Ignoring Facts, Right-Wing Media Rush To Congratulate Bush On Bin Laden's Death
Media conservatives are insisting that George W. Bush deserves as much credit as President Obama for the death of Osama Bin Laden, if not more. However, making this argument means ignoring what the Bush administration itself reportedly called its "gravest error" -- not capturing bin Laden at Tora Bora in 2001 -- and Bush's 2002 statement that he was "not concerned" about bin Laden.
Conservative Media Credits Bush For Death Of Bin Laden
Hannity: "There Was No Way This Would Have Happened, But For The Policies Of George W. Bush." [Fox News, Hannity, 5/4/11, via Nexis]
Karl Rove: "Important Policy Decisions Made Under Bush" Made Bin Laden's Death Possible. [Fox News, Hannity, 5/3/11, via Nexis]
Washington Times' Brett Decker: "Bin Laden's Death Is More Mr. Bush's Victory Than Mr. Obama's." [The Washington Times, 5/2/11]
Fox's Bolling: "Thank GWB For This Not BHO!" From a May 2 post on Fox Business host Eric Bolling's Twitter feed:
[Twitter, 5/2/11]
Bolling later posted a follow-up "correction" on Twitter, writing: "correction.. thank The men and women who risked and lost their lives and GWB...not BHO." [Twitter; 5/2/11]
But It Was Obama Who Made Finding Bin Laden A Top Priority ...
Obama: "Shortly After Taking Office, I Directed ... The Director Of The CIA To Make The Killing Or Capture Of Bin Laden The Top Priority." From the speech Obama delivered on May 1, announcing the death of Osama Bin Laden:
OBAMA: And so shortly after taking office, I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority of our war against al Qaeda, even as we continued our broader efforts to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat his network. [WhiteHouse.gov, 5/2/11]
CNN In 2008: Obama "Wants To Renew The U.S. Committing To Finding ... Bin Laden." From a November 12, 2008, article on CNN.com:
President-elect Barack Obama wants to renew the U.S. commitment to finding al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, according to his national security advisers.
The Obama team believes the Bush administration has downplayed the importance of catching the FBI's most-wanted terrorist because it has not been able to find him.
"We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al Qaeda. That has to be our biggest national security priority," Obama said during the presidential debate on October 7. [CNN.com, 11/12/08]
... And Not Bush
Bush In 2002: "I Truly Am Not Concerned About" Bin Laden. From a March 14, 2002, Reuters article titled, "Bin Laden not a concern: Bush":
After focusing on bin Laden in the weeks immediately after more than 3,000 people died when hijackers piloted passenger jets into the Pentagon, New York's World Trade Center and a Pennsylvania field, Bush now rarely mentions bin Laden by name.
"I don't know where he is ... deep in my heart I know the man is on the run, if he's alive at all," Bush said.
Bush said lately he "hadn't heard much" from bin Laden. In the past, the Islamic dissident the Taliban sheltered in Afghanistan has been seen on tape.
The president dismissed the idea that bin Laden is "at the centre of any command structure."
"I truly am not that concerned about him ... I was concerned about him when he had taken over a country. I was concerned about the fact that he was basically running Afghanistan and calling the shots for the Taliban." [Reuters, 3/14/02, accessed via Nexis]
NY Times: In 2006, CIA Closed The Unit Dedicated To Hunting Bin Laden. From a July 4, 2006, New York Times article:
The Central Intelligence Agency has closed a unit that for a decade had the mission of hunting Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants, intelligence officials confirmed Monday.
The unit, known as Alec Station, was disbanded late last year and its analysts reassigned within the C.I.A. Counterterrorist Center, the officials said.
The decision is a milestone for the agency, which formed the unit before Osama bin Laden became a household name and bolstered its ranks after the Sept. 11 attacks, when President Bush pledged to bring Mr. bin Laden to justice "dead or alive."
The realignment reflects a view that Al Qaeda is no longer as hierarchical as it once was, intelligence officials said, and a growing concern about Qaeda-inspired groups that have begun carrying out attacks independent of Mr. bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. [The New York Times, 7/4/06]
And It Was Obama Who Brought Bin Laden To Justice
Obama: "The United States Has Conducted An Operation That Killed Osama Bin Laden." From the speech Obama delivered on May 1, announcing the death of Osama Bin Laden:
Good evening. Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda, and a terrorist who's responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women, and children.
