The Worst President in History?

An Alternate 9/11 History
By staying 'humble,' as he promised in 2000, Bush preserved much of the post-9/11 good will abroad.
By Jonathan Alter
Newsweek

Sept. 18, 2006 issue - Five years after 9/11, the world is surprisingly peaceful. President Bush's pragmatic and bipartisan leadership has kept the United States not just strong but unexpectedly popular across the globe. The president himself is poised to enjoy big GOP wins in the midterm elections, a validation of his subtle understanding of the challenges facing the country. A new survey of historians puts him in the first tier of American presidents.

As Bush warned, catching terrorists wasn't easy, but he kept at it. At the battle of Tora Bora, CIA operatives on the ground cabled Washington that Osama bin Laden was cornered, but they desperately needed troop support. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld immediately dispatched fresh forces, and the evildoer was killed. While bin Laden was seen as a martyr in a few isolated areas, the bulk of the Arab world had been in sympathy with the United States after 9/11 and shed no tears. After their capture, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and other 9/11 terrorists were transported to the United States, where they were tried and quickly executed.

Today, Al Qaeda remains a threat but its opportunities for recruitment have been scarce, and the involvement of the entire international community has helped dramatically reduce terrorist attacks worldwide. Because Bush believes diplomacy requires talking to adversaries as well as friends, even Syria and Iraq were forced to help. By staying "humble," as he promised in 2000, he preserved much of the post-9/11 good feeling abroad, which paid dividends when it came time to pull together a coalition to handle North Korea and Iran.

At home, some aides suggested that Bush simply tell the nation to "go shopping." But the president knew he had a precious opportunity to ask Americans for real sacrifice. He took John McCain's suggestion and pushed through Congress an ambitious national-service program that bolstered communities and helped train citizens as first responders.

Soon Bush put the country on a Manhattan Project crash course to get off oil. He bluntly told Detroit that it was embarrassing that Chinese automakers had better fuel efficiency, he classified SUVs as cars, and he imposed a stiff gas tax with a rebate for the working poor. To pay for it, he abandoned his tax cuts for the wealthy, reminding the country that no president in history had ever cut taxes in the middle of a war. This president would be damned if he was going to put more oil money into the pockets of Middle Eastern hatemongers who had killed nearly 3,000 of our people. To dramatize the point, he drove to his 2002 State of the Union address in a hybrid car. Sales soared.

When Karl Rove suggested that the war on terror would make a perfect wedge issue against Democrats in the 2002 midterms, Bush brought him up short. Didn't Rove understand that bipartisanship is good politics? Lincoln and FDR had both gone bipartisan during wartime, he reminded his aide. So when evidence of torture at the prison camp in Guantánamo Bay surfaced and Rumsfeld was forced to resign, former Democratic senator Sam Nunn got the job. With post-9/11 unity still at least partially intact in 2004, Bush was re-elected in a landslide.

Taking a cue from Lincoln's impatience with his generals, Bush was merciless about poor performance on homeland security. When the head of the FBI couldn't fix the bureau's computers in a year's time to "connect the dots," he was out. And Bush had no patience for excuse-making about leaky port security, unsecured chemical plants and first responders whose radios didn't communicate. If someone had told him that five years after 9/11 these problems would still be unsolved, Bush would have laughed him out of the office.

In 2003, Vice President Cheney advised the president to take out Iraq's Saddam Hussein militarily. But Bush was beginning to understand that his veep, while sounding full of gravitas, was in fact reckless. When it became clear that Saddam posed no imminent threat, Bush resolved to neuter him, Kaddafi style. When the president found, after a little asking around, that the 10-year cost of invading Iraq would be a crushing $1.2 trillion, he opted out of this war of choice.

Five years after that awful September day, even Bush's fiercest critics have learned an important lesson: leadership counts. Imagine if we'd done the opposite of these things. This country?-and the world?-would be in a heap of trouble.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14753927/site/newsweek/

snood wrote:

...never found the water-boarding reference...

Here is the source of my information:

Quote:

On September 6, 2006, the United States Department of Defense released a revised Army Field Manual entitled Human Intelligence Collector Operations that prohibits the use of waterboarding by U.S. military personnel.

