http://www.gallup.com/poll/111280/Bush-App...s-Continue.aspx
I would like to discuss the President's accomplishments, his failures, and his legacy. The link above discusses his approval rating. Personally, I never approved of him, his Cabinet, and his policies. But that's me! What do you think? Am I wrong to think that he is one of the worst presidents in history? He must have done something right--what? I do hope he has many happy years of retirement, and I hope he never has his hands near the levers of power ever again. Does everyone else feel like we have chewed off our arms to sneak away in the morning? Has he been as bad as I think?
Full Version: George W. Bush
He led the economy out of the Clinton Tech Bubble recession of 2000-2001.
QUOTE(mcstumper @ Oct 28 2008, 09:03 PM) 
He led the economy out of the Clinton Tech Bubble recession of 2000-2001.
Please tell me you are joking.
QUOTE(krk @ Oct 28 2008, 10:46 PM)
Please tell me you are joking.
Actually speaking from an economic sense he is 100% right. The recession in 2001-02 started officially in March of 2001. From a velocity of money standpoint, it takes monetary and policy at least 6 months to filter into the US economy because of its sheer size, and most experts feel that the real effects are more like a year or more down the road. Therefore GW Bush who was inaugurated on January 20th of that same year pretty much had zero chance to have an effect on the economy by anything he did.
QUOTE(mcstumper @ Oct 28 2008, 08:03 PM)
He led the economy out of the Clinton Tech Bubble recession of 2000-2001.
I would rather have Clinton discussions in his own thread.
Given that, my question is, what policies did Mr. Bush implement and how did they work out? To what extent were those policies in particular responsible for the alleged success you mention?
QUOTE(southsider2k7 @ Oct 29 2008, 07:52 AM)
Actually speaking from an economic sense he is 100% right. The recession in 2001-02 started officially in March of 2001. From a velocity of money standpoint, it takes monetary and policy at least 6 months to filter into the US economy because of its sheer size, and most experts feel that the real effects are more like a year or more down the road. Therefore GW Bush who was inaugurated on January 20th of that same year pretty much had zero chance to have an effect on the economy by anything he did.
Exactly. I believe in the overriding power of the economic cycle and that the policies of W and Slicky Willie had little to do with the onset of the 2000 and 2008 recessions. However, since the moveon.ogres will undoubtedly hail Obama for a recovery over which he will have contributed nada, I feel it is my obligation to bestow the same glory on George W. Bush.
So... no. Not kidding.
So, you're saying he led us out of the recession you called the Clinton Tech Bubble of 2000-2001 although ..."the policies of W and Slicky Willie had little to do with the onset of the 2000 and 2008 recessions"...?
Exactly. I believe in the overriding power of the economic cycle and that the policies of W and Slicky Willie had little to do with the onset of the 2000 and 2008 recessions. However, since the moveon.ogres will undoubtedly hail Obama for a recovery over which he will have contributed nada, I feel it is my obligation to bestow the same glory on George W. Bush.
So... no. Not kidding.
QUOTE(mcstumper @ Oct 29 2008, 10:44 PM)
Exactly. I believe in the overriding power of the economic cycle and that the policies of W and Slicky Willie had little to do with the onset of the 2000 and 2008 recessions. However, since the moveon.ogres will undoubtedly hail Obama for a recovery over which he will have contributed nada, I feel it is my obligation to bestow the same glory on George W. Bush.
So... no. Not kidding.
Semantics!
Anyhoo, back to thread topic...
Anyhoo, back to thread topic...
KRK, love your thoughtful monkey.
Bush had to deal with more major crisis than any President in modern history. Let's see:
Dot-com Crash
9/11
Katrina
Iraq War
The Tsunami
Global Warming Hysteria
Epic Spike in Illegal Immigration
100-Year Flood
Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac Bailout caused by the CRA Act of 1974.
And during the entire time, received nothing but biased news reporting from nearly everyone in the media and on the net; which led to worldwide disdain for the American people.
But during all that, he managed to remove a genocidal dictator from power and in turn help free 11 million Iraqis, rescuing them from a government that used rape, torture and murder (of men, women and children) to control its people.
Dot-com Crash
9/11
Katrina
Iraq War
The Tsunami
Global Warming Hysteria
Epic Spike in Illegal Immigration
100-Year Flood
Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac Bailout caused by the CRA Act of 1974.
