled on the Bill of Rights, appointed foxes in every henhouse, compounded the terrorist threat, turned a blind eye to torture and corruption and a looming ecological disaster, and squandered the rest of the world’s goodwill. In short, no other president’s faults have had so deleterious an effect on not only the country but the world at large.”

“With his unprovoked and disastrous war of aggression in Iraq and his monstrous deficits, Bush has set this country on a course that will take decades to correct,” said another historian. “When future historians look back to identify the moment at which the United States began to lose its position of world leadership, they will point—rightly—to the Bush presidency. Thanks to his policies, it is now easy to see America losing out to its competitors in any number of area: China is rapidly becoming the manufacturing powerhouse of the next century, India the high tech and services leader, and Europe the region with the best quality of life.”

“It would be difficult to identify a President who, facing major international and domestic crises, has failed in both as clearly as President Bush,” concluded one respondent. “His domestic policies,” another noted, “have had the cumulative effect of shoring up a semi-permanent aristocracy of capital that dwarfs the aristocracy of land against which the founding fathers rebelled; of encouraging a mindless retreat from science and rationalism; and of crippling the nation’s economic base.”

“George Bush has combined mediocrity with malevolent policies and has thus seriously damaged the welfare and standing of the United States,” wrote one of the historians, echoing the assessments of many of his professional colleagues. “Bush does only two things well,” said one of the most distinguished historians. “He knows how to make the very rich very much richer, and he has an amazing talent for f**king up everything else he even approaches. His administration has been the most reckless, dangerous, irresponsible, mendacious, arrogant, self-righteous, incompetent, and deeply corrupt one in all of American history.”

source
Yeah, I gotta agree.

This just in from Talk Radio. 98% of historians are liberals.

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Proof of media bias? A mistake by the major networks they don't want you to know about. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/media...als_04-24.html

1) You know what Bush is going to do.
2) He's actually appointed some of the best judges I've read (I actually read alot of court cases - but he also tried to appoint people on personal basis).
3) Ousted Saddam (which has had it's drawbacks, no more need be said)
4) Economy (economy was great under Clinton, but there isn't much you can say Clinton did to make it that way)
5) Marriage and death tax (he cut them, as I recall)
6) A leader of integrity. We can at least say that our leader honors his vows.




Have you heard of Frank Caliendo?
YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.

he's a fan of dropping pie charts and graphs from blogs and such, and he doesn't like to think outside of the box - like that most historians are liberal (most of them get paid by big gov), or that 109 isn't a very good sample group, ask the same question of Hillsdale or Wheaton College professors and you'd get a different answer.

he's a fan of dropping pie charts and graphs from blogs and such, and he doesn't like to think outside of the box - like that most historians are liberal (most of them get paid by big gov), or that 109 isn't a very good sample group, ask the same question of Hillsdale or Wheaton College professors and you'd get a different answer.

If their all liberals then how did any Republican Presidents ever get a positive rating?

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Proof of media bias? A mistake by the major networks they don't want you to know about. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/media...als_04-24.html