Wikipedia

Brandon9000 wrote:
Joe Nation wrote:

Quote:

Brandon hasn't been following the issue very closely. If he listened to the President's speech regarding moving the fourteen detainees from the secret CIA prisons to Guantanamo last week he would understand what the administration's problem is. They've already violated the Geneva Conventions, by using the CIA to interrogate the prisoners using methods such as water boarding and other coercive, now they want the Congress to say that's okay....

Quote:

Then why does the new edition of The Army Field Manual ban water boarding? Provide a citation to show that the Bush administration is now seeking permission to make water boarding legal.

Journalists Brian Ross and Richard Esposito described the CIA's waterboarding technique as follows:

The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt. According to the sources, CIA officers who subjected themselves to the water boarding technique lasted an average of 14 seconds before caving in. They said al Qaeda's toughest prisoner, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, won the admiration of interrogators when he was able to last over two minutes before begging to confess. "The person believes they are being killed, and as such, it really amounts to a mock execution, which is illegal under international law," said John Sifton of Human Rights Watch.

In the United States, military personnel are taught this technique, ostensibly to demonstrate how to resist enemy interrogations in the event of capture. According to Salon.com, SERE instructors shared their torture techniques with interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay detainment camp.

Dr. Allen Keller, the director of the Bellevue/N.Y.U. Program for Survivors of Torture, has treated "a number of people" who had been subjected to forms of near-asphyxiation, including waterboarding. An interview for The New Yorker states:

[Dr. Keller] argued that it was indeed torture. Some victims were still traumatized years later, he said. One patient couldn't take showers, and panicked when it rained. "The fear of being killed is a terrifying experience," he said.

On September 6, 2006, the United States Department of Defense released a revised Army Field Manual entitled Human Intelligence Collector Operations that prohibits the use of waterboarding by U.S. military personnel. The revised manual was adopted amid widespread criticism of U.S. handling of prisoners in the War on Terrorism, and prohibits other questionable practices in addition to waterboarding. The revised manual applies to U.S. military personnel, and as such does not apply to the practices of the CIA.

Clearly, Brandon likes to edit his citations.

Quote:

Journalists Brian Ross and Richard Esposito described the CIA's waterboarding technique as follows:

The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt. According to the sources, CIA officers who subjected themselves to the water boarding technique lasted an average of 14 seconds before caving in. They said al Qaeda's toughest prisoner, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, won the admiration of interrogators when he was able to last over two minutes before begging to confess. "The person believes they are being killed, and as such, it really amounts to a mock execution, which is illegal under international law," said John Sifton of Human Rights Watch.

In the United States, military personnel are taught this technique, ostensibly to demonstrate how to resist enemy interrogations in the event of capture. According to Salon.com, SERE instructors shared their torture techniques with interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay detainment camp.

Dr. Allen Keller, the director of the Bellevue/N.Y.U. Program for Survivors of Torture, has treated "a number of people" who had been subjected to forms of near-asphyxiation, including waterboarding. An interview for The New Yorker states:

[Dr. Keller] argued that it was indeed torture. Some victims were still traumatized years later, he said. One patient couldn't take showers, and panicked when it rained. "The fear of being killed is a terrifying experience," he said.

On September 6, 2006, the United States Department of Defense released a revised Army Field Manual entitled Human Intelligence Collector Operations that prohibits the use of waterboarding by U.S. military personnel. The revised manual was adopted amid widespread criticism of U.S. handling of prisoners in the War on Terrorism, and prohibits other questionable practices in addition to waterboarding. The revised manual applies to U.S. military personnel, and as such does not apply to the practices of the CIA.

Source

Interesting snipper you've got there, Brandon.

