Do you think Bush deserves to be re-elected?

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Originally Posted by The Man

The biggest problem with Bush is that he's not an honest president, actually. He's far more dishonest than Clinton ever was.

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Let's see... Clinton: lied under oath and cheated on his wife. Bush: made a judgement mistake when it came to WMD's in Iraq. Pretty much everyone in the world knew that Saddam had those weapons. When we got there, there were none. Does this mean Bush lied about them? Not necessarily. Could it be possible that they were moved to Syria, or destroyed, or hidden in some other form? Entirely possible.

And you say that Bush is more dishonest than Clinton? I think you're biased.

If my memory serves, Bush said there was conclusive evidence that Saddam had nukes, despite the fact that considerable intelligence from virtually every source apart from the CIA said that he had none. We still haven't found any. Granted, it's possible that he moved them. But then he wouldn't have had them in the first place. Odds are, yes, Saddam did possess WMD (although I highly doubt he ever possessed nukes) at one point. But if he destroyed them, the odds are strong he didn't possess them at the time we went to war with him.

He's also changed the reason we've gone to war at least twice. First it was because of an indisputable tie with al-Qaida which we still haven't proven, then it was because they had WMD, then it was to liberate the Iraqi people from an oppressive dictatorship. I'm sure he gave other reasons as well, but they're not coming to mind right now.

We run the American justice system on an "innocent until proven guilty" system. Is there any reason we should mete out justice to other countries on a "guilty until proven innocent" principle? Because we're going to make a lot more enemies that way. The "war on terrorism" only seems to be encouraging it; just the other day, a report came out saying al-Qaida's numbers had swelled by, I think, 18,000 or some absurd number.

As for the "under oath" bit, I really don't care. His lie still only should have affected the few people concerned. Yes, it was wrong, but the only reason anyone even cared is because he was the President. Bush's lies, on the other hand, have affected the entire course of world history; by garnering support from a war that it seems more and more evident we had scant evidence for, he has turned the tide of world opinion directly against the U.S. and heartily encouraged that which he claims to have been attempting to fight.

It's sad that most people think that the vote essentially boils down to the lesser of two evils.

Kerry is the lesser, in my opinion. I doubt I'd vote if I was an American, because it doesn't seem right to vote just to get Bush out. We should demand more from politicians/ have greater choice.

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Originally Posted by The Man

As for the "under oath" bit, I really don't care.

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I find it hard to believe that lying under oath isn't a big deal for you. You're being rather hypocritical by completely dismissing a blatant lie, and then denouncing what you think is a lie based on loose evidence and speculation.

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Originally Posted by DocFrance

I find it hard to believe that lying under oath isn't a big deal for you. You're being rather hypocritical by completely dismissing a blatant lie, and then denouncing what you think is a lie based on loose evidence and speculation.

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Look, it's Clintons personal life. If it came down to me being asked how many pieces of toilet paper do I use in the restroom I would have lied under oath too, because I don't want people knowing personal things about me. I'm not going to say what Clinton did was moralistically right or wrong, but the fact of the matter is he was a good president.

I really don't care about his personal life. What I do care about is whether he's honest about it or not. And a good president would not lie under oath.

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Originally Posted by DocFrance

I really don't care about his personal life. What I do care about is whether he's honest about it or not. And a good president would not lie under oath.

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A good president would be honest...then we haven't had one in a while, have we?

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Originally Posted by DocFrance

I find it hard to believe that lying under oath isn't a big deal for you. You're being rather hypocritical by completely dismissing a blatant lie, and then denouncing what you think is a lie based on loose evidence and speculation.

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You're right that lying under oath is not as big a deal to me as telling the entire American people that which turns out to be the truth. Bush clearly stated that there was conclusive evidence that Iraq had WMD and that there were tangible ties to al-Qaida; if the evidence he had was inconclusive, then he was lying by saying it was conclusive evidence. It is the responsible of an elected official to act responsibly; by presenting as the unassailable truth that which we turned out to have inconclusive evidence for, he opened himself to criticism for the results of his actions.

Clinton's lie should really have concerned who? Him, Mrs. Clinton, Monica, and the few other people who actually have just claims to be directly affected by said claims. Bush's lies have drawn us into a war that we had very scant grounds to fight in the first place; they have caused America to lose a vast amount of respect in the eyes of the rest of the world; and they have incited a tremendous amount of recruitment towards the very group this war was, at first, allegedly intended to fight.

