Steve Benson for March 21, 2013

Clearly the context is the ten year anniversary of the start of the Iraq War. Maybe you should ponder the irony of blaming Obama with a knee-jerked reaction.

He had a lot of helpers.

Bush was obviously a lousy President.

Without him, someone completely un-qualified would never have been considered “better.” These two make me long for Clinton…

I like how the"main stream media" always fails to mention that the reason that debt went up under Obama is that unlike his predisessor he put the war debt “on the books” instead of hiding it from us.

No, those were BILL CLINTON’S fault

BTW, There have been 3438 Iraq veteran suicides since 2003. That number will rise for possibly another deacade, and at the current rate will surpass the number of actual deaths due to the conflict itself. GWB can add that to his baggage as well.

@fourcrowsit also shows how astutely obama has handled the withdrawl from iraq.

If the war was justified and a clear outcome was desired, you’d see a whole lot more people volunteering for the armed forces, just like WWII. If the war has no goal and no direction, and no reason for existing, we just recycle the same troops because we have no fresh ones. Viet Nam comes to mind; very few volunteered for that service, fewer and fewer as the war dragged on. If it weren’t for the draft, we would have sent people on multiple tours just as we’re doing now.

The American people, by their willingness to ignore these conflicts (how many people died yesterday? where are there battles? what “victories” have occurred? Don’t know? you’re not alone…), have shown that the wars in the Middle East have no purpose. Stay for 200 years or two weeks, there will be violence and upheaval among the natives. Our presence will cause nothing beyond resentment of the occupiers.

If we had gone after bin Ladin, tried him and fried him and gone home, we’d have much more money, less debt, and a far better standing in the world. Oh, and Iraq would have crumbled under its own weight soon after, without us losing one life or spending one penny.

Whether Bush has been gone for one day or 500 years, his actions and inactions brought great damage to the country. They are part of history, regardless of his current status.

Well said Played One, but don’t forget that Bush and Nixon were the ones whose lies and general deceit left today’s legacy of distrust of the government. Yet another consequence. Of course the Bush clan think governing is their god-given right and have Jeb and his son both trying to stay on the public’s milktrain.

Amen!

“Bush lied about Iraq’s “WMD,” misled us into believing Hissein had something to do with 9/11, ".Like a good liberal you believe what you are told to believe while drinking the Kool Aid.Saddam was an open terrorism sponsor, if he didn’t have a WMD, he was trying to get one. He openly had terrorist training camps and offered safe haven..There have been reports of him using chemical weapons on his neighbor Iran, the Kurds and technically chemical weapons are WMD..Check out the website council for foreign relations:Bush lied about Iraq’s “WMD,” misled us into believing Hissein had something to do with 9/11,

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein_and_al-Qaeda_link_allegations.…back to your regularly scheduled Kool-Aid drinking festival.

BTW, Ahab, my mother was Lenape, so her (actually my grandparents’) word was Wanishi.Are you, in fact, Navajo? I may be moving out of the forests and into the desert (Phoenix) myself, soon. Last time I was out in that direction, I looked downright pasty next to the Paiute.

@howgoziti’m sure much to your chagrin,stimulus and green jobs didn’t kill and maim our own people and all the other collateral damage to the USA in the above posts.at the end of the bush admin the credit market had seized up, old, venerable financial institutions were going out of business over night, the housing market was in free fall and we were losing over 700,000 jobs a month.I believe your assertion is wrong when compared with today.Your republicans latest effort of sequestration is just the latest attempt to reverse the stable and positive numbers coming out of the economy lately.I hope your republican efforts fail to stall the economy, as they are intended to do.

The Iraq “war” started because GHW Bush’s administration told Saddam the invasion of Kuwait was “an Arab against Arab thing”, and he didn’t tell Saddam to “back down” which he would have done, without invading Kuwait. Then GHW failed to support the Shia in the south because they didn’t want the Shia running the country, which they’re now doing, because they were “linked to Iran”! (duh!) Just giving them support as we did the Kurds, would have put an end to things, as IRAQIS, would likely have gotten rid of Saddam for us if we hadn’t been incompetent. (The watchword of BOTH Bush administrations!)

Next: Clinton continued to bomb Iraq with the excuse of the “no fly zones” and taunting Iraqis to keep targeting (never once hitting) our aircraft over THEIR airspace!

So, America’s LONGEST WAR is IRAQ, NOT Afghanistan, as we started shooting in 1991 because of an incompetent administration, and only stopped in 2012! Even then, many Republicans who started the whole thing didn’t really want to see it end! (Despite, yes, the “treaty” that “w” agreed to for withdrawal.)

Now Afghanistan isn’t really a “war” as much as a total stupidity aimed at “regime change” instead of going after the actual INDIVIDUALS who attacked the U.S. in 2001. It only took getting rid of Bush, to get “rid” of bin Laden. And, no, that nearly decade old “intelligence” gathered under the “Cheney Doctrine” had nothing to do with actually, finally, nailing bin Laden. It took someone with the guts to finally let our troops (SEAL teams) do their job. That wasn’t anyone named “Bush”.

appears Howie still can’t deal with facts.

In your parallel universe you get to have your own facts?