Bush Comparing Himself To Harry Truman

[journalist3072]

If I had a moment with Bush, I think I'd ask him "Have you no sense of decency, sir?"

He used his speech at West Point to compare himself to Harry Truman:

"As President Truman put it towards the end of his presidency, 'When history says that my term of office saw the beginning of the Cold War, it will also say that in those eight years we set the course that can win it.' His leadership paved the way for subsequent presidents from both political parties — men like Eisenhower, Kennedy and Reagan — to confront and eventually defeat the Soviet threat."

"Today, at the start of a new century, we are again engaged in a war unlike any our nation has fought before, and like Americans in Truman's day, we are laying the foundations for victory."

Ok, explain this to me, Bushie. If we were truly "laying the foundations for victory" in this so-called war on terror, don't you think it would help if we were actually fighting the enemy---the Islamic extremists who attacked us on 9/11?

Don't you think it would have helped not to take our eye off the ball in Afghanistan?

How is it that Osama is still out there making audio tapes?

When you prove that you are doing all you can to capture Osama bin Laden, then come talk to me about laying the foundation for victory in this "war on terror."

Oh, one more thing, Bushie. It also might help our standing in the world, if you don't go around using your graduation speeches to threaten Iran: "This is only the beginning. The message has spread from Damascus to Tehran that the future belongs to freedom, and we will not rest until the promise of liberty reaches every people in every nation."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060527/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_west_point

[Drum]

1. more like Hoover, no? nt

[JackintheGreen]

You mean insofar as he sucks?

;)


ooooh....you mean his abysmal record on foreign trade.

[Drum]

11. Heheh...all of the above,

and the impression I have that Hoover left so many out in the cold in the Great Depression.
But history is not my strong suit....
;)

[JackintheGreen]

22. Nor mine, but there was the lovely Smoot-Hawley Act

in 1930 which I think was supposed to fulfill a pledge Hoover made to protect farmers from the post-WWI rebounded European agricultural economy. Tariff rates on certain imports were jacked up to some 60%, which of course caused affected nations to institute retaliatory measures against U.S. exports.

Some historians have even suggested that the ensuing trade war was one of the factors behind the start of WWII, but I don't buy it (but then I don't know much about 20th century European economic history).

But the Smoot-Hawley is one of the proudest moments of a GOP lead congress ever.

[Lusted4]

More like Hairy Ass n/t

[MadMaddie]

2. I find it interesting that he never uses his own father....

[Captain Hilts]

4. He looks to a "higher father." nt

[MadMaddie]

14. I forgot about that gem...

[Olney Blue]

33. Yes, that is very interesting, isn't it?

His father looks like an intellectual giant compared to his mutant offspring.

[Captain Hilts]

3. Johnson and Nixon didn't fight "theSoviet threat?" News to me. nt

[blogslut]

5. Can't he make up his mind?

First he was Reagan, then Roosevelt, then Lincoln...now he's Truman! Pick a President!

[SammyWinstonJack]

44. First, he'd have to have a mind. nt

[joemurphy]

6. More like Pee Wee Herman only more dangerous. n/t

[Clark2008]

7. Does that mean he's going to use a nuke?

:scared:

[journalist3072]

13. That's exactly what it means

And like I said in my post, notice how he threated Iran during his speech.

And this is the man with the code to the nuclear football.

I think Bush makes a damn good argument that anyone wanting to be President should have a comprehensive mental health exam.

[sweetheart]

8. spare us the big myth

"to confront and eventually defeat the Soviet threat."

- to "create", "inflate" and eventually defeat a paper threat"
whilst wasting a generation's savings on missiles and bombs that
for the basis of nationwide toxic waste nightmare today.

Operation home run, flying massive wings of bombers in to russia to
"test" their preparedness for aggressive war is certianly a smart
thing to do if you want to get big arms contracts to your buddies
and sell out the future of whatever society you thought you were helping.

These foul mass murdering men in suits, blundering about doing war
crimes here and there and then crediting each other, as "admired"
Its nauseating.

Truth, a buch of corporate shills screwed the public using lies for
half a century to sell out their peace to arms manufacturers, and these
shills keep a lid on their innocence via the corporate whitewash media,
and as long as the people don't mind being enslaved, what else should
they expect. Caesar is dead, all hail Caesar.

