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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bentway who wrote (611873)	8/27/2004 12:16:16 PM
From: Emile Vidrine	Respond to of 769670

Greenspan: Cut SS payments to elderly, Israel may need more wars and welfare payments: "JACKSON, Wyo. - Federal Reserve (news - web sites) Chairman Alan Greenspan (news - web sites) said Friday that the country will face "abrupt and painful" choices if Congress does not move quickly to trim the Social Security (news - web sites) and Medicare benefits that have been promised to the baby boom generation" story.news.yahoo.com

To: bentway who wrote (611873)	8/27/2004 12:49:22 PM
From: Kevin Rose	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

It seems amazing that the Iraqis would hold such ill will for us. Nearly all Iraqis, outside the Sunnis, seemed to despise Saddam. Now, they seem to equally despise us. Why is that? Well, as Bush finally admitted, we screwed up. Just about everything. At first, the Iraqis thought that the delays in restoring basic services was some sort of subtle punishment or warning. They simply could not believe that the United States, the richest and most powerful country in the world, could really be so incompetent. Our inability to provide security contributed to the mess. First, we let the only organized force, the Iraqi army, simply fade away. The dual hit of loss of a ready security force, and the subsequent insurgency of a number of these troops, not only threw the country into more turmoil, it delayed the ability to provide basic services and safety to the people. Next, we insisted on not committing more troops, because Bush and Rummie didn't want people to think they were wrong. They'd been warned by other Army generals that there were not enough troops for security, but to actually listen to people who knew what they were talking about but disagree with the administration was unthinkable. In Bush's administration, dissent is not allowed, and changes of plan to adjust for reality are derisively seen as 'flip flopping'. So, we lost the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. Unlike in Vietnam, where we never really had them, we HAD the hearts and minds of the vast majority of the Iraqi people. And Bush lost them. Through incompetence, lack of planning, and just plain bull-headed stubbornness, we managed to completely 'flip flop' the people of Iraq from seeing us as deliverers of freedom and prosperity to hated occupiers. If Clinton had been President, just this ONE failure would have been enough to send the Republicans into a purple-headed rage. Unfortunately, this failure is only one of a litany of failures in the Bush administration. We didn't want Bush to fail; we wanted him to stop failing. Now, it's too late. We just want him to go away.