Bush's Farewell
 

Getting ready to watch his speech. I am really very torn between two opinions: 1) appreciation for keeping the pressure up overseas, depleting various terrorist organisations of funds, and keeping us safe for seven years and 2) disappointment at the misleading intel that led to a war in Iraq and the loss of civil liberties. I believe that in the end, history will look favorably on this administration and I wish the next one well. Please don't bash me for that, I'm just hoping that all of this harshness is not being directed towards a man who honestly meant well and tried his hardest to protect us, only to not have the favor returned in the form of thanks.

actually from what I've heard, terrorist organizations have seen rapid advancement in the past 7 years. The war in Iraq gave them more reasons to wish to harm the US. Reguardless of your personal view most people outside of the US view it as an invasion and the extremist as an attack on their people as a whole. True we haven't had a terrorist attack in years, but not like thats unheard of.

As I've mentioned countless times before, bragging about keeping the nation safe from another 9/11 doesn't mean much when the only 9/11 we've had was on his watch.

well we have had other terrorist attacks. Just none involving landmarks. But realistically this is just gonna happen. There will always be terrorist attacks. If we were ever truely safe, well it would mean losing so many freedoms, it isn't worth it

1. Anthrax 2. DC sniper 3. Major incidents in countries allied with us. And the man could have prevented the first 9-11 from being 9-11 if he'd bothered paying any kind of actual attention to his job.

And I'm sure Bush meant well, it's just that in his case 'meant well' translates directly to 'spend eight years giving reacharounds to my rich white cronies and too bad for everybody else'. Personally I've gotten tired of the seasonal food poisoning outbreaks because Bush can't bother appointing anyone to run the FDA and USDA who has any interest in like, actually inspecting the food supply to make sure it won't make us sick or kill us. There's a lot of things I really don't look forward to about Obama's administration but I figure at absolute rock-bottom there's at least a decent chance his appointments for the leadership of our public health agencies won't be former dang lobbyists for the industries those agencies are supposed to regulate who are ideologically opposed to enforcing the law.

I don't necessarily agree in the appointment of Clinton to State either. It seems as if almost everyone that was part of the Clinton administration has again found jobs in the Obama administration.

The problem with Bush is the fact that he lost his power to persuade by making Congress highly ineffective. As well, his "preemptive attack" techniques make him seem more of a cowboy than even Regan.

From what's being said, it seems Obama will have a struggle with a Democratic Congress that doesn't necessarily agree on the extent needed for recovering the economy.

We have a capitalist economy. There is nothing wrong with it. It is working exactly as intended.

The frustrating thing about all of Clinton's cronies back in office is that Obama preached change. It is really easy to talk about something while trying to get elected and then just do whatever you want. The events since the election have shown to me that our government will never change from within. Therefore why bother marking the comings and goings of presidents. They are simply different faces of the monster that we have created.

Sorry, I didn't really mean to make this kind of a thread. I angled it more at what everyone thought of the speech. I thought it was fairly succinct and appropriate. What about you guys?

I don't know about everyone else, but I distinctly remember voting to change things back to the way they were in the '90s. Change to something that we've already done before and was totally better than what we have now is still change, after all.

Just saw the speech. It is appropriate for what he's needed to do, getting out his version of events. Though, I doubt Bush will come outside of his ranch anytime soon. Hate to say it, but he'll be getting blamed for a LOT of wrong even if he did two or three things right.