[...]
Then, last August, after years of painstaking work by our intelligence community, I was briefed on a possible lead to bin Laden. It was far from certain, and it took many months to run this thread to ground. I met repeatedly with my national security team as we developed more information about the possibility that we had located bin Laden hiding within a compound deep inside of Pakistan. And finally, last week, I determined that we had enough intelligence to take action, and authorized an operation to get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice.
Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability. No Americans were harmed. They took care to avoid civilian casualties. After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body. [WhiteHouse.gov, 5/2/11]
Whereas Bush Made The "Gravest Error" In Failing To Hunt Bin Laden In Tora Bora
Washington Post: Bush Administration Concluded That "Failure To Commit U.S. Ground Troops To Hunt" Bin Laden "Was Its Gravest Error In The War Against Al Qaeda." From an April 17, 2002, Washington Post article:
The Bush administration has concluded that Osama bin Laden was present during the battle for Tora Bora late last year and that failure to commit U.S. ground troops to hunt him was its gravest error in the war against al Qaeda, according to civilian and military officials with first-hand knowledge.
Intelligence officials have assembled what they believe to be decisive evidence, from contemporary and subsequent interrogations and intercepted communications, that bin Laden began the battle of Tora Bora inside the cave complex along Afghanistan's mountainous eastern border. Though there remains a remote chance that he died there, the intelligence community is persuaded that bin Laden slipped away in the first 10 days of December. [The Washington Post, 4/17/02]
NYT: Bush Administration Denied Brigadier General's Request For More Troops In Tora Bora. From a September 11, 2005, New York Times article:
The American bombardment of Tora Bora, which had been going on for a month, yielded to saturation airstrikes on Nov. 30 in anticipation of the ground war. Hundreds of civilians died that weekend, along with a number of Afghan fighters, according to Hajji Zaman, who had already dispatched tribal elders from the region to plead with bin Laden's commanders to abandon Tora Bora. Three days later, on Dec. 3, in one of the war's more shambolic moments, Hazarat Ali announced that the ground offensive would begin. Word quickly spread through the villages and towns, and hundreds of ill-prepared men rushed to the mountain's base. The timing of the call to war was so unexpected that Hajji Zahir, one of its three lead commanders, told journalists at the time that he nearly slept through it.
On a map, it was little more than a mile from the bottom of the White Mountains to the first tier of the Qaeda caves, but the snow was thick and the slopes were steep and, for the Afghan fighters, it was a three-hour climb. They were ambushed nearly as soon as they arrived. The battle lasted for only 10 minutes before bin Laden's fighters disappeared up the slope and the Afghans limped away. Over the coming days, a pattern would emerge: the Afghans would strike, then retreat. On some occasions, a cave would change hands twice in one day. It was only on the third day of the battle that the three dozen Special Forces troops arrived. But their mission was strictly limited to assisting and advising and calling in air strikes, according to the orders of Gen. Tommy Franks, the head of U.S. Central Command, who was running the war from his headquarters in Tampa, Fla.
Even after the arrival of the Special Forces, the Afghan militias were making little headway in their efforts to assault the Qaeda caves - largely as a result of heavier resistance than they had expected - despite having launched simultaneous attacks from the east, west and north. They had sent none of their forces to the south, where the highest peaks of the White Mountains are bisected by the border with Pakistan. The commanders, according to news reports, argued vehemently among themselves on what the conditions on the southern side of the mountain were: some insisted it was uncrossable, closed in by snow; other commanders were far less sure.
By now, the Taliban's stronghold in Kandahar had fallen or, more correctly, had been abandoned by the soldiers of the regime. The Taliban retreat from Kandahar was emblematic of the war. None of Afghanistan's cities had been won by force alone. Taliban fighters, after intense bombing, had simply made strategic withdrawals. A number of American officers were now convinced that this was about to happen at Tora Bora, too.
One of them was Brig. Gen. James N. Mattis, the commander of some 4,000 marines who had arrived in the Afghan theater by now. Mattis, along with another officer with whom I spoke, was convinced that with these numbers he could have surrounded and sealed off bin Laden's lair, as well as deployed troops to the most sensitive portions of the largely unpatrolled border with Pakistan. He argued strongly that he should be permitted to proceed to the Tora Bora caves. The general was turned down. An American intelligence official told me that the Bush administration later concluded that the refusal of Centcom to dispatch the marines - along with their failure to commit U.S. ground forces to Afghanistan generally - was the gravest error of the war. [The New York Times, 9/11/05]
The Bush administration did do one thing better than anyone else before them they brought incompetence to all time new level of high .