You're right that a good president would not lie under oath, but a good president would also not lie to the American people about his evidence for starting a war. While it's true Clinton did other things that are easy to question with hindsight, I find far more to question in Bush's past policies than I find to question in Clinton's policies.

Clinton's trial was a farce and he was lying about his personal life to cover his rear after he screwed up. Particularily admirable? No. Of earth-shaking importance? No. I hate it when people draw parallels between Bush's lies or "mistakes" and Clinton's perjury and act as if Clinton's was the worst of the two. Clinton's lies at least didn't result in the death of a few hundred American soldiers and countless Iraqis.

How do you know Bush wasn't right and the WMD were moved to syria before we came in? Then I could say that you were lying.

Bush said there was conclusive evidence the WMD were there. Since it's come out that a lot of intelligence sources disagreed with the CIA's conclusion that Iraq had WMD (which, apparently, they themselves have admitted they hastily jumped to), it obviously wasn't conclusive by any means. Ergo, Bush either told a lie or was horrifically misinformed, but in the case of misinformation it would be the best for him to sack those responsible rather than carrying on with his ridiculous policy of "keeping the chain of command intact." The fact that he isn't rectifying the obvious flaws in his current chain of command indicates to me that he has no desire to make things better, ergo he won't be getting my vote.

I agree that somwhere along the line something messed up but, I don't think that everyone should blame Bush for the entire war. He was informed by the CIA of WMD also congress voted the war ok. He couldn't send troops unless he had the support of congress. which are supposed to be our representatives.

Bush was surely misinformed; I have enough faith in the man that he wouldn't start a war when all the evidence solidly pointed to there being no traces of WMD in Iraq. What I charge him with is irresponsibility on pushing for war with Iraq when the evidence was hardly solid, and pursuing a war allegedly against terrorism that only ended up bolstering the recruitment for such a force. The fact that he isn't firing, or even severely admonishing, any of his staff for their mess-ups is really what leads me to believe that there's no reason to leave any trust in this administration.

It's also seeming more and more likely that incidents like Abu Gharib may have been encouraged by high-level memos that, as Seymour Hersh wrote:

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encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq.

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Whether the intention of these memos was to circumvent the Geneva Convention in cases where it still ought to have applied is not the issue; the fact is that it appears that the wording of these memos led soldiers to believe that such abuse was not merely tolerated but encouraged. The fact that Rumsfeld, who is allegedly the source of many of these memos, still has his position and has received almost no censure for his actions speaks highly poorly, to me, of the administration, although the accusations of Hersh (and many others) still haven't been conclusively proven. Regardless, Bush is still acting as if there's no problem with the chain of command - has yet, as far as I'm aware, to even acknowledge that issues have been raised - when a large portion of the country and an even larger portion of the rest of the world sees there to be a very big problem indeed.

Quite frankly, I see the man to be living in a bubble.

I dont think Bush will get re-elected as being a pessimist of the situation right now. So many young people of the age of 18 are graduating right to register to vote, and most of them are liberal. An in 30-50 years the usa will be so liberal. Ah its just a personal opinion, dont take it seriously now.. :) I hope he does get re-elected though because we have to let him finish what he started, and he's doing a good job on national security. Many of you guys would probably disagree, but without his actions through the fallout of 9/11 Id say we are a saffer country. The only thing I dont like is are Mexican borders are wide open..

America's too heavily controlled by corporations to become as strongly liberal a nation as, say, Canada, I think. It's obvious no matter your viewpoint that the tide of public opinion has been turning steadily against Bush in the past year or so though, there's no denying that, and the natural reaction is indeed for the nation to become more liberal.

It's not like I'd vote for any liberal just on the basis of his being a liberal, tho'. Actually, if it were a Kerry vs. McCain race instead of a Kerry vs. Bush race, I'd probably vote for McCain.

Edit: I fail to see how we're any safer due to Bush's actions since 9/11. If anything, the terrorists hate us more than ever, I think; there's certainly no denying that there's more of them. There've been a few minor steps in airport security that might prevent another 9/11 from happening if all the people involved end up getting caught in the random security checks, but it won't stop people like al-Qaida from trying to pull off something like 9/11 - These people really don't care about their own lives, so putting in randomly active security measures isn't going to stop them from trying to pass through. That can't be attributed to Bush at all though, and I don't think it's enough.