Tag: Worst President Ever

New Poll: The Military Thinks Bush Blows Too

Trish

Bush has never been less popular among American troops, maybe, as Jon pointed out, because he stands in front of them and tells them bold-faced, transparent lies.

No doubt there are other reasons, too, such as demanding they serve…and serve…and serve as he, himself, was never willing to do.

A poll released at year-end by the Military Times shows our soldiers are no longer pickin’ up what Bush is puttin’ down.

Barely one-third of service members approve of the way the president is handling the war

For the first time, more troops disapprove of the president’s handling of the war than approve of it. Barely one-third of service members approve of the way the president is handling the war, according to the [Dec. 22,] 2006 Military Times Poll.

When the military was feeling most optimistic about the war — in 2004 — 83 percent of poll respondents thought success in Iraq was likely. This year, that number has shrunk to 50 percent.

Only 35 percent of the military members polled this year said they approve of the way President Bush is handling the war, while 42 percent said they disapproved. The president’s approval rating among the military is only slightly higher than for the population as a whole. In 2004, when his popularity peaked, 63 percent of the military approved of Bush’s handling of the war…

Just as telling, in this year’s poll only 41 percent of the military said the U.S. should have gone to war in Iraq in the first place, down from 65 percent in 2003. That closely reflects the beliefs of the general population today — 45 percent agreed in a recent USA Today/Gallup poll.

The poll was taken before His Assholiness spoke the other day.

Whatever war plan the president comes up with later this month, it likely will have the replacement of American troops with Iraqis as its ultimate goal. The military is not optimistic that will happen soon. Only about one in five service members said that large numbers of American troops can be replaced within the next two years. More than one-third think it will take more than five years. And more than half think the U.S. will have to stay in Iraq more than five years to achieve its goals.

Almost half of those responding think we need more troops in Iraq than we have there now. A surprising 13 percent said we should have no troops there. As for Afghanistan force levels, 39 percent think we need more troops there. But while they want more troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, nearly three-quarters of the respondents think today’s military is stretched too thin to be effective.

And they should know. So much for Bush listening to those “boots on the ground.”

Cult of Personality Around Bush Has Broken Down

Jon Ponder

Gene Lyons:

Bush is wrecking the GOP everywhere but in the South.

Although polls show slight majorities favoring impeachment, the votes just aren’t there. Even so, it’s not hard to imagine how it could happen. Because to allow an arrogant, arguably delusional president and his shrinking band of ideologically driven aides to double-down in Iraq, gambling the “lives and sacred honor” of American soldiers to save face in a misbegotten war also would do incalculable harm to the idea of self-government.

To remove Bush, however, Republicans would have to take the lead. As Bush is currently wrecking the GOP everywhere but the Deep South, chances may not be as remote as they seem.

The cult of personality surrounding the White House has broken down. Last November, American voters delivered as clear a verdict on Iraq as an offyear electorate can possibly render. No Democratic incumbent lost anywhere. Yet Bush acts as if it never happened.

Bush Caught Lying to Troops about Escalation Plan

Jon Ponder
Here we have one branch of the Traditional Media reporting the true facts on the ground only to have the elite crew in the White House press corps ignore it when the president lies about these same facts to the very uniformed military personnel he intends to send into harm’s way.

If I’m lying, you’re dying: Pres. Bush was caught rewriting recent history in a speech he gave Thursday to the troops at Ft. Benning, Georgia, some of whom are preparing for their third deployment to Iraq. Here is the transcript of the president’s load of bull:

“The [Iraqi] Prime Minister came and said, look, I understand we’ve got to do something about this violence, and here is what I suggest we do. Our commanders looked at it, helped fine-tune it so it would work. . . .

“The commanders on the ground in Iraq, people who I listen to — by the way, that’s what you want your Commander-in-Chief to do. You don’t want decisions being made based upon politics, or focus groups, or political polls. You want your military decisions being made by military experts. And they analyzed the plan and they said to me, and to the Iraqi government, this won’t work unless we help them. There needs to be a bigger presence. . . .

“And so our commanders looked at the plan and said, Mr. President, it’s not going to work until — unless we support — provide more troops. And so last night I told the country that I’ve committed an additional — a little over 20,000 more troops, five brigades of which will be in Baghdad.”

Meanwhile, back in reality, the facts are quite different. The strategy of escalating the war came from the West Wing, not the Iraqi leadership or Bush’s generals:

[A Washington Post story Wednesday] made it abundantly clear that adding U.S. troops was not an idea that emerged from the American commanders — nor, for that matter, from the Iraqis.