Joe(Watch out, Snipper could be your new nickname)Nation

5-75. If used in conjunction with intelligence interrogations, prohibited actions include, but are not limited to?-
•
Forcing the detainee to be naked, perform sexual acts, or pose in a sexual manner.
•
Placing hoods or sacks over the head of a detainee; using duct tape over the eyes.
•
Applying beatings, electric shock, burns, or other forms of physical pain.
•
"Waterboarding."
•
Using military working dogs.
•
Inducing hypothermia or heat injury.
•
Conducting mock executions.
• Depriving the detainee of necessary food, water, or medical care. 5-76. While using legitimate interrogation techniques, certain applications of
approaches and techniques may approach the line between permissible actions and prohibited actions. It may often be difficult to determine where
6 September 2006 5-21
FM 2-22.3 _________________________________________________________________________________
permissible actions end and prohibited actions begin. In attempting to determine if a contemplated approach or technique should be considered prohibited, and therefore should not be included in an interrogation plan, consider these two tests before submitting the plan for approval:
•
If the proposed approach technique were used by the enemy against one of your fellow soldiers, would you believe the soldier had been abused?
•
Could your conduct in carrying out the proposed technique violate a law or regulation? Keep in mind that even if you personally would not consider your actions to constitute abuse, the law may be more restrictive.
5-77. If you answer yes to either of these tests, the contemplated action should not be conducted. If the HUMINT collector has any doubt that an interrogation approach contained in an approved interrogation plan isconsistent with applicable law, or if he believes that he is being told to use an illegal technique, the HUMINT collector should seek immediate guidance from the chain of command and consult with the SJA to obtain a legal review of the proposed approach or technique. (See paras 5-80 and 5-81 for information on responding to illegal orders.) If the HUMINT collector believes that an interrogation approach or technique is unlawful during the interrogation of a detainee, the HUMINT collector must stop the interrogation immediately and contact the chain of command for additional guidance.

Joe Nation wrote:

Interesting snipper you've got there, Brandon.

Joe(Watch out, Snipper could be your new nickname)Nation

I stated that a new army manual prohibits waterboarding and gave the manual name. When snood said that he couldn't find the topic in the manual, I provided the sentence that gave the reference. Hardly a conspiracy.

blatham wrote:

Brandon9000 wrote:

blatham wrote:

Brandon9000 wrote:

Joe Nation wrote:

Brandon hasn't been following the issue very closely. If he listened to the President's speech regarding moving the fourteen detainees from the secret CIA prisons to Guantanamo last week he would understand what the administration's problem is. They've already violated the Geneva Conventions, by using the CIA to interrogate the prisoners using methods such as water boarding and other coercive, now they want the Congress to say that's okay....

Then why does the new edition of The Army Field Manual ban water boarding? Provide a citation to show that the Bush administration is now seeking permission to make water boarding legal.

Quote:

WASHINGTON ?- The nation's top intelligence official acknowledged Sunday that the CIA had used "tough" and "aggressive" interrogation techniques that were discontinued when the Supreme Court ruled that terrorism suspects are entitled to the protections of the Geneva Convention.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-intel18sep18,0,3407082.story?coll=la-home-nation

How about you, brandon, putting your little dick on the line and clarifying for the rest of us the disparity between what was done, what the SC held could and could not be done, and what Bush now wants to be able to do.

Why should I? The fact that I ask someone to support an assertion he's made doesn't obligate me to do anything more.

Perhaps to demonstrate that you are capable of thought?

Yes, and I'm sure you'll be happy to run off on every wild goose chase that I set for you. Your demonstratuon that I'm not taking orders from you doesn't constitute a successful rebuttal of anything that I've herein asserted.

Brandon9000 wrote:

Joe Nation wrote:

Interesting snipper you've got there, Brandon.

Joe(Watch out, Snipper could be your new nickname)Nation

I stated that a new army manual prohibits waterboarding and gave the manual name. When snood said that he couldn't find the topic in the manual, I provided the sentence that gave the reference. Hardly a conspiracy.

And snipped the exact wording that supported my point and answered your question....yes,,,, perfectly understandable.

Joe(sure)Nation.

Ideals and Realities Clash In Bush 'Freedom Agenda'

By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 21, 2006; A20

At the United Nations lectern this week, President Bush hailed the spread of democracy. "From Beirut to Baghdad," he said, "people are making the choice for freedom." Yet even as he spoke, tanks were rolling through the streets of Bangkok as a military coup toppled the elected leader of Thailand, who at that moment was in New York for the U.N. session.

Bush made no mention of the dramatic events on Tuesday and left New York yesterday without ever seeing the deposed prime minister, much less offering any public support for a onetime strong ally of the United States. The president's spokesman later provided a strikingly mild response only after being asked by a reporter, pronouncing the White House "disappointed" by the coup.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/20/AR2006092001696_pf.html

What probably makes you sick, Brandon, is being called on the very thing you excoriate others for.
Again, your inability to hold yourself to the same standard you expect others to maintain is overwhelming.

Just another fine example that blows apart that old canard that the USA is in any way interested in furthering democracy. The USA is only interested in furthering the USA and their long history of supporting tyrants proves it.

[QUOTE-"okie"]Many wolves dress up in sheeps clothing