That's right, Conservative toilet paper/publication The Weekly Standard shows just how incompetent and weak on terror President Bush really was. The interview and article is from 2006 but it gives an interesting glimpse into what Bush was thinking and why he was making some of the decisions he was making.
"The way you win the war on terror," Bush said, "is to find people [who are terrorists] and get them to give you information about what their buddies are fixing to do."
This was Bush's response to a question about why the USA hadn't pursued Bin Laden. It's an interesting strategy from our Commander in Chief at the time. I've never been in the terror fighting business, but if I were, I would try to capture or kill those who are responsible for the largest terror attack on American Soil. That's just my humble position of course.
Bush declared: "I've never been more convinced that the decisions I made are the right decisions."
I would argue that Bin Laden agrees with that statement.
The president said he "can pretty well anticipate" what people will say about him and his actions. The response to his 9/11 speech "was a classic," he said. It was that he'd brought up the subject of Iraq, thus injecting politics into the address. "Well, imagine what would have been said if I didn't talk about Iraq." Bush said it would have been called a "failed policy, therefore we can't talk about it." But because he did talk about it, the complaint is "it's politics," he said. "It's just the nature of the deal."
I had to reprint the whole paragraph because I'm having a terrible time making sense of it. Again, I will offer my opinion that people weren't upset about the mention of Iraq because of the politics involved, but more because it had nothing to do with the attacks on 9/11 and would divert resources and attention from operations that would in fact protect America. Instead it would provoke a generation of Muslims to distrust and even hate America as an imperial power. That's why I was upset with the mentioning and then executing of war with Iraq.
The article goes on to explain how Bush supported Rumsfeld's "modernization of the army" and running of the Pentagon "100%". That includes the outsourcing of military jobs to the likes of Blackwater, Halliburton, KBR, Custard Battles and many more. Costing the U.S. Tax payer billions in treasure while our servicemen and women begged for better equipment and supplies.
To pay for these outrageous contracts one thing President Bush wouldn't do was raise taxes. In his mind that's all people meant when they wanted the President to ask American's for more sacrifice during the war(s).
"You know what the definition of sacrifice is for a lot of people" who question him about the lack of sacrifice? "How come you didn't raise taxes? That's what that means as far as I'm concerned . . .
--Bush
He goes on to explain that raising those taxes would have just crushed the economy. How'd not raising taxes affect the economy?
The article goes to quote Bush as saying "I have a lot of smart people around me" It did not say that Bush routinely ignored those people. It also went into Bush's prediction that Republicans would hold both houses in congress. Because the election would be... "these elections will come down to two things: one, firm belief that in order to win the war on terror there must be a comprehensive strategy that recognizes this war is being fought on more than one front, and, two, the economy." It was indeed.
This diary started with research into Bush's opposition to the 9/11 commission. I wanted to write about it because of all the republican posturing against Obama and Cheney's despicable comments as of late to show just how hypocritical these people are. This article to me is a case study in just how wrong about everything, and how wrong for America the Bush Administration was.