[Zynx]

19. The Soviet Union under Stalin was a threat.

I've never seen anyone credible dispute that.

[Jara sang]

26. It has been disputed in recently declassified documents.

They were not the threat they were made out to be. Intelligence estimates of the Soviet Union were greatly overblown.

[sweetheart]

27. Operation home run

Flew live wings of bombers in to russia without warning to test air defenses.

Do you think this was an act of war? It was 1947. Do you not think that
this provoked the USSR to be onry, especially given the history of 3 painful
invasions in a century, not to mention a revolution in which the US had
troops fighting to stymie the coming to power of the Bolsheviks.

Stalin threatened to defend Russia from another aggressor, and the US clearly
was behaving, despite the whitewash, the aggressor. That's the problem, american
people don't know the history of their own country, so they dont' realize we've
unzipped out fly and pissed bombs on everyfuckingbody, threatening war liberally
and selling the planet in to an arms race, pushing the envelope on WMD's development
that the world is constantly endangered... yea right, protected the world from
the evils of stalin! A more frank reading of history shows constant provocation
and sabre rattling, threatening and intervention against democracy for half a
century.

[Captain Hilts]

45. By location alone, they were a direct threat to WesternEurope and England.

Then there were those missiles aimed at us.

Correct, no one credible has said they were not a threat.

[TechBear_Seattle]

9. Truman was the only president to use nuclear weapons of mass destruction

So maybe the comparison is not all that far-fetched.

[Zynx]

17. You do know that FDR was going to as well.

He just didn't live long enough to.

[Nickster]

10. He set the course to win it? I thought he said it was up to other

Presidents to decide how to handle Iraq?

[Benhurst]

12. Maybe he just means he's brain-dead, something we've always known. NT

[Cha]

15. If bush is like

Truman.. it's dropping the bombs on civilians.

[Zynx]

16. That is nothing short of blasphemy.

Harry Truman was one of our greatest presidents who spread liberty at home and abroad and improved our standing in the world. Bush has done the exact opposite.

[sweetheart]

28. The people of the civilian city of nagasaki...

thank you for that whitewash.

Bush is far more noble than truman, he's killed a fraction
even with his armed bugling, and he hasn't used WMD's yet.

It makes bush more like God. I think bush is really God, or
at least tony blair is god and bush is god's right hand. And
together they are the holy spirit and god, only missing jesus...
no wait, dick cheney is clearly jesus. There you have it,the
trinity.

And madonna loves new york and hopes the trinity will stay in texas. ;-)

[Zynx]

32. I cannot believe you just said that.

I suppose you must think FDR is a horrible guy too for the disgusting bombing of German and Japanese cities under his watch. I guess Bush is better than FDR too by your standards.

[sweetheart]

34. All war is civil war and class war

The world war 2 consensus was to send masses of lower classes to die
fighting each other whilst the upper classes looked on. FDR just played
to the barbaric expectations of his compatriots... when authoritarianism
rises in one country, it rises in the other as well.

USing WMD's on Japan was uncalled for, and it did not save american lives,
thats a right wing argument, pushed to a false choice of losing ameircan
lives OR dropping WMD's on civilian cities.

These men fed the beast of the military industrial complex at the time,
knowing and saying in advance what that complex would ultimately do to the
nation in its later stranglehold... and here we sit in that stranglehold
and i'm supposed to be thankful for a consensus of war that brought
hitler to power in the first place.

World war 2 destroyed american socialism, that is the unwritten chapter
you've not read... and you're grateful for the table scraps kaptial threw
at the people to keep from having their mansions razed... and now they
figure that those scraps were too many, as we're such a lazy cowardly generation,
we'll never fight back, we make much better prison labourers in the prison
empire. Oh, say can you see by the dawns early light, the biggest prison
in existance, prison USA, and the flag is still flying while bombs burst
in midair over civilians on every continent on earth.

Empire gone bad. FDR, a forgotten consensus unmade.

[Webster Green]

18. "defeat the Soviet threat"...

The United States looks more and more like the old Soviet Union every day.