And during the entire time, received nothing but biased news reporting from nearly everyone in the media and on the net; which led to worldwide disdain for the American people.
But during all that, he managed to remove a genocidal dictator from power and in turn help free 11 million Iraqis, rescuing them from a government that used rape, torture and murder (of men, women and children) to control its people.
QUOTE(Roger Kaputnik @ Oct 28 2008, 03:01 PM)
http://www.gallup.com/poll/111280/Bush-App...s-Continue.aspx
I would like to discuss the President's accomplishments, his failures, and his legacy. The link above discusses his approval rating. Personally, I never approved of him, his Cabinet, and his policies. But that's me! What do you think? Am I wrong to think that he is one of the worst presidents in history? He must have done something right--what? I do hope he has many happy years of retirement, and I hope he never has his hands near the levers of power ever again. Does everyone else feel like we have chewed off our arms to sneak away in the morning? Has he been as bad as I think?
Still better than the Democrat-Controlled Congress:
http://www.pollingreport.com/CongJob.htm
QUOTE(krk @ Oct 30 2008, 12:41 PM)
Interesting article and site. Spent a lot of time browsing.
Those are good ones, but I think there are several important disagreements on the credit due to Mr. B. At any rate, I highly recomment the Gentle Reader's perusal of the article.
QUOTE(Dan @ Oct 31 2008, 09:15 AM)
Bush had to deal with more major crisis than any President in modern history. Let's see:
Dot-com Crash
9/11
Katrina
Iraq War
The Tsunami
Global Warming Hysteria
Epic Spike in Illegal Immigration
100-Year Flood
Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac Bailout caused by the CRA Act of 1974.
And during the entire time, received nothing but biased news reporting from nearly everyone in the media and on the net; which led to worldwide disdain for the American people.
But during all that, he managed to remove a genocidal dictator from power and in turn help free 11 million Iraqis, rescuing them from a government that used rape, torture and murder (of men, women and children) to control its people.
Dot-com Crash
9/11
Katrina
Iraq War
The Tsunami
Global Warming Hysteria
Epic Spike in Illegal Immigration
100-Year Flood
Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac Bailout caused by the CRA Act of 1974.
And during the entire time, received nothing but biased news reporting from nearly everyone in the media and on the net; which led to worldwide disdain for the American people.
But during all that, he managed to remove a genocidal dictator from power and in turn help free 11 million Iraqis, rescuing them from a government that used rape, torture and murder (of men, women and children) to control its people.
Much of the bad press was simply reporting of what he was up to. The hoary bias claim is pretty much discredited, given the rah-rah press Mr. Bush has enjoyed despite anything.
The worldwide disdain is not directed at the American people. It is directed at the American government, mostly, and the American multinationals, much of it well-deserved. The disdain for Mr. Bush is not just felt by non-Americans, by the way.
In your list, you essentially play back the standard neocon lines. I suggest you look up the facts in www.snopes.com and www.factcheck.org.
Global Warming Hysteria? Seriously? 
QUOTE(Roger Kaputnik @ Oct 31 2008, 10:27 AM)
Much of the bad press was simply reporting of what he was up to. The hoary bias claim is pretty much discredited, given the rah-rah press Mr. Bush has enjoyed despite anything.
The worldwide disdain is not directed at the American people. It is directed at the American government, mostly, and the American multinationals, much of it well-deserved. The disdain for Mr. Bush is not just felt by non-Americans, by the way.
In your list, you essentially play back the standard neocon lines. I suggest you look up the facts in www.snopes.com and www.factcheck.org.
"standard neocon lines" is a standard neolib line; you're better than that Roger. Regardless, it does not make what I stated any less correct. Bush has faced more epic/catastrophic/severe national crises more than any President in modern history. If I am wrong, then please tell me which president has experienced more epic/catastrophic/severe national crises than Bush, and what those crises were.
Media bias has been scientifically proven and admitted to, time and again by both sides of the isle, and by the media themselves. Yes, republicans can conduct scientific studies and surveys, the left does not have a monopoly on factual research.
For example, these are reporters, correspondents and "journalists" who admit it:
QUOTE
The elephant in the newsroom is our narrowness. Too often, we wear liberalism on our sleeve and are intolerant of other lifestyles and opinions....We’re not very subtle about it at this paper: If you work here, you must be one of us. You must be liberal, progressive, a Democrat. I’ve been in communal gatherings in The Post, watching election returns, and have been flabbergasted to see my colleagues cheer unabashedly for the Democrats.”