I hope President Obama declassifies some of the CIA papers dealing with this episode so that the entire world can laugh at these idiots. And then we could arrest Rumsfeld, Bush and Cheney for war crimes.
Wow, you must really hate this country as you're willing to invent lies about our former president.
P.S. n'est-ce pas and jonimacaroni1 have been outted, he is one person using multiple screen names. When you’re so far out of the main stream you need to invent personalities to fake support.
Pres. Obama re-instated the task force and set their priorities and gave the command to go in and get him. Bush, sat their with his finger up his arse and he-heing in TV interviews about how he wasn't worried about OBL.
Spoken as a true far left nutjob. Al Queada operated without restriction before the war, now they're dead or on the run.
You need to examine your pathology, CenterRight. Immediately!
But denial (De Nile) is more than just the longest river in Africa, isn't it?
I was in a fraternity along with many other fine people
You too! You're probably a great guy.
However, we don't really need those qualities in our president.
Oh, where do I begin. I almost got convinced to join one when I was 18. It took less than a day for me to realize I was an adult and there was no way I was going to allow another adult to treat me like a child.
You are a LIAR. We dont care about your delusions and spam concerning good posters while you are a disgusting piece of garbage. You must really hate this country since you try so hard to dishonor it. Bush ADMITTED directly he didnt care where Ben Laden was. That isnt inventing anything. GOD but you are stupid
Please provide a link for this claim.
A) Thought that we had forgotten hearing the actual audio quote, or that it had been lost to the sands of time and wouldn't exist on the internet any longer for someone to easily and instantly destroy his argument.
OR:
B) That his right wing media propaganda experience has actually left him so insulated from reality and has protected his delicate republican ears from any negative or inconvenient statements regarding republican leadership so that he was blissfully unaware of this statement.
Couldn't resist. I wonder who I will be accused of sockpuppeting with? Congero? Mary59? Jaguarandi?
I hope it's someone cool!
-hehe
Nah, it'll probably just end up being me.
(Just kidding Kabniel, we're cool right?)
How can you be taken seriously when you post such ignorance. How many quotes and references do you need? Yep, Bush said it. Yep, Bush meant it because he failed at Tora Bora. That is also a historical fact. I suspect that references to facts would not dissuade your wing nut ardor.
By the way, if anyone's curious why tommy stopped posting under his usual name, right ON, it's because he changed that account to southerngal. His old posts under right ON changed when he flipped the screen name.
P.S. n'est-ce pas and jonimacaroni1 have been outted, he is one person using multiple screen names. I asked one a direct question but the other replied, apparently he forgot which screen name he was logged in under. Busted!!!!!! When you’re so far out of the main stream you need to invent personalities to show fake support.
Can you provide a link to this supposed n'est-ce pas faux paux?
n'est-ce pas has provided a working link to BOTH of your transgressions - all you have provided is hear-say.
I will repost them in case you missed them. Number 1 and number 2
See, it ain't that hard!
No they havent. You are a liar.
There is something VERY James O'Keefe about all this. I guess that's trickle down dishonesty for you?
Obama did not change ANYTHING policy-wise from Bush, except the banning of waterboarding.
BOTH Presidents deserve credit. You all make it seem that Bush didn't give a rat's rear about catching Bin Laden. That's false.
By all means, release the CIA papers. All it would do is prove that Bush's policies were successful, and Obama's continuance of these policies enabled the military to finally catch and kill OBL.
Again with the idiocy about water boarding being responsible for giving the name of the courier. The name was given. The man had previously been water boarded, which is a criminal act that violates the Geneva Convention. You cannot prove cause and effect about the information and that is a fact.
Bush did the opposite, military occupation instead of targeted strikes. And even if Obama followed general tactics why would Bush get credit? Why not just say "It was sort of like how McArthur got Hitler therefore McArthur got Bin Laden"?
It's logical that Gore's team would have taken the baton from Clinton and continued to take the threat from Al Qaeda seriously. There's no guarantee that 9/11 would have been prevented, but Gore certainly would have had a better chance of correctly interpreting the intelligence and doing something about it.