Cronyism and corruption are rampant, media is controlled by the administration, the government has no interest in meeting the needs of the citizens, dissenters are deemed to be insane or traitorous, the nuclear sabre is being rattled, elections are rigged.......

[Zynx]

20. All that we need now is the mass killings of political opponents.

[sweetheart]

38. Thats not the way

Its masss disenfranchisement, imprisonment and impoverishment of political opponents.

More prisoners than anywhere on earth (vastly political opponents)
Stripping people of voting rights by criminalizing race (inordinately ethnic prison populations).

Then when the poor homeless opposition dies, it isn't actually "killing"... so clearly its defensible?

[BrklynLiberal]

21. No matter how many Presidents he compares himself to, he will never be a

great man, or even anything more than a pathetic attempt at being a man.

[opihimoimoi]

42. He can never be a man, Beause when in uniform, ...he ran

He deserted his NG Unit...while a war was going on....he ran away from the fight, he went awol....

[Jara sang]

23. This is so laughable!

The Cold War was a arms race between two countries that had real physical borders. The so called war on terror is like a declaration of war against the tooth fairy.

[cliss]

31. You bring up a good point.

The policymakers have had trouble with this one too. Early on, they realized it would be tough to sell the American people on something as vague as 'terror'. They knew they could roust them up: just declare war, and you've got your population behind you.

But how would they present it? How would they motivate the Americans to be in a war-like state for a prolonged period, on something as vague as an emotion (terror)? Declare war on Osama bin Laden? One person? No way would that work. Because the minute they caught him, the war would be over.

Well then maybe Al Qaida. Or the Taliban. They knew that wouldn't work, either because the US could make short order of these 2 organizations and they would be fresh out of wars to fight.

I've actually read some documents where they are grappling with these problems: how to present such an abstract topic as "terrorism" as something to fight against, and yet make it seem real enough that people would buy into it. They decided to keep it abstract. They would never name groups, or organizations. They WOULD pick a Bad Guy of the week, like Zarkawi, or UBL.

They also decided to hammer away at Terror, Terrorism, Enemy, Fight, 24/7 until it got imprinted into peoples' brains.

But you're right: it's like the Tooth Fairy.

[Sapphire Blue]

24. More delusions of grandeur; he should be in a padded room...

... not in the Oval Office.

Tell me again, Ms. Pelosi, why shouldn't the Dems focus on impeachment?

[Beelzebud]

25. With Bush, the buck still stops at Harry Truman's desk. :D

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

29. Warmup to using nukes, like Truman did?

Nothing like a little mass murder to entrench yourself in the history books.

[987654321]

30. He should be more specific.

He should compare himself to Truman's ass instead. They both just spewed out a bunch of crap.

[MrTriumph]

35. It is outrageous to equate yourself with Truman, George.

"His leadership paved the way for subsequent presidents from both political parties — men like Eisenhower, Kennedy and Reagan — to confront and eventually defeat the Soviet threat."

Hey, George, not only did Truman provide leadership, he provided the strategy that would undo the Soviets.

Oh, and in addition to the point that by comparison yours is a chain of failed strategies, whether in Iraq or Afghanistan, please consider that were Truman to have adopted your foolish concept of preemptive war, the US would have made war on the USSR. And as history has shown, that war would have been needless. Containment worked on the Soviets and was working on Saddam.

Bush, history will judge you a fool at best.

[Booster]

36. Bush can compare himself to the guy who runs the 7-11 store

and the guy from 7-11 will win every time. Bush is a blowhard loser.

[Dervill Crow]

37. The buck stops WHERE!?

Good Lord (and Lady), he is the most un-Truman like human being ever to contaminate our planet. What hubris.

[no_hypocrisy]

39. Harry S Truman would beat THE SNOT out of George W. Bush. n/t

[dysfunctional press]

40. well- truman is the only president to use nukes on an enemy...

maybe that's the angle he's going for when he says: "...and like Americans in Truman's day, we are laying the foundations for victory."

he's signaling his intent to use nukes against iran.

[opihimoimoi]

41. More like Caligula and Nero, etc.

[johnnie]

43. I think he means Truman now

But I would have to say that Truman is doing a lot better job these days than george.