You can criticize the US for what we DID do, but at least we were willing to DO SOMETHING – which is much more than most of the world.

Also, I’m not sure why you’re telling me to check my sources – every major intelligence agency DID believe the same faulty evidence that the CIA did. What sources should I check on that that say otherwise?

Oh, and Donald Trump is wrong about GW – just as he is wrong about many things.

In actuality, I feel sort of bad for the guy. He has a long uphill battle fighting a sub-par legacy ahead of him. Hopefully the outcome of his fight will solidify his legacy in a light that is more well respected than Nixon, sheesh.

The whole point I was trying to make was that Bush was not a neoconservative (I believe) until he was unfortunately blessed with the ideologies of those he surrounded himself by.

The point is, Americans would NOT have voted him into office in the first place had he come out and said “My goal is to spread Democracy to the Middle East by invading Iraq”. Remember, we invaded Iraq for the supposed safety of our own people, ie. remember the whole WMD theory. But yet Dick Cheany admitted just a few weeks ago that we would have invaded anyways based on their ability to produce WMD, irrespective of whether or not they had any.

My whole point is that Bush is a good person I think deep down. I am agreeing with Matt. But I think that he is a poor decision maker and he has a problem with facing the reality of his 2 terms. But I think he is starting to get it. He definitely seems more humbled then ever these last days.

So good bye and good luck Mr. President, God Speed. And if the word God offends anyone then you will just have to get over it.

There’s a quote from the movie, Charlie Wilson’s War, that I think applies well to your argument.

Gust Avrakotos: There’s a little boy and on his 14th birthday he gets a horse… and everybody in the village says, “How wonderful. The boy got a horse.” And the Zen master says, “We’ll see.”

Two years later, the boy falls off the horse, breaks his leg, and everyone in the village says, “How terrible.” And the Zen master says, “We’ll see.”

Then, a war breaks out and all the young men have to go off and fight, except the boy can’t ’cause his legs all messed up. And everybody in the village says, “How wonderful.”

Charlie Wilson: Now the Zen master says, “We’ll see.”

The point? In life, we don’t have the luxury of retrospect – until it’s too late. We must make the best decisions we can with the information we are given. Obviously – the president has more information than any of us realize, and when we were first attacked on OUR OWN soil, Bush had to make a decision. Whether it was good or bad – only time could tell. It is a great shame, a tragedy, that so many people have died in Iraq – yet, had we not gone in, what would’ve happened? We don’t know.

You call Bush a neoconservative. But this is a democracy – and he was elected with the same ideologies that the majority of Americans agreed with at the time of election. Just like now, Obama has been elected with ideologies that the majority of Americans believe in (even if many of us staunchly disagree).

Whether it be his Katrina response, torturing war prisoners, economic downfalls, or of course the war in Iraq, Bush has made some questionable decisions that may take years to live down. This is what his legacy will be based on. This is why his approval rating upon departure of the Presidency is the lowest since Nixon. But he will have years to set the record straight.

When GW finally admits to some of these mistakes is when people will truly begin to see all that he has accomplished. More aid to Africa. Protection at home. Etc.

Maybe 30 years from now, we may view neoconservatism differently. But evidence does not support this idea right now.

The whole point of all this is that I agree that GW Bush is a good person. The core problem, in my opinion, are the ideologies of others that he so strongly supported. We need a president that is an independant thinker. Someone that will not only make the tough decisions, but make the right ones.

Bush came into office, in my opinion, with no ideaologies. Bush says himself that he spent most of his younger years hanging with the jocks and poking jokes at the intellects. Somewhere down the line he admits to finally paying more attention to the intellectual crowd. Through the influence of the Rumsfeld’s and the Chaney’s he latched on to neoconservatisim – and in my opinion his legacy will be attached at the hip to this ideaology. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like it works. Maybe in retrospect, trying to spread *American* type democracy in a region that has been fighting wars for 1000′s of years maybe wasn’t the best idea. But he won’t admit to that. You will notice in his latest ‘legacy’ tour or exit interviews, addresses, etc. he won’t own up to any mistakes that he has made. They call them ‘underestimations’ (as Cheaney put it) not mistakes. He is clearly trying to steer his legacy towards something that it is not. Only problem is he won’t admit that he done anything wrong. He speaks of how he should be commended for making the tough decisions of the past 8 years. But isn’t that what a President does? It is to be expected, not celebrated. Maybe in 30 years people with see GW in a different light. But that light will only begin to take shape when he starts to confront some of the bad decisions he made outside of the neoconservative vaccuum. 4000 US troops dead. 100,000 Iraqi civilians dead.