The dogs in the street know that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney had a long held agenda to go to war with Iraq; before they were elected and certainly before 9/11. The used the convenience of 9/11 to stir up misplaced fear and that combined with a completely bogus yarn about WMDs they pushed the country into an unnecessary and unconsciouable war.
As the years progressed and their lies were one by one exposed, the pointed fingers of blame at everyone around them and beneath them. Colin Powell was fired, as was Rumsfeld. The CIA were blamed for faulty intelligence gathering. The military was blamed for poor planning and threat assesment. The media was blamed for not telling the story the White House wanted us to believe. Everyone was to blame but the architects of the calamity themselves, our supposed leaders.
I always assumed that with leadership came responsibility and with responsibility a duty to accept ownership for failure as well as success. Bush and Cheney accepted ownership for the initial military success…MISSION ACCOMPLISHED…and then ran for cover knocking everyone around them under the bus as the shit began to hit the fan and things started to go wrong.
This is certainly not the only example of Bush/Cheney refusing to own their failure, but it certainly is the most obvious. Between them I can’t think of a single significant mea culpa over the 8 long horrible years of their rule.
How refreshing it is therefore to have a President in the Oval Office who today told the nation, “the buck stops with me” in relation to AIG bonuses, even if the facts show that at least 50% if not more of the buck lies with the previous administration who gave AIG billions no strings attached.
Its nice to have a leader running this country instead of a pair of blame shifters and scapegoat herders.
If the buck stops with him, why does he allow congress to grill the President of AIG? Why doesn’t he publically grill govt for their lack of judgement in doing these bailouts. Why doesn’t he demand that we redo the agreements…hell, its all Bush’s fault.
The buck does stop with him, as it did a year ago when he and Geithner first heard about the bonuses. Oh wait, he was campaigning and probably didn’t get the memo. Well, Geithner as head of the NY Fed sure did.
Matt’s just trying to rebut my trenchant observation about the fact of Dubya’s class and distinction in choosing not to join the choir of folks criticizing our current president for perceived slip-ups. A real lefty will never let an opportunity to call Bush the Antichrist go by (hahahahaha!). In fact most will still be doing it 3 or 4 years after the current president has retired to a lakeside mansion somewhere on Chicago’s Gold Coast.
If the buck stops with him, why does he allow congress to grill the President of AIG? Why doesn’t he publically grill govt for their lack of judgement in doing these bailouts. Why doesn’t he demand that we redo the agreements…hell, its all Bush’s fault.
Ummmm cuz Congress has subpoena rights and they are allowed to grill the CEO of AIG if they want to, they don’t work for the President…its ummmm in the Constitution…kinda.
You should know at least as well as I how Robespierre and Marat ended up. Perhaps Mssrs. Frank and Dodd can do us the favor of flattery by imitation, right down to its bloody conclusion?
This Congress reminds me somewhat of those heady days of mob rule. Only now, instead of the guillotine, they use the subpoena. Even though they’ve accomplished about as much with that subpoena as the good French gentlemen did in their own day with their own courts of “inquiry.”
**The dogs in the street know that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney had a long held agenda to go to war with Iraq; before they were elected and certainly before 9/11. The used the convenience of 9/11 to stir up misplaced fear and that combined with a completely bogus yarn about WMDs they pushed the country into an unnecessary and unconsciouable war. **
Do you not get tired of trotting out this tired conspiracy theory, especially considering that your lone “fact” to “prove” it is that Rumsfeld asked just after 9-11 if we should hit Iraq? Why do you keep throwing this out there as if its fact, when its pure bullshit? You don’t have one iota, one scintilla of evidence, much less proof, that this is even remotely true.
The rest of your post is also pure partisan bile. Man, I’m glad I don’t go around with such hate in my heart on a day to day basis.
And by the way, if you had bothered to check on the facts of the bonus given to the AIG employees, you might find that the outcry about it was pure theatrics as well, which came to light today in the testimony given by the head of AIG to Congress today.
I seem to remember a Secretary of the Treasury under Bush named Paulson, who was at one time the chairman of Goldman Sachs, going before congress and telling them and the American public that if Wall St. And firms like AIG didn’t get billions in bailout money immediately that our entire financial system would collapse. Prez Bush got on TV and told the American people that Wall St. Had to get the money immediately and that the democrats questions as to necessity and oversight were delaying the funds and therefore risking calamity for the country.
I guess some of that oversight would have been a good thing.
Bush and Paulson pulled the biggest rip off of the American treasury in history.
