GW Bush-Mistakes?

And you would be hard put to find a question asked him by the reporters that was not specifically designed to put him on the spot and embarrass him. They might as well have asked him, so President Bush, when did you stop beating your wife?

I would defy anybody to have withstood that press conference with as much grace and poise as GWB withstood it. Yes, he is a terrible extemporaneous speaker. But try answering those questions directed at you and see how eloquent you would be.

The behavior of the press was disgraceful and I have no respect for any one of them. No president in history has ever been subjected to that kind of venom.

Thanks to Bush and pals, during the last twenty-four hours, eight more Americans and one Italian dead in Iraq.[/b]

Had Saddam not been such an ass, we would not have had to invade.

McGentrix wrote:

Had Saddam not been such an ass, we would not have had to invade.

McG: You need to give this to the White House: the administration has been using and discarding excuses for invading Iraq since the beginning of 2002. Your "Saddam-was-an-ass-so-we-had-to-invade" excuse may be just the convincing rationale that Bush has been looking for. Indeed, you might even win yourself a job as National Security Advisor, once Condi moves to the State Dept.

Jay Ambrose: No apology, none due

Critics won't be satisfied until President Bush concedes that 9/11 was his fault and that the war in Iraq was a major mistake.

By JAY AMBROSE, [email protected]
April 15, 2004

President Bush doesn't want to hand his political enemies a list of his mistakes so they can flog him with it, and he refuses to apologize for something he did not do. We've got him now, say the critics.

To listen to and read their comments after the Bush press conference Tuesday night, you almost get the idea the critics won't be wholly satisfied unless the president abdicates his office. Short of that, they would like him to say the Sept. 11 terrorist attack was his fault and that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was a grotesque error having nothing to do with the protection of this country. They would like an admission, too, that the recent frightening events in Iraq require a wholly different strategy.

Bush isn't going along with any of that. Part of his performance ?- the reading of a statement that was prelude to questions and answers ?- was instead a stirring reaffirmation of his belief that the establishment of a free Iraq is "vital to the defeat of violence and terror." Iraq, he said, is a "place in which the enemies of the civilized world are testing the will of the civilized world." His own will, he made clear, is resolute.

Less stirring were his extemporaneous answers to questions. It is not America's best-kept secret that our president is painfully inarticulate. That may be one reason why this was only his third evening press conference in over three years as president, and only his 11th press conference overall. Another possible reason: For some reporters, a press conference is show time. They don't just ask questions. They give pompous little speeches, as if they themselves were running for high office. And it's not unusual for the questions to be invitations for the president to commit political suicide.

Several questions were of that order, such as whether he would like to take "personal responsibility" for 9/11 or whether he would like to apologize for it and what he would identify as his "biggest mistake" since that awful day 2-1/2 years ago.

Apologize? That would make roughly as much sense as America's police chiefs apologizing every day for crime in the streets. If there had been negligence, yes, sure, an apology would be in order, and more ?- a resignation, maybe. But despite the insinuations of the politically charged and increasingly reckless 9/11 commission, there is no proof of negligence. As Bush said in the press conference, Osama bin Laden was the one chiefly responsible for what happened to all of America on 9/11.

The question about the "biggest mistake" implied a series of mistakes, and Bush did not pretend to infallibility as he stood back from issuing a true confession. He conceded there had been errors, saying only that he could not think of what the biggest one was. If he had, political opponents would find ways to use his words against him. He was not poorly advised to keep his thoughts to himself, although many observers of all political hues would say the biggest one was a failure of the administration to act more wisely in the aftermath of initial combat in Iraq or to adjust more as difficulties became apparent. Even now, there is reason to think we are marching toward a transfer of authority to Iraqis without having a clear notion of exactly how that will work.

Whether a different approach would have kept the horrors of recent weeks from occurring is not so easy to say as some pretend, however. Nor is it strikingly clear that some proposed alternatives will have a better chance than the administration's plans in achieving a free and stable Iraq. Even Sen. John Kerry agrees we should stick to the June 30 date for granting Iraqis sovereignty.

The odds are that things will get much better in Iraq if the administration stays as firm as Bush so convincingly pledged Tuesday night. If things do not get better ?- and especially if they get worse ?- Bush will likely lose the election in November. The critics will then have at least that wish come true, but they won't thereby have demonstrated their basic premise that the Iraq war was itself a mistake or that Bush shared the blame for terrorism reaching our shores so dramatically in 2001.

Jay Ambrose is director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard Newspapers.

"Nor has any been so deserving of utter contempt."

This Pres. desrves more contempt and also deserves to be impeached and prosecuted for High Crimes.

He is merely lucky that the Congress and the Supreme Court domintated by the Right Wing.

Brian, I am former military as well (Iraq the first time around and Somolia), and I disagree vehemently with the ilegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. So do many others on this board who have sevrved in conflicts from WWII-onward. Rather than jumping in and displaying evidence of simplistic reasoning, peruse the threads for a while, then repond in a civil manner, okay? Thanks.

Were you not as upset on 9/11 when planes destroyed 3 buildings and 3000 people died in one day? Do you have no support for our men and women that are over there giving their lives so that this does not happen again?

It is thanks to those men and women (and several thousand before them) that you have the right to get on an internet chatroom anonymously and spout your drivel.

If you really disapprove of what we (I am former military) are doing over there. Hop on a plane, go to Iraq and tell the opposition that you support them and want to fight with them. See how quickly you are running for the protection of our fine fighting force.

Do you think that we should have left Saddam in power to kill another 300,000 of his own people with mustard gas (that's what he used on them and it is a weapon of mass destruction in case you didn't know)?

Had Clinton taken Osama when he had the chance (the national security advisor could not locate him and could not reach him by telephone for well over an hour) 9/11 would not have happened and we wouldn't be in Iraq now.

Saddam gave money and territory to Osama, the Taliban and al Qaeda.