Bush uses final 50 days in office to tout legacy

WASHINGTON (AP) - President George W. Bush says history will judge him, but he is getting his own crack first. Bush is using his final 50 days in office to tout his legacy, hoping to leave a lasting impression of overshadowed progress. On Monday, World AIDS Day, Bush was heralded for his leadership in fighting the disease, a point that even his Democratic critics readily concede.

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Bush uses final 50 days in office to tout legacy

I don’t like George W. Bush. I voted FOR him, but that was because, as far as I was concerned, he was the lesser of all the evils, Republican, Democratic or any other choice. I am not a Republican. I am NOT Democrat. I am NOT a libber, I don’t blindly follow ANY party or their line of political BS. I am that rare commodity that *party parrots* fear. I am an American PATRIOT, I bow to no party. I answer to ME, I vote my conscience and I sleep quite well in doing so.

I’m not an economics guy. I look at the current issues regarding the economy and I have to rely on my friend and adviser, Jason Potts, at Lifetime Wealth Management, PC to be my eyes and ears on what to do with our money. My field of expertise is an altogether different area of endeavor. Jason tells me what HE thinks about the money markets, he’s the MBA and finance guy. I tell him what I think about tactics and strategy, that is where I did MY study.

I can tell you right now, had I been on the advisory staff when the decision was made to go into Iraq, I would have likely made the BIG news. Iraq was an ill-advised effort, nearly everyone in the national security and Intel business KNEW that. I KNOW that there were some advisers that told Bush the truth about Iraq, but the truth wasn’t what the man wanted to hear. He wanted to hear support and justifications. Here are some of my reasons for believing that Iraq, and the continued prosecution of that war, is the cause of the current financial maladies that this nation is suffering.

We are dumping BILLIONS upon BILLIONS of OUR tax dollars into one of the most oil rich nations on earth, and we are seeing NO return for OUR investment.

Personally, I would NEVER have gone to Iraq, not to attack. I would have gone under the guise of friend and ally to Saddam. That would have been the most logical effort to make in Iraq, make Saddam an ALLY, he hated Iran, he hated al-Qaida, he didn’t like us too much either but he would have taken any U.S. support he could have received.

Iraq was NOT worth the effort, the lives lost, the money spent, ANY of it, but Saddam may have been valuable had he been developed as an asset, not a TRUSTED ally or asset, but valuable none the less. He would have held Iran in check, thus leaving us free to pursue al-Qaida in Afghanistan, and Pakistan if need be, and to other areas as needed, the REAL enemy, where they actually were.

I don’t care what ANY of the Bush Bots say, Iraq was NOT a part of 9-11, Iraq did NOT support al-Qaida and there were NO Taliban or al-Qaida fighters IN Iraq until WE went there, al-Qaida came to Iraq to fight us.

Strategically, that may not have been an altogether bad thing if the truth were told. Iraq, especially the area around Baghdad, is a much easier theater of battle than the mountains of Afghanistan. The Russians suffered miserably in the rough terrain of Afghanistan, they were defeated by American supplied arms and Taliban guts. Pay attention to that last word, TALIBAN. We were supplying the Taliban with everything they needed as long as they were fighting the Russians. That old enemy of my enemy is MY friend thing.

In any case, Iraq equates to $10B a month that could be well spent elsewhere, because GWB surely didn’t have ANY idea that Iraq was better ground to fight upon, all GWB had was a hard-on for Saddam and the desire to see him dead. Damn the end results and consequences to the American or Iraqi people, ‘Daddy’ had to be vindicated, that was *Job 1* in George W. Bush’s mind.

And yes, I DO know, Saddam WAS evil personified, he was a monster, but only to his own people. Saddam was a threat to his region of the world, his immediate region, and if the people of that region didn’t have the balls to stand up to him, well hey, they were HIS people.

Bush has written his legacy, America is in a recession, we had a budget surplus when he took office. No more. Over 4,200 American service men and women were killed in Iraq, and for no REAL reason that I can see. We continue to pump BILLIONS of dollars into Iraq. We continue to lose troops lives in Iraq. Our border with Mexico is still wide open. The U.S. government became a SOCIALIST regime under Bush. Americans are on the verge of bankruptcy. We never got the *Drill Here - Drill Now* from Bush. We are still reliant on foreign oil, and as such, we are vulnerable to monetary blackmail. OPEC can strangle this nation any time they wish, simply by raising the price of oil to it’s recently high levels.

The legacy that Bush leaves behind will make Jimmy Carter look like a harmless old fool. I will reserve my opinion of Obama and his presidential prowess until such time that he really IS the POTUS.