More lies. There were tons of targeted strikes under Bush. It was the invasion of Afganistan that enables the local targeted strikes. Do you hate Bush that much you're willing to invent lies about him?
If you don't believe the military was just sitting on it's hands during bushes term, ask General Petraus or that outstanding American General McChrystal. They're the ones who were b!tching about not having the man power to win.
I do hate bush, I don't have to lie about him.
Nice try. If you were in Little League, we'd say "good cut" as you swing wildly and miss.
Why oh why are right-wingers so deficient when it comes to rhetorical argument? If I wanted to argue the conservative side, I could actually make a decent case. Almost all conservatives, however, seem incapable of effectively arguing their side. It's pretty pathetic and you are a good example.
GOD but you are stupid. Was the wiretapee in the US? I am sorry but helping someone as stupid as you understand anything more complicated than a mudpuddle is mission impossible
Even if the calls indeed had an endpoint in the US, it still would not explain - knowing who the courier was at the time - why we would have any difficulty getting a retroactive warrant based on probable cause.
It might do you good to talk to some actual liberals once in a while. You will likely learn something and hopefully avoid making yourself look so foolish in the future.
Does the loony right NOW want to give Bush HALF OF THE BLAME for the failed operations?
HELL NO!
So WHY does Bush deserve credit now? Because the mission was a success?
Seems fair to me.
Ummm, no. We would not.
This, to me, is the very same kind of "credit" Bush deserves for the killing of Bin Laden.
SNARK
.
"I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority."
- G.W. Bush, 3/13/02
Sanchez and others, that were critics of the Bush/Cheney war policies, to speak out against this nonsense of giving Bush credit for killing Bin Laden.
It's pure dishonest partisan nonsense to make such claims.
should Bush also get credit for the US casualty rate dropping dramatically after Obama drew down troops there? There's probably rightwing nuts that would try to lay claim to that too.
SNARK
No logic.
By any means of measurement to the sane, Bush was an unmitigated disaster as President. But, for the sociopathic "conservatives", they will happily take any leap from reality rather than admit the truth. The truth doesn't fit with their warped agenda, so they refuse to live in it. It galls them to no end that sane people see through them, and galls them even worse the an African American is quantumly more effective as President than the last one who attempted to push their warped agenda.
Spoken as a true far far left partisan nutjob. I don't think Bush was great, he was ok. Until the unemployment rate comes down I'd say the same about Obama.
Can you read a simple, bar chart? I'm not going to search it out for you because I know you've already seen it dozens if not hundreds of times! Unemployment peaked at the end of the Bush administration. Frankly, I don't recall and it doesn't matter, whether it was highest just before or just after the Obama inauguration but any ten year old is capable of reading, understanding and interpreting the stats and the cause and effect!
Who is 'the partisan nutjob'? Your unmitigated gall is beyond belief! You folks to a man really do believe that if you repeat the same lies over and over they will become truth.
As a group or individually, your ignorance is exceeded only by your temerity and stubbornness!
Methinks you're a pathological liar besides and it would appear that that gene runs throughout your 'club' as well!
So? All presidents deal with issues created by former administrations.
Did you even read my post? I say Obama is doing an ok job and you call me a partisan nutjob. Wow.
Of course you would say that, since you are a LIAR you are unconstrained by reality, since you are a brainwashed MORON you dont even TRY to make sense or know what you are talking about so you can just say any really stupid thing that floats to the top of that sump between your ears
The fact is that if we got it via torture, in almost all cases, we could have gotten that same info using non-torture interrogation methods. And if that's the case here, then it's thoroughly bogus to assert that torture got us any info.
---Larry Elder
B), (c), & (d). If all the intel came from dubya, why didn't he get him?
It stands to reason that at least SOME of the work took place under Obama, right?
If you can admit that, great. If you can't, kill yourself.
Bush instituted those policies. Those policies led to the intel that got us to UBL's whereabouts.
Obama never acknowledged Bush in his speech, a mistake, and very poor judgment.
No one said Seymour Hersh was your God, but the fact is, and you can look this up for yourself, many liberal blogs covered this, and were in agreement that this was murder, and illegal, and frightening if true.
Why didn't he get them? He did. He just wasn't president. It didn't come on his watch. If you took the time to read any of the hundreds of accounts on the internet, it took several years to determine the couriers' identity, and several more years to find their location.