And, as it turns out, two stories in this morning’s New York Times add to the evidence: “A narrative pieced together from interviews with participants and from public testimony suggests that through much of the process, generals who had been on the ground in Iraq during the past year had favored that the new strategy begin with a substantially smaller force than the one that President Bush announced to the nation on Wednesday night. In the end, it was Mr. Bush who appeared to drive his commanders along to the conclusion that more troops were needed.”

Not only were the Iraqis not involved in creating the plan, they are not happy about it, according to another Times report:

So, not surprisingly: “Iraq’s Shiite-led government offered only a grudging endorsement on Thursday of President Bush’s proposal to deploy more than 20,000 additional troops in an effort to curb sectarian violence and regain control of Baghdad. The tepid response immediately raised questions about whether the government would make a good-faith effort to prosecute the new war plan.”

Where was the White House press corps on this? Didn’t anyone in that elite corps of journalists know the facts about the origins of the escalation?

Or maybe the president lies so often, they’re inured to it.

Here we have one branch of the Traditional Media reporting the true facts on the ground only to have the elite crew in the White House press corps ignore it when the president lies about these same facts to the very uniformed military personnel he intends to send into harm’s way.

Surge — Send In the Sick Soldiers

Buck Banks

Trauma ward: George Bush’s plan to pour more troops into Iraq will likely mean sending some soldiers who are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s a recipe for disaster, but can’t be helped because the all-volunteer army ain’t got depth. This is a story the Pentagon does not want you to know:

Between Christmas and New Year’s 2006, five U.S. soldiers committed suicide after being informed they’d been ordered to serve an additional tour in Iraq.

PTSD is an anxiety disorder that can emerge after exposure to a terrifying event or ordeal in which grave physical harm occurred or was threatened. A person experiencing PTSD can lose touch with reality and believe that the traumatic incident is happening all over again.

Pentagon doctors estimate that 12 percent of the 1.5 million veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from PTSD. Newly revised Defence Department guidelines for service-members with “a psychiatric disorder in remission, or whose residual symptoms do not impair duty performance” say they may be considered for duty downrange. It lists post-traumatic stress disorder as a “treatable” problem.

Many believe President George W. Bush’s newly announced plan to send 21,500 additional U.S. soldiers to Iraq will involve the redeployment of soldiers suffering from severe trauma. Press reports indicate Bush wants to implement his “surge” by speeding up previously scheduled redeployments and extending the tours of soldiers already in the field of battle.

That reality has increasing numbers of soldiers taking matters into their own hands.

Between Christmas and New Year’s 2006, five U.S. soldiers committed suicide after being informed they’d been ordered to serve an additional tour in Iraq. In Iraq itself, the military announced on Dec. 30 that soldier Michael Crutchfield of Stockton, California killed himself north of the capital, Baghdad.

Leonard Pitts: Support for Bush’s ‘Surge’ a Matter of Trust

Buck Banks

Nailed it: As usual, columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. sussed out the nagging reason that most of us don’t condone President Bush’s latest plan to fix the war in Iraq — we simply don’t trust the guy who has lied to us, spied on us and proved to be the Worst President Ever.

Bush is a man who has heretofore shown only arrogance in the face of monumental and fatal misjudgments. Now he comes before the country asking us, in effect, to trust him.

I know that we’ve been misled to an awful intersection of history where there are no good options, only options in varying shades of bad. I know how tempting it is to say we ought to wash our hands of this mess and bring our men and women home. I know that it still strikes me as wrong, for reasons both moral and pragmatic, to come in, blow up these people’s country, then walk away and leave them in the rubble.

Most of all, though, I know this: I do not trust my leaders. And politics is not the only, or even the primary, reason. No, at the end of the day, this is a question of character.

From the beginning, the architects of this war have shown a frightening nonchalance toward truth, a troubling willingness to treat fact as optional. Where reality has collided with political expedience, political expedience has invariably won. Where it has been inconvenient, it has been ignored.

It happened when the administration linked Iraq to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks even though one had nothing to do with the other. It happened when the White House used discredited intelligence to make the case for war. It happened when the president dismissed gloomy intelligence reports that did not jibe with his preferred view. It happened when he insisted we ”stay the course” even after it became apparent to everyone with eyes that the course led straight off a cliff.