— Washington Post “Book World” editor Marie Arana in a contribution to the Post’s “daily in-house electronic critiques,” as quoted by Post media reporter Howard Kurtz in an October 3, 2005 article.
Newsweek’s Evan Thomas: “Is this attack [on public broadcasting’s budget] going to make NPR a little less liberal?”
NPR legal correspondent Nina Totenberg: “I don’t think we’re liberal to begin with and I think if you would listen, Evan, you would know that.”
Thomas: “I do listen to you and you’re not that liberal, but you’re a little bit liberal.”
Totenberg: “No, I don’t think so. I don’t think that’s a fair criticism, I really don’t — any more than, any more than you would say that Newsweek is liberal.”
Thomas: “I think Newsweek is a little liberal.”
— Exchange on the June 26, 2005 Inside Washington.
“There is, Hugh, I agree with you, a deep anti-military bias in the media. One that begins from the premise that the military must be lying, and that American projection of power around the world must be wrong. I think that that is a hangover from Vietnam, and I think it’s very dangerous. That’s different from the media doing it’s job of challenging the exercise of power without fear or favor.”
— ABC News White House correspondent Terry Moran talking with Los Angeles-based national radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt, May 17, 2005.
“I believe it is true that a significant chunk of the press believes that Democrats are incompetent but good-hearted, and Republicans are very efficient but evil.”
— Wall Street Journal political editor John Harwood on the April 23, 2005 Inside Washington.
“I worked for the New York Times for 25 years. I could probably count on one hand, in the Washington bureau of the New York Times, people who would describe themselves as people of faith....I think one of the real built-in biases in the media is towards secularism....You want diversity in the newsroom, not because of some quota, but because you have to have diversity to cover the story well and cover all aspects of a society. And you don’t have religious people making the decisions about where coverage is focused. And I think that’s one of the faults.”
— Former New York Times reporter Steve Roberts, now a journalism professor at George Washington University, on CNN’s Reliable Sources, March 27, 2005.
“Personally, I have a great affection for CBS News....But I stopped watching it some time ago. The unremitting liberal orientation finally became too much for me. I still check in, but less and less frequently. I increasingly drift to NBC News and Fox and MSNBC.”
— Former CBS News President Van Gordon Sauter in an op-ed published January 13, 2005 in the Los Angeles Times.
Joe Scarborough: “Is there a liberal bias in the media or is the bias towards getting the story first and getting the highest ratings, therefore, making the most money?”
Former ABC 20/20 anchor Hugh Downs: “Well, I think the latter, by far. And, of course, when the word ‘liberal’ came to be a pejorative word, you began to wonder, you have to say that the press doesn’t want to be thought of as merely liberal. But people tend to be more liberated in their thought when they are closer to events and know a little more about what the background of what’s happening. So, I suppose, in that respect, there is a liberal, if you want to call it a bias. The press is a little more in touch with what’s happening.”
— MSNBC’s Scarborough Country, January 10, 2005.
“Does anybody really think there wouldn’t have been more scrutiny if this [CBS’s bogus 60 Minutes National Guard story] had been about John Kerry?”
— Former 60 Minutes Executive Producer Don Hewitt at a January 10, 2005 meeting at CBS News, as quoted later that day by Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s Hardball.
“The notion of a neutral, non-partisan mainstream press was, to me at least, worth holding onto. Now it’s pretty much dead, at least as the public sees things. The seeds of its demise were sown with the best of intentions in the late 1960s, when the AMMP [American Mainstream Media Party] was founded in good measure (and ironically enough) by CBS. Old folks may remember the moment: Walter Cronkite stepped from behind the podium of presumed objectivity to become an outright foe of the war in Vietnam. Later, he and CBS’s star White House reporter, Dan Rather, went to painstaking lengths to make Watergate understandable to viewers, which helped seal Richard Nixon’s fate as the first President to resign. The crusades of Vietnam and Watergate seemed like a good idea at the time, even a noble one, not only to the press but perhaps to a majority of Americans. The problem was that, once the AMMP declared its existence by taking sides, there was no going back. A party was born.”
— Newsweek’s chief political reporter, Howard Fineman, “The ‘Media Party’ is over: CBS’ downfall is just the tip of the iceberg,” January 11 , 2005.