Some of the work took place under Obama; I have no qualms about acknowledging that and commend him and his administration for what they did.
And here is Example #2,451 of how MMfA dishonestly distorts, cherry-picks and edits key information. In the WaPo article highlighted above, they do not include the key information about downplaying the desire to capture or kill bin Ladin and their belief that promoting how much they were focusing on him would only serve to elevate his status all the more. They also omit Frank's stated belief that bin Ladin was not in the area and not certain the radio intercepts correctly identified him, that there were conflicting reports about his whereabouts. Agree or disagree, but not including either of those two key elements in this post is dishonest and shameful.
Now you're cherry-picking by quoting from Gen. Tommy Frank's PR man, Rear Admiral Quigley. Of course Frank and Quigley don't want to admit that Bin Laden was allowed to escape from Tora Bora, but it's generally acknowledged that he did.
The intelligence community had to fight Bush's advisers to get anything done as far as actionable intelligence. Bush and his team were at odds with interrogation procedures that work as opposed to Jack Bauer inspired fantasies about how one gathers intelligence.
Really it would be better for you to just have another snort of whatever it is you're drinking and go to bed.
Bush and his crew fractured the intelligence agencies. That's what happens when you believe you can filter intelligence and only accept the 5% that is spurious and ridiculous but somehow fits your skewed world-view. His administration must've learned everything they know from Faux News. When asking the inventor of "Stovepiping" (Rummy) he replied "I, I don't know the meaning of that term".
I don't doubt that Bush didn't completely quit the search for OBL; not even a dummkopf of his magnitude would do that but he did get on national media and disavow the attempt. He could have said that we have many priorities and OBL is actually on Death Row just a waitin'. But he didn't.
How much does it hurt you personally for Obama to get him hoosier? How long did it take you to individually formulate the same cr@p on the RWA hate machine as your own thoughts?
I still remember the weekly Westmoreland briefing about how we were "Winning" - Charlie Sheen Style. So you expect me to swallow practically anything coming from our military as accurate?
I really love how RWAs are constantly preaching how Obama can't blame Bush for anything and now Bush is responsible for getting OBL. Too funny and seriously worrying about the sanity of the right wing in this country. I am constantly amazed at the obvious swill they swallow and ask for seconds on.
If your trying to say SEAL team 6 is the assassination squad Hersch was talking about your going to have to provide proof. Most of the people around here aren't gullible. SEAL Team 6 was around long before bush became president.
As far as murder or assassination go, bin laden declared war on us, he died in battle.
There is no proof for the rest of your talking points either.
Dick Cheney in his typical deranged fashion wanted to use the SEALS and other special ops agents to murder people on a list: he would sign off on which ones.
a) killed by a unit overseen by what New Yorker reporter Seymour Hersh denounced as Vice President Dick Cheney's "executive assassination ring," which was
b) sent into action based on intel derived from the now-outlawed "enhanced interrogation techniques," which were
c) used on detainees captured during the George W. Bush administration, who were
d) being held in now-outlawed "secret prisons" or in the intended-to-be-closed Gitmo
---------------------------------------------
a) soldiers do what they are ordered to do. If Cheney used them as an assassination squad, that reflects on Cheney - not Obama.
b)Unproven, but even if it is true, so what? It is not like the same information or more could not have been gathered by legal interrogations. Torture is illegal and immoral PERIOD.
c)Some of the detainees were captured under George W. Bush. That appears to be the greatest extent of GWB's contribution to the OBL capture and I am thankful to him for that. All of the available info indicates these prisoners released their information without being tortured. I think any president would legally interrogate prisoners and I am glad GWB did it in this instance, too.
d)So what if detainees were held in "secret prisons", that does not make "secret prisons" somehow magically more useful, just because some detainees lived there. I mean the detainees had to live somewhere. Right? Why couldn't they live in a military prison someplace else on the US mainland? What difference would it make in the end? Not any that I can see.
P.S. n'est-ce pas and jonimacaroni1 have been outted, he is one person using multiple screen names. When you’re so far out of the main stream you need to invent personalities to fake support.
History is replete with a plethora of examples:
Why don't we form a Committee of Public Safety to decide who could be a threat like France under the Terror?
Or "Arbeitlager" for those who just won't get with the program?
How long until YOU'RE labeled a "terrorist" and I'd really bet you'd change YOUR tune.
