Wednesday, March 3, 2010

What Bush Has Wrought

Bush's administration created the trillion dollar economic meltdown by its ideologue approach to government, i.e. deregulate, deregulate, deregulate.

Bush also created the trillion dollar unnecessary war in Iraq which in fact has given Iran just what it wanted: dominance over Iraq. Here is a posting on Thomas E. Ricks blog The Best Defense by Col. Gary Anderson, USMC (Ret.):
One day last month, I was having a glass of tea with a shopkeeper in Khan Dari, a small town in the Abu Ghraib district of Iraq's Baghdad Province. It is the actual site of the infamous Abu Ghraib prison -- which since it became world-famous has been renamed. My friend fought in the Iran-Iraq War as an infantryman under the Saddam Hussein regime. The main objective of my visit was to ask him if he intended to vote in the upcoming March 7th election.

When I finally got around to asking the question, he looked me in the eye and asked, rather dryly, "How does it feel to have fought for seven years so Iran can take over Iraq?" This was followed by a litany of complaints regarding corruption in the administration of Prime Minister Maliki, and by his belief that all of Iraq's politicians are crooks and incompetents. When he finished his tirade, I reminded him that he had not answered my question. "Of course I'll vote," he said, "how could I not?" My friend, by the way, is a Shiite.

...

Why vote then? Most voter registration in Iraq is tied to ration cards, and there is a feeling among many that they will somehow be punished for not voting by a reduction in their ration allocation; this is an interesting alternative to an appeal to civic virtue. Almost all of the Iraqis I know think that a return to strong man rule is inevitable, and most hope that that dictatorship will not be preceded by civil war. Some openly hope for a military coup. The Iraqi Army is the most trusted element in society, and it is nationalistic. One Sheikh volunteered that there will not be enough piano wire in Iraq to hang Chalabi and his Iranian traitor friends when the army takes over. Ahmed Chalabi is a pro-Iranian legislator who recently led a committee that disbarred over 500 Sunni and Shiite candidates from the election on the grounds that they are former members of the Baath Party. My Iraqi acquaintances are quick to point out that that the other thing the disbarred candidates have in common is that they are anti-Iranian nationalists. Chalabi's last gig was as an American agent who gave us much of the false evidence that led us to war in 2003. As one nationalist Iraqi army officer friend commented to me, "he betrayed you once --- and us twice."
What I find truly incredible is that anybody would ever vote for Republican anything in the future. But in fact, after trashing the country under Bush and now paralyzing the country for over a year under Obama, the Republicans are poised to regain control of Congress.

The American people have a death wish... a suicide by their own hand. Bizarre.

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