“Most members of the establishment media live in Washington and New York. Most of them don’t drive pickup trucks, most of them don’t have guns, most of them don’t go to NASCAR, and every day we’re not out in areas that care about those things and deal with those things as part of their daily lives, we are out of touch with a lot of America and with a lot of America that supports George W. Bush.”
— ABC News Political Director Mark Halperin during live television coverage immediately before John Kerry’s concession speech on November 3, 2004.
“I know a lot of you believe that most people in the news business are liberal. Let me tell you, I know a lot of them, and they were almost evenly divided this time. Half of them liked Senator Kerry; the other half hated President Bush.”
— CBS’s Andy Rooney on the November 7, 2004 60 Minutes.
“There’s one other base here: the media. Let’s talk a little media bias here. The media, I think, wants Kerry to win. And I think they’re going to portray Kerry and Edwards — I’m talking about the establishment media, not Fox, but — they’re going to portray Kerry and Edwards as being young and dynamic and optimistic and all, there’s going to be this glow about them that some, is going to be worth, collectively, the two of them, that’s going to be worth maybe 15 points.”
— Newsweek’s Evan Thomas on Inside Washington, July 10, 2004.
The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz: “You’ve said on the program Inside Washington that because of the portrayal of Kerry and Edwards as ‘young and dynamic and optimistic,’ that that’s worth maybe 15 points.”
Newsweek’s Evan Thomas: “Stupid thing to say. It was completely wrong. But I do think that, I do think that the mainstream press, I’m not talking about the blogs and Rush and all that, but the mainstream press favors Kerry. I don’t think it’s worth 15 points. That was just a stupid thing to say.”
Kurtz: “Is it worth five points?”
Thomas: “Maybe, maybe.”
— Exchange on CNN’s Reliable Sources, October 17, 2004.
Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham: “The work of the evening, obviously, is to connect George W. Bush to the great war leaders of the modern era. You’re going to hear about Churchill projecting power against public opinion....”
MSNBC’s Chris Matthews: “But Iraq was a popular cause when he first started it. It wasn’t like Churchill speaking against the Nazis.”
Meacham: “That’s not the way the Republican Party sees it. They think that all of us and the New York Times are against them.”
Matthews: “Well, they’re right about the New York Times, and they may be right about all of us.”
— Exchange shortly after 8:30pm EDT during MSNBC’s live convention coverage, August 30, 2004.
“Of course it is....These are the social issues: gay rights, gun control, abortion and environmental regulation, among others. And if you think The Times plays it down the middle on any of them, you’ve been reading the paper with your eyes closed.”
— New York Times Public Editor Daniel Okrent in a July 25, 2004 column which appeared under a headline asking, “Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?”
“Like every other institution, the Washington and political press corps operate with a good number of biases and predilections. They include, but are not limited to, a near-universal shared sense that liberal political positions on social issues like gun control, homosexuality, abortion, and religion are the default, while more conservative positions are ‘conservative positions.’...”
“The press, by and large, does not accept President Bush’s justifications for the Iraq war....It does not accept the proposition that the Bush tax cuts helped the economy....It remains fixated on the unemployment rate....The worldview of the dominant media can be seen in every frame of video and every print word choice that is currently being produced about the presidential race.”
— From the February 10, 2004 edition of ABCNews.com’s “The Note,” a daily political memo assembled by ABC News political director Mark Halperin and his staff.
Jack Cafferty: “Can you say liberal? And the liberal talk radio station Air America debuts today....The question is, does America need additional ‘liberal’ media outlets?...”
Bill Hemmer: “I think it’s a good question....Why hasn’t a liberal radio station or TV network never taken off before?”
Cafferty: “We have them. Are you, did you just get off a vegetable truck from the South Bronx? They’re everywhere....What do they call this joint? The Clinton News Network?”
— Exchange on CNN’s American Morning, March 31, 2004.
“I think most claims of liberal media bias are overblown. At the same time, I do think that reporters often let their cultural predilections drive their coverage of social issues, and the coverage of the gay marriage amendment offers a perfect example....Why do reporters assume that the amendment is a fringe concern? Perhaps because nearly all live in big cities, among educated, relatively affluent peers, who hold liberal views on social matters. In Washington and New York, gay marriage is an utterly mainstream proposition. Unfortunately, in most of the country, it’s not.”
— New Republic Senior Editor Jonathan Chait, CBSNews.com, March 1, 2004.