What's your problem with someone having dozens of screen names anyway? Please correct my listing of your aliases (or is it aliai when you have so many?): Tommy incarnates: RightOn, RightON2, CenterRight, and James B., Wesley, westla, Metanoia, pongotwistleton, alwaysright1, riverdog, alwaysright, antilib, RaisedRight
Nailed as CenterRight = RightOn at:
http://mediamatters.org/research/201102090033#1187469
My main problem with him is the inability to concede a point, no matter how evident. He also, when backed into a corner, would lose his grip on logic altogether and cling to the most inane and easily debunked arguments. I have a particularly low tolerance for illogical arguments. I've been even known to argue with people who agree with me in their conclusions but back that conclusion up with specious reasoning.
http://mediamatters.org/research/201102090033#1187469
God forbid you ever aquire a soul and a sense of decency and suddenly understand what a putrid excuse for a human being you are.
You are a LIAR. You keep spamming that idiocy for no other reason that you get sheer joy from telling lies. You are also FAR too stupid to know what the mainstream is. You are not in it. Soulless morons like YOU are not in the majority
Please do not assume we are all as cowardly as you are. Some of us understand that our country and its principles are bigger than us.
Tossing out your morality to meet your enemy on their ground is in reality a loss for our ideals. What is a nation? Is it merely the land on which property lines are drawn, or is it the people and the ideals they stand for?
Don't forget that we signed treaties that prohibit the use of torture after the allied powers witnessed the atrocities of the third Reich and Imperial Japan's treatment of prisoners. We denounced torture by the north Vietnamese during that war as well.
We have to be better then that. What good is it to win a struggle against a barbaric foe, if you adopt barbarism as a matter of course?
He said (paraphrase) 'No-o-o-o,... I don't think too much about Saddam uh, I mean Osama bin Laden..'
Too bad you're apparently unable to be ashamed of yourselves. SICKOS!!
If that applies to Bush fighting terror, then it also applies to Bush destroying the economy!!!
Answer: Christopher Nolan
You could say that there might not have been a Batman Begins if Batman & Robin weren't such a wretched movie. In the same way, Obama would not have had to kill bin Laden if Bush hadn't done such an incompetent job of it himself.
Does that make Bill Clinton the Tim Burton?
Perhaps.
I typed out an exquisitely crafted soliloquy comparing and contrasting Clinton and Obama, but strangely MMFA thought I had used profanity when I hadn't. I guess I need to do a copy of my posts before attempting to post so I don't lose so much work.
I'll summarize:
I have greatly admired Clinton's unparalleled political abilities but felt his messages and speeches were too carefully crafted and politically perfect. Obama's speeches are less precise but seem to come from his true beliefs and not an opinion poll. I find it refreshing. After the fulfillment of his seemingly unrealistic campaign promise to take out bin Laden, I have a renewed respect for his cool, calm demeanor and leadership style. I had been critical of him over the last year due to what I felt was his excess fealty to a right-wing that has not intent to compromise with him. Hopefully, his recent success will herald the calm after the storm going into the crucial 2012 elections.
By the way, my second attempt to post also failed even though I rewrote it. It turns out that the problem was saying that I was "h@ard on" Obama over the last year. That's just a pathetic profanity filter. They need to fix that.
I think I mentioned something about flat taxes being hard @n the middle and working classes. Haha.
I like your synopsis, except I think Clinton was far more effective at getting his message and policies across. He had more faith that his common sense Keynesian economic policies WOULD improve everyone's financial situation, and so he pushed a lot harder for them.
- G.W. Bush, Sep. 13, 2001
“I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority.”
- G.W. Bush, March 13, 2002
“I am truly not that concerned about him.”
- G.W.Bush, March 13, 2002
“Gosh, I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those exaggerations.”
- G.W. Bush, presidential debate, Oct. 13, 2002
“If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will.”
- Barack Obama, Aug. 1, 2007
“If we have Osama bin Laden in our sights and the Pakistani government is unable or unwilling to take them out, then I think that we have to act, and we will take them out. We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al-Qaida. That has to be our biggest national security priority.”
- Barack Obama, Second presidential debate: foreign policy, Oct. 7, 2008
“As President of the United States, I will declare war on, bomb, and/or invade Pakistan.”
