THE POLITCS OF BUSH'S POLITICS

Against its agency's own findings, which the Bush administration tried to suppress--what a surprise, George Bush will NOT act on the EPA's findings nor comply with the Supreme Court's demand of over a year ago. Why? POLITICS.


Washington Post: Regulation of greenhouse gas emissions will have to wait until President Bush is out of office, the EPA announced today. Instead, the agency will say it needs months of further public comment to make any decision. The statement is the end result of a protracted White House effort to tone down the agency’s findings, the Washington Post reports.

“They argued that this increase in regulation should be on the next president's record,” said one participant in the interagency debate. The Supreme Court demanded a ruling on the subject more than a year ago, and initial reports said unequivocally that more regulation was called for. But the administration ignored those reports, edited testimony, and changed computer models, a Post investigation found.

The Bush administration has consistently said they would NOT withdraw our troops from Iraq because that would encourage the enemy, and they have called Obama's plan to withdraw in 16 months a surrender--except now, they've changed their mind. Why? POLITICS:

Source: The Independent (UK)

President George Bush wants to speed up the withdrawal of American combat troops from Iraq, a move that could help to quell the anti-war anxieties of voters before November's presidential election. Drawing down large numbers of troops would enable the Republican candidate, John McCain, to say that his forceful military strategy for Iraq was correct.

Alone among Republican and Democratic politicians, he consistently urged Mr Bush to take on the insurgents with extra forces. He is now attacking his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, for preaching policies of defeat by calling for a withdrawal in 16 months. American commanders want to reduce their deployment in Iraq to ease the strain on the military and free up troops for Afghanistan where they are taking a beating from the Taliban and other militants.

Nine American soldiers were killed and 15 wounded yesterday in the bloodiest day in three years for US forces in Afghanistan. In a multi-pronged attack, revealing sophistication and daring, militants overran a remote US base near the Pakistan border on the front lines of the hunt for Osama bin Laden. It was the deadliest on US forces in the country since 16 combat troops were killed when their helicopter was shot down by a rocket-propelled grenade in the same area in 2005.


Nancy Greggs from Democratic Underground sums up George W. Bush in this piece:

[snip]
But as we have all sadly seen, the suffering that we as a country, and the world at large, now endure is not the result of things gone inexplicably awry, but the single-minded pursuit of a political ideology whose sole purpose was to enrich the few at the expense of the many, and to place power into the hands of those who would stop at nothing to maintain it, all to be achieved while blithely ignoring the ensuing consequences; irreparable damage, escalating violence, economic instability, and the deaths of millions.

A large part of Bush’s legacy will undoubtedly be his administration’s ability to spin the worst behavior into something noble, the most blatant lies into something too truthful to be questioned, the most heinous crimes into something heroic, all couched in language meant to divert the mind from reality, and the soul from guilt.Terms like “executive privilege”, once used to protect the presidency from sharing sensitive information that could place us in jeopardy, have been twisted into poltically-convenient catch-all phrases behind which crimes can be covered-up and its perpetrators shielded from justice.

The term “torture” has been replaced with “enhanced interrogation techniques”, a newly-coined soundbyte intended to mask the barbarism in which we now wallow with impunity.Even the once respected term moral Christian has been forever tarnished, having now been attributed to a torturer, a warmonger, a widow-maker, a non-repentant creator of orphans, of limbless soldiers, of multitudes of homeless, hungry, sick and dying people whose fate is of no concern to he who is not ignorant of, but blatantly dismissive of the very teachings he pretends to follow and revere.Perhaps the most enduring part of any president’s legacy is the remembrance of their most obvious personal quality.

In this instance, surely Bush will be best remembered for his arrogance – an arrogance born not of an overly-exuberant recognition of his own abilities or record of accomplishment, but merely reflective of a sense of entitlement to be praised for that which he never achieved, and rewarded with adulation and respect that was clearly never earned.

Ultimately, history is not written by scholars assessing the past from afar. It is passed down to children and grandchildren by those who experienced the events firsthand, an oral history that lives and breathes long after the pages of even the most well-researched tomes are reduced to dust. And the tales that will be told of Bush’s presidency will be rife with tragedy; tales of soldiers who died fighting not for freedom but profit, of cities left to drown amid apathy and incompetence, of corporations given free rein to exploit the vulnerabilities of a nation’s people, of an administration that plundered our treasury, saddled us with unconscionable debt, circumvented the rule of law, and left our Constitution in tatters.

Despite the best efforts of the revisionists, the spinmeisters, the propagandists, and those simply unwilling to admit that they were hoodwinked by an inept scoundrel and his attendant snake-oil salesmen, it is the truths of George W. Bush’s failed presidency that will be the basis of his legacy.

In light of that fact, Worst President Ever might be the kindest title that history eventually confers.

Source: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x6495674