So now, here comes Bush with sober mien and chastened air asking for one more chance to get it right. And if you sense in this corner a reluctance to comply, well, it has less to do with the merits of his proposed strategy than with the fact that it is his proposed strategy. Bush is a man who has heretofore shown only arrogance in the face of monumental and fatal misjudgments. Now he comes before the country asking us, in effect, to trust him.

You can read the complete column here.

Bush: Iraq Study Group Report a ‘Flaming Turd’

Jon Ponder

Scatman: What is it with our fratboy-in-chief’s obession with scatalogical slang:

“He’s also known to cut a few for laughs, especially when greeting new young aides.”

Informed correspondents of the Washington Post and New York Times related in conversation that Bush furiously called the [Iraq Study Group] report “a flaming turd,” but his colorful remark was not published. Perhaps it was apocryphal. Nonetheless, it conveyed the intensity of his hostile rejection.

This is from the same class act whose term of endearment for Karl Rove is “turd blossom.”

Update: EvilPoet reminds us about the president’s obsession with fart jokes:

“He loves to cuss, gets a jolly when a mountain biker wipes out trying to keep up with him, and now we’re learning that the first frat boy loves flatulence jokes. A top insider let that slip when explaining why President Bush is paranoid around women, always worried about his behavior. But he’s still a funny, earthy guy who, for example, can’t get enough of fart jokes. He’s also known to cut a few for laughs, especially when greeting new young aides, but forget about getting people to gas about that.”

Post-Withdrawal Iraq Could Resemble Bloody Aftermath of First Bush’s Gulf War

Jon Ponder

In 1991, the first Pres. Bush promised military support to Iraqi rebels after Saddam’s surrender. But Bush broke the promise and Saddam’s forces masssacred 30,000 rebels and buried them in unmarked graves.

This is how Pres. George W. Bush’s failed Iraq war will end. When U.S. forces pull out of Iraq — whether it is next week, next month, or, as Pres. Bush now prosposes, 10 years from now, the civil war for control of the country will escalate.

The warring factions will include various sects within the majority Shia communtiy, the Sunni minority and the Kurds seeking secession and independence. There may also be forces of outside fundamentalists militias, including al Qaeda, who move in to fill the vaccuum left by departed American forces.

The battle for control of Iraq could be bloody and long, perhaps comparable to the war in Lebanon in the 1980s.

Unfortunately, George Bush lit the fuse on this bomb in the heart of the Middle East in 2003, when he foolishly ordered the invasion of Iraq. Those of us who opposed the war from the start, and who now favor moving our troops out of harm’s way, should be prepared for the violence and bloodshed that erupt in the aftermath of our retreat.

To get a sense of what Iraq will suffer when the U.S. pulls out, we need look no further back than 1991, in the aftermath of the first Gulf War.

Inmediately after the end of the first Gulf War, Pres. George H.W. Bush promised Iraqi Shiites and Kurds American military support if they would rise up and overthrow the newly defeated Saddam Hussein. In a broadcast to Iraqis via Voice of America on Februrary 15, 1991, then-Pres. Bush said:

There is another way for the bloodshed to stop: And that is, for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside and then comply with the United Nations’ resolutions and rejoin the family of peace-loving nations.

But when the rebellion got underway, Bush and his war council, which included Defense Sec. Dick Cheney and Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell, changed their minds about helping the rebels.

This decision led to the massacre of at least 30,000 rebels who were buried in mass graves. Mr. Bush himself has said that what happened to the Shiites was one of the deepest regrets of his presidency

Details of the uprising and its horrific aftermath below the fold.

[…]

Poll: Bush Sucks as President, Commander-In-Chief

Buck Banks

Duh: This just in from the Bleeding Obvious File — George W. Buch is the Worst President Ever, as confirmed by Zogby International’s analysis of its own poll results. This is mildly significant because John Zogby, president of ZI, is, well, kind of a Republican, but even he can’t ignore the numbers.

Even those who identify themselves as Born Again or Evangelical Christians, a group once viewed as ardent Bush supporters, have a negative view of Bush’s handling of the Iraq War.

A December Zogby International telephone poll showed Bush’s national job approval rating sank to 30 percent, falling again from the 31 percent approval rating he dropped to in early June. The survey of 982 likely voters nationwide was conducted Dec. 5-8, 2006, and carries a margin of error of +/- 3.2 percentage points. Americans’ satisfaction with Bush’s job performance has continued to fall from the 61 percent he enjoyed in April 2003, shortly after the start of the war in Iraq, our polling shows. Zogby International has been tracking questions from Bush’s job performance rating to how American’s view Bush’s handling of the Iraq war since the war began in 2003.