“Where I work at ABC, people say ‘conservative’ the way people say ‘child molester.’”
— ABC 20/20 co-anchor John Stossel to CNSNews.com reporter Robert Bluey, in a story posted January 28, 2004.
“I think they [most reporters] are on the humane side, and that would appear to many to be on the liberal side. A lot of newspaper people — and to a lesser degree today, the TV people — come up through the ranks, through the police-reporting side, and they see the problems of their fellow man, beginning with their low salaries — which newspaper people used to have anyway — and right on through their domestic quarrels, their living conditions. The meaner side of life is made visible to most young reporters. I think it affects their sentimental feeling toward their fellow man and that is interpreted by some less-sensitive people as being liberal.”
— Former CBS Evening News anchor Walter Cronkite to Time magazine’s Richard Zoglin in an interview published in the magazine’s November 3, 2003 edition.
“I thought he [former CBS News correspondent Bernard Goldberg] made some very good points. There is just no question that I, among others, have a liberal bias. I mean, I’m consistently liberal in my opinions. And I think some of the, I think Dan [Rather] is transparently liberal. Now, he may not like to hear me say that. I always agree with him, too, but I think he should be more careful.”
— CBS’s 60 Minutes commentator Andy Rooney on Goldberg’s book, Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News, on CNN’s Larry King Live, June 5, 2002.
“Most of the time I really think responsible journalists, of which I hope I’m counted as one, leave our bias at the side of the table. Now it is true, historically in the media, it has been more of a liberal persuasion for many years. It has taken us a long time, too long in my view, to have vigorous conservative voices heard as widely in the media as they now are. And so I think yes, on occasion, there is a liberal instinct in the media which we need to keep our eye on, if you will.”
— ABC anchor Peter Jennings appearing on CNN’s Larry King Live, April 10, 2002
“[Journalists] have a certain worldview based on being in Manhattan...that isn’t per se liberal, but if you look at people there, they lean’ in that direction.”
— Columbia Journalism Review publisher David Laventhol, as reported in “Leaning on the Media” by Mark Jurkowitz, The Boston Globe, January 17, 2002.
“There is a liberal bias. It’s demonstrable. You look at some statistics. About 85 percent of the reporters who cover the White House vote Democratic, they have for a long time. There is a, particularly at the networks, at the lower levels, among the editors and the so-called infrastructure, there is a liberal bias. There is a liberal bias at Newsweek, the magazine I work for — most of the people who work at Newsweek live on the upper West Side in New York and they have a liberal bias....[ABC White House reporter] Brit Hume’s bosses are liberal and they’re always quietly denouncing him as being a right-wing nut.”
— Newsweek Washington Bureau Chief Evan Thomas on Inside Washington, May 12, 1996.
“Everybody knows that there’s a liberal, that there’s a heavy liberal persuasion among correspondents.....Anybody who has to live with the people, who covers police stations, covers county courts, brought up that way, has to have a degree of humanity that people who do not have that exposure don’t have, and some people interpret that to be liberal. It’s not a liberal, it’s humanitarian and that’s a vastly different thing.”
— Former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite at the March 21, 1996 Radio & TV Correspondents Dinner.
“There are lots of reasons fewer people are watching network news, and one of them, I’m more convinced than ever, is that our viewers simply don’t trust us. And for good reason. The old argument that the networks and other `media elites’ have a liberal bias is so blatantly true that it’s hardly worth discussing anymore. No, we don’t sit around in dark corners and plan strategies on how we’re going to slant the news. We don’t have to. It comes naturally to most reporters.....Mr. Engberg’s report set new standards for bias....Can you imagine, in your wildest dreams, a network news reporter calling Hillary Clinton’s health care plan ‘wacky?’...
“‘Reality Check’ suggests the viewers are going to get the facts. And then they can make up their mind. As Mr. Engberg might put it: ‘Time Out!’ You’d have a better chance of getting the facts someplace else — like Albania.”
— CBS reporter Bernard Goldberg on an anti-flat tax story by CBS reporter Eric Engberg, February 13, 1996 Wall Street Journal op-ed.
“I think this is another reflection of the overwhelming journalistic tilt towards liberalism and those programs. Now, the question is whether that’s bad or not, and that’s another debate. But the idea that many of us, and my colleagues deny that there is this kind of bias is nuts, because there is in our world — I forget what the surveys show, but most of us are Democratic and probably most of us line up in the fairly liberal world.”