- Nobody, certainly not Barack Obama, on any date ever
“Another tape says he's [Usama bin Laden] going to invade Pakistan and declare war on Pakistan and Musharraf, which, ladies and gentlemen, puts him on the same page with a Democrat presidential candidate -- that would be Barack "Uss-Obama."
- Rush Limbaugh, The Rush Limbaugh Show, Sept. 20, 2007
“[Obama said] he would bomb an ally, General Musharraf in Pakistan… Barack Obama is not qualified to be president of the United States.”
- Sean Hannity, Hannity & Colmes, Aug. 14, 2007
“[Obama said he would] maybe invade an ally like Pakistan and potentially create a theocracy with nuclear weapons."
- Sean Hannity, Hannity & Colmes, May 12, 2008
“Barack Obama, losing ground to Hillary Clinton because he seemed naive about real world threats, frantically suggest[ed] that he would invade Pakistan.”
- William Kristol, The Weekly Standard, Aug. 13, 2007
“Obama… insisted that US forces invade Pakistan in search of Osama bin Laden - seemingly without regard for the potential consequences of attacking a nuclear-armed nation, ally or not.”
- New York Post, Sep. 8, 2008
“Barack Obama suggested we invade Pakistan, this week, he's a loser.”
- John Gibson, Fox News, The Big Story, Aug. 3, 2007
“Over the years, I've repeatedly made clear that we would take action within Pakistan if we knew where bin Laden was. That is what we've done.”
- Barack Obama, remarks, May 1, 2011
“The American Left, the Democrat Party in this country, and the liberals owe us and the United States an apology… for taking every opportunity to undermine our efforts to track down bin Laden and other terrorists. They have been the primary obstacles to getting bin Laden.”
- Rush Limbaugh, May 3, 2011
“There was no way this would have happened, but for the policies of George W. Bush.”
- Sean Hannity, May 4, 2011
50% rep morons ,and thats going to end the world .Good I needed a vacation anyway ,learn to swim!!!!!1
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/09/AR2006090901105.html
The article is entitled "Bin Laden Trail 'Stone Cold'". In it, troops looking for Bin Laden state that they haven't had evidence on his whereabouts for 2 years. Does it really sound like Bush was on top of it?
Much to the chagrin of Republicans.
Second point of explanation for you people is Obama could not have killed OBL without Bush having set up the infrastucture to do it! Good grief, get a clue people.
Bush failed to apprehend or kill the person most responsible for the deaths of almost 3000 Americans on 9/11. He himself admitted that he didn't think about him anymore, and that was less than six months after the 9/11 attacks. With have the video. It unequivocal. His indifference is really inexcusable and the fact that right-wingers are coming out of the woodwork to try and defend this indefensible policy is a testement to how crazy they really are.
If McCain had been president, we would still be asking Pakistan to please, please find bin Laden for us. He resoundingly criticized Obama in the campaign for his bold and ultimately correct assertion that we should be willing to go into Pakistan and take out bin Laden ourselves. For that policy shift alone, Obama deserves the vast majority of credit for successfully silencing public enemy number one, an individual that he right-wingers had too long ignored.
Your second point, the task force charged with capturing OBL was dismantled by Bush just a few weeks after 9/11.
Please dont try to explain anything to us till you grow a functional brainpan. It is like a monkey trying to explain quantum physics to Stephen Hawking.
GOD but you are so stupid and so brainwashed even making SENSE is far beyond you. Did BUSH set up the NAVY SEALS. Why no that was Kennedy. Did BUSH set up the CIA no that was after WW2. Bush didnt set up ANY infrastructure, he SHUT DOWN the Ben Laden unit. You are too stupid to be humiliting yourself so publicly and so often. GOD but you are ignorant and pathetic
Giving credit would depend on why the economy would be good. Or bad. By your standard it would be okay to credit Bush for it being good.
To be sure I understand too: takemycountryback says that the way you give credit blows with the wind, then you apply the blow-with-the-wind logic again in your reply, which would credit Bush for a good economy.
But takemycountryback just explained that blow-with-the-wind is your standard logic, so why did you apply it to takemycountryback?
1. Why did Obama wait 10 years to get OBL?
2. Why didn't Obama warn the U.S. about 9/11?
3. Obama oversteps his boundaries and goes after OBL without telling GWB.
4. Why did Obama allows our soldiers to be put into harms way for political gain?
5. Why didn't Obama prevent the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand?