Tag: george w bush

Quote of the Day, The DNC Is Now Quoting GWB Favorably edition.

I’m not going to show you the commercial that attempts to use Bush to attack Republicans, but you can watch it here. This is all that you need to really know about it, though:

I’ve played this three times and still can’t believe I’m watching an ad from the Democratic Party pointing at George W. Bush as a role model on how to think about terrorism. The punchline is, Bush himself mentioned “radical Islam” in his presidential rhetoric; he even used it in the State of the Union, for cripes sake. He used the adjective “radical” because he wanted to suggest a distinction between “real” Islam and the version preached by jihadis — which is the same thing the Republican candidates featured in the ad are doing. It’s these DNC imbeciles, not the GOPers in the ad, who are effectively equating Islam with “radical Islam” by refusing to acknowledge the distinction.

…because, really: the important thing is that any hardcore antiwar Lefties who watched the video in question likely died a little inside from viewing it. This is what the Democratic party thinks of your opinions, oh progressives!  This is their assessment of how worthy your efforts were from 2001 to 2009!

Enjoy!

The New York Times vs. The New York Times on Presidential Prerogatives.

This story via the New York Times is… this is one of those times when you have to take the long view, perhaps. “The White House will try to block the release of a handful of emails between President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, citing longstanding precedent invoked by presidents of both parties to keep presidential communications confidential, officials said Friday.”  See, the problem here is that the White House has a point: Presidents from both parties have indeed long taken the position (I think, fairly) that they should be able to get unvarnished opinions from their advisers without having to worry about whether it’d be used for partisan purposes.  After all, as the New York Times goes on to note:

President Bush has said that Karl Rove, his closest adviser, and Harriet Miers, his former White House counsel, among others, do not have to comply with Congressional subpoenas because “the president relies upon his staff to give him candid advice.”

This may well end up in a constitutional showdown. If it does, there is no question about which side should prevail. Congress has a right, and an obligation, to examine all of the evidence, which increasingly suggests that the Bush administration fired eight or more federal prosecutors either because they were investigating Republicans, or refusing to bring baseless charges against Democrats. The Supreme Court’s ruling in the Watergate tapes case, and other legal and historical precedents, make it clear that executive privilege should not keep Congress from getting the testimony it needs.

…Oops.  Sorry, that was what the New York Times argued in an ‘editorial’ in 2007.  My bad.  This is what the NYT says now: Continue reading The New York Times vs. The New York Times on Presidential Prerogatives.

My piece on GWB at The Journal at IJReview is up!

Found here. Short version: um, just as a reminder, Republicans like George W Bush*. Even if they have lots of problems with his domestic policies. So it shouldn’t be a surprise when a comment about him keeping us safe after 9/11 gets applauded at a Republican debate.

That being said, they shifted the title around a little.

Moe Lane

*For that matter, most people who aren’t Democrats like GWB these days, which is why he’s got a favorable approval rating again.

Let us stop pretending that the Iraq War was the Worst Thing Ever.

(Via Instapundit) This is a pet peeve of mine, and it got triggered by this otherwise not-as-bad-as-it-could-have been article on Obama’s Syria debacle (the NYT prefers the term ‘nightmare’):

American interventionism can have terrible consequences, as the Iraq war has demonstrated. But American non-interventionism can be equally devastating, as Syria illustrates.

Stop. Freeze-frame. Rewind.  Look at those two sentences. Also look at that word ‘equally,’ which means that the author of this piece wants his readers to conclude that there are two separate military situations here, each one of which was, well, equally disastrous. Continue reading Let us stop pretending that the Iraq War was the Worst Thing Ever.

George W Bush patiently explains the facts of life and war to his successor.

Because that is who this advice is aimed at.

The United States will need combat troops on the ground to defeat the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), former President George W. Bush suggested in a new interview

“The president will have to make that determination,” Bush said in an interview published Friday with the Israel Hayom newspaper when asked if ISIS could be defeated without ground troops.

“My position was that you need to have boots on the ground,” he said.

Continue reading George W Bush patiently explains the facts of life and war to his successor.

Quote of the Day, Remember: Barack Obama Lost The War George W Bush Won edition.

Glenn Reynolds feels the need – again – to point out something really, really important:

In Iraq, Obama took a war that we had won at a considerable expense in lives and treasure, and threw it away for the callowest of political reasons. In Syria and Libya, he involved us in wars of choice without Congressional authorization, and proceeded to hand victories to the Islamists. Obama’s policy here has been a debacle of the first order, and the press wants to talk about Bush as a way of protecting him. Whenever you see anyone in the media bringing up 2003, you will know that they are serving as palace guard, not as press.

If that sounds kind of familiar, it’s because I keep saying pretty much the same thing.  Because both Glenn and I know that we need to make this clear. There’s a difference between not getting everything that you want, and presiding over a debacle; and this administration is currently providing for us a stark example of the latter.

George W Bush declines to back-stab the CIA over waterboarding.

I wonder what tomorrow’s (scheduled) Senate report on waterboarding during the Bush era is actually going to say. I suspect – suspect – that it’s going to end up seriously upsetting the antiwar Left, in large part because the former administration isn’t hanging the CIA out to dry:

The report is said to assert that the C.I.A. misled Mr. Bush and his White House about the nature, extent and results of brutal techniques like waterboarding, and some of his former administration officials privately suggested seizing on that to distance themselves from the controversial program, according to people involved in the discussion. But Mr. Bush and his closest advisers decided that “we’re going to want to stand behind these guys,” as one former official put it.

Mr. Bush made that clear in an interview broadcast on Sunday. “We’re fortunate to have men and women who work hard at the C.I.A. serving on our behalf,” he told CNN’s Candy Crowley. “These are patriots and whatever the report says, if it diminishes their contributions to our country, it is way off base.”

Continue reading George W Bush declines to back-stab the CIA over waterboarding.