— Time Washington contributing editor Hugh Sidey responding to a caller who asked if journalists are in favor of affirmative action, July 21, 1995 C-SPAN Washington Journal.
“As much as we try to think otherwise, when you’re covering someone like yourself, and your position in life is insecure, she’s your mascot. Something in you roots for her. You’re rooting for your team. I try to get that bias out, but for many of us it’s there.”
— Time Senior Writer Margaret Carlson quoted in The Washington Post, March 7, 1994.
“I think liberalism lives — the notion that we don’t have to stay where we are as a society, we have promises to keep, and it is liberalism, whether people like it or not, which has animated all the years of my life. What on Earth did conservatism ever accomplish for our country? It was people who wanted to change things for the better.”
— Charles Kuralt talking with Morley Safer on the CBS special, One for the Road with Charles Kuralt, May 5, 1994.
“I won’t make any pretense that the ‘American Agenda’ [segments on World News Tonight] is totally neutral. We do take a position. And I think the public wants us now to take a position. If you give both sides and ‘Well, on the one hand this and on the other that’ — I think people kind of really want you to help direct their thinking on some issues.”
— ABC News reporter Carole Simpson on CNBC’s Equal Time, August 9, 1994.
“I think we are aware, as everybody who works in the media is, that the old stereotype of the liberal bent happens to be true, and we’re making a concerted effort to really look for more from the other, without being ponderous or lecturing or trying to convert people to another way of thinking.”
— ABC World News Tonight Executive Producer Emily Rooney, September 27, 1993 Electronic Media.
“The group of people I’ll call The Press — by which I mean several dozen political journalists of my acquaintance, many of whom the Buchanan administration may someday round up on suspicion of having Democratic or even liberal sympathies — was of one mind as the season’s first primary campaign shuddered toward its finish. I asked each of them, one after another, this question: If you were a New Hampshire Democrat, whom would you vote for? The answer was always the same; and the answer was always Clinton. In this group, in my experience, such unanimity is unprecedented....
“Almost none is due to calculations about Clinton being ‘electable’...and none at all is due to belief in Clinton’s denials in the Flowers business, because no one believes these denials. No, the real reason members of The Press like Clinton is simple, and surprisingly uncynical: they think he would make a very good, perhaps a great, President. Several told me they were convinced that Clinton is the most talented presidential candidate they have ever encountered, JFK included.”
— New Republic Senior Editor Hendrik Hertzberg, March 9, 1992 issue.
“We’re unpopular because the press tends to be liberal, and I don’t think we can run away from that. And I think we’re unpopular with a lot of conservatives and Republicans this time because the White House press corps by and large detested George Bush, probably for good and sufficient reason, they certainly can cite chapter and verse. But their real contempt for him showed through in their reporting in a way that I think got up the nose of the American people.”
— Time writer William A. Henry III on the PBS November 4, 1992 election-night special The Finish Line.
“Coverage of the campaign vindicated exactly what conservatives have been saying for years about liberal bias in the media. In their defense, journalists say that though they may have their personal opinions, as professionals they are able to correct for them when they write. Sounds nice, but I’m not buying any.”
— Former Newsweek reporter Jacob Weisberg in The New Republic, November 23, 1992 issue.
“There is no such thing as objective reporting...I’ve become even more crafty about finding the voices to say the things I think are true. That’s my subversive mission.”
— Boston Globe environmental reporter Dianne Dumanoski at an Utne Reader symposium May 17-20, 1990. Quoted by Micah Morrison in the July 1990 American Spectator.
“I do have an axe to grind...I want to be the little subversive person in television.”
— Barbara Pyle, CNN Environmental Editor and Turner Broadcasting Vice President for Environmental Policy, as quoted by David Brooks in the July 1990 American Spectator.
“I’m not sure it’s useful to include every single point of view simply in order to cover every base because you can come up with a program that’s virtually impossible for the audience to sort out.”
— PBS Senior Producer Linda Harrar commenting on PBS’s ten-part series, Race to Save The Planet, to MRC and reported in the December 1990 MediaWatch.
“As the science editor at Time I would freely admit that on this issue we have crossed the boundary from news reporting to advocacy.”
— Time Science Editor Charles Alexander at a September 16, 1989 global warming conference at the Smithsonian Institution as quoted by David Brooks in an October 5, 1989 Wall