Thanks again President Bush

I just watched a clunky B-movie called Deterrence, starring Kevin Pollack
as the president of the USA, Timothy Hutton as an advisor and one of the hobbits
from LOTR's as a local redneck. It's a pretty bad movie that I was semi watching
by flipping back to Top Gear to see their space shuttle launch (super cool)

The movie was interesting because it was made in 1999 starring a couple of
left wing actors and written and produced by French guys, yet the premise
of the movie was that Iraq was reinvading Kuwait, we threatened them with
nukes to stop and they responded by launching nuclear bombs at us.

It contained a lot of information that was common knowledge at the turn of
the century, the president of Iraq was Uday Hussein (so we couldn't just wait
for Saddam to drop dead), Iraq was trying for years to get NBC WMD's and they
had them, and were ready to attack Kuwait or the US at any time.

It was just another data point that tells me almost all of the Bush lied meme was just
cynical political posturing by democrats scrambling for power. Things that were common
knowledge in 2000 became hard to track intelligence data points pumped up by
political pressure by 2004.

Bush instead took the much harder decision not to nuke bagdad, or conventionally
bomb them for days or weeks as Clinton did, but invade. I would have nuked them
from orbit, or tomahawked them for months before risking american soldiers, but
Bush didn't. He took the non-cynical more moral decision that I still think will have
long term positive effects, for Iraq at least, even though it cost us a hella lot of money.

Once the glow has fully faded from The One, the comparisons will be even clearer.

Obama takes over the helm

Bush only has a few more hours to pull off a coup if he's going to do it. Maybe right now

tanks are stuck in traffic all over washington as angry fists are shaken out of windows,

"get out of my way you piece of crap rebuilt tank, I'm late for work!" Somehow, I doubt it.

Bush may be seen as an idiot around the world, but he looks to me like the most relieved

person in the country, and the people that think he would use force to stay in power

have to be the stupidest, blindest on the planet. I don't think he'd submit to a reverse coup where

someone would hold a gun to his head to make him stay president.

I'd like to think that long term history will be kind to Bush, but the people that write history

are 10:1 the same people that use the NYtimes as their number one resource. The things that

go well in Iraq will be now attributed to obama as he waves his magic life-giving hands over the globe

and the angry waters retreat, all the bad things that have happened over the past 8 years and the next

8 years will be packaged up as "due to bush". Levees in New Orleans mismanaged over 40 years,

bush did it. Congress requiring banks to lend to poor people, then banks repackaging those loans

into bonds over the past 20 years, bush did it. The usa shipping off it's manufacturing base since the

70's and importing too much plastic crep from china, you guessed it. bush did it.

Bush could have done a better job, less delegation and more followup could have limited the bad

results in Iraq and Katrina. If his administration had made an effort to sell what they were trying to do, instead of depending on the kindness of strangers to report the truth, the results would have been better. On the other hand, 75% of the hatred for bush was formed in the last 2 months of 2000, and he could have personnaly shot bin laden and

used his body to plug a hole in the levee in New Orleans, and he would still be disliked.

Now it's the new guy's turn in the barrel. I wish him all the luck in the world and I hope he is as good as

some people say he is. Before the election I might have said that I thought he was a commie bastard,

but now he's my commie bastard president and I don't want any foreigner to say anything bad about him.