Bush’s performance on the Iraq War shows similar low levels of satisfaction — a majority of American’s polled in December (74 percent) give Bush negative marks — the greatest level of dissatisfaction our polling has found since we began tracking Bush’s performance on the war in 2003. Overall, the majority (54 percent) say Bush has performed poorly on the war and 20 percent say he has had fair performance — only 19 percent grade his performance as good and 5 percent as excellent.

Even those who identify themselves as Born Again or Evangelical Christians, a group once viewed as ardent Bush supporters, have a negative view of Bush’s handling of the Iraq War — 46 percent say he has handled the war poorly while 17 percent give him only a fair grade. The same poll also shows only one in three (34 percent) Americans say the war in Iraq has been worth the loss of American lives — among the lowest percentage recorded in a long series of Zogby polls on the question. In November 2003, 44 percent of Americans polled said the war in Iraq was worth the loss of American lives.

Bush: Lamest of the Lame Ducks Limps Toward Irrelevance

Buck Banks

Lonely at the bottom of the top: As the Democrats enjoy their newfound ascendancy in the Congress, the president is finding less and less to enjoy in the waning years of his second term. Indeed, if he wasn’t such an arrogant and ignorant bastard, one could almost be tempted to feel a little bit sorry for him. Congressional Quarterly’s Craig Crawford offers a snapshot of the Bush administration in decline.

With a new Congress that’s run by Democrats, a restive public that’s pining for change and a government in Iraq that’s descending into chaos, the way forward in Washington might not include George W. Bush.

It seems the president is positioning himself as just another spectator on the outskirts of power — firing off letters to the editor. Perhaps he should start his own blog.

Despite the power he has to ramp up his use of the veto, and his tenacious hold on his powers as commander in chief, Bush faces a tough challenge to remain relevant in the waning 24 months of his presidency. Indeed, if not for his war-making clout, this president might be the lamest lame duck ever.

There was something almost sad about Bush putting his own name on an op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal that laid out his legislative agenda on the eve of the formal Democratic takeover of Capitol Hill. Clearly gone are the days when Vice President Dick Cheney could use a private meeting with Republican lawmakers to set the congressional priorities list. Now, it seems, the president is positioning himself as just another spectator on the outskirts of power — firing off letters to the editor. Perhaps he should start his own blog.

Democrats are making the most of returning to power at the Capitol after a dozen years on the outs. Armed with a midterm election mandate widely seen as a repudiation of Bush, they are talking tough about dealing with the White House. For symbolic starters, Cheney was compelled to give up his ornate office just off the House floor to Charles B. Rangel, the New York Democrat who is now chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.

As the clock ticks past the three-quarters mark on the Bush presidency, it is the new, 110th Congress and its crop of 65 new faces that will appear the fresher and more promising, garnering the lion’s share of news media attention — while administration figures come across more and more as yesterday’s news.

In response to the political test posed by that dynamic, Bush is calling for bipartisanship. Funny how the losing side in an election almost always ends up being the one to call for magnanimity. After 12 years of being made almost invisible, especially in the House, Democrats appear in no mood to do anything but pay lip service to the current calls for collaboration. Although careful not to say so publicly, congressional Democrats are champing at the bit for payback. Evicting Cheney from his office was just the beginning.
[…]

Poll: GOP in Military Drops below Half

Jon Ponder

President Bush is having a disastrous effect on his party, including separating it from one of its more reliable constituencies:

The Military Times released its annual poll of active-duty service members, and the results showed something virtually unprecedented: a one-year decline of 10 percentage points in the number of military personnel identifying themselves as Republicans. In the 2004 poll, the percentage of military respondents who characterized themselves as Republicans stood at 60 percent. By the end of 2005, that had dropped to 56 percent. And by the end of 2006, the percentage of military Republicans plummeted to 46 percent.

The drop in Republican Party identification among active-duty personnel is a sharp reversal of a 30-year trend toward the “Republicanization” of the U.S. military, and it could mark a sea change in the nature of the military — and the nature of public debates about national security issues.

The de-Republicanization of the military as a result of Bush’s incompetent leadership is actually a benefit to the nation. It is dangerous for our military to be under the control of a political party, especially one that is run by delusional demagogues.