it's important to note that W only commuted the prison portion of Libby's sentence, leaving in place his felony conviction (and loss of law license) as well as his $250k fine. moreover, Libby was not guilty of outing Plame- that was Richard Armitage.
On a certain level Bush was a decent man and a good guy to have a beer with, is rumored to be considerate of his yard men, is more considerate of women than Trump, less of a chronic liar than Trump, likes to read My Pet Goat to children and paints with water colors. etc. On another level Dubya started a needless war that continues to lead to more than a million dead and many millions of refugees, authorized torture etc. In a more decent world he would be in the Hague like Milosevic, who for all we know, might also have been nice to friends and family and a pleasant guy to have a drink with.
The war on Iraq and the cut in capital gains tax(biggest win for the rich) are all on him. He was incompetent but still a better human being than Trump. The guy at least had a heart.
If Bush would have had the mental strength to surround himself with good people he probably would be considered a much better president. Unfortunately though that's on him the buck stops with the president. With Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al seeming to control Bush for the majority of his terms the country really had a tough 8 years.
It really isn't. Libby mentioned to reporters that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA, Armitage did as well to different writers but they both did it to undermine Wilson's accurate intelligence in favor of their own misleading garbage; all done in defense of Bush's irrational and outwardly destructive policies.
i think if we're ever to move past the current political divide, we need to reject the "fake but accurate" paradigm you embrace here.
Nothing Trump has done equates to starting an unnecessary war. I have friends that didn't come out of that war as well. One friend, I never bring the topic up but sometimes he does. He starts talking about his experiences and next thing you know he has a facial twitch and is stressing to the max... and he's in great shape compared to some others. Bush spent too much money, started an unnecessary war, and hired a bunch of thugs for top leadership positions that pushed him around because they were his daddy's friends. Also.. I was not a fan of John Kerry, but how Bush's campaign managed to turn John Kerry's service in Vietnam into a nasty political smear campaign is disgusting. Especially when you consider that Bush was playing fly boy back home. A simple John Kerry deserves respect for serving during a war would have sufficed.
Nothing I said was false, half of your rebuttal was and your entire point was "petulant but irrelevant." Your pathological niggling is more exemplary of any partisan divide than anything I've posted in this thread.
I remember back more than 10 years ago during the GW Bush presidency having this debate with many, especially the more liberal, on this board regarding whether GW Bush was the worst President in the US history. I didn't think he was then and certainly don't now. As I said then Bush was bad but not quite the Hardings or Buchanans of the US. I also said it could always get worse and I think most would agree that I'm correct. My own overall opinion of GW Bush hasn't really changed since then. I never thought he was an evil man but do believe that he himself sees himself truly as a compassionate conservative. Unfortunately as others have noted he was ill served by people in his Administration who were too eager to impose an extreme ideological vision of Neoconservatism and also given his own family history, "he tried to kill my daddy", he was more than willing to make the horrific decision to invade and occupy Iraq. A decision that cost us billions of dollars, thousands of American lives, and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives. I think that Bush felt he needed to be president as a family obligation and that he truly wanted to do good. The problem was he lacked a strong enough vision and intellect and instead allowed his presidency to be defined by others in his own administration. Also I find it ironic, that there are so many, including on this board, who fully supported and defended practically everything Bush did back during his Presidency now defending Trump when so much of Trump's rhetoric and actions are against what the 43rd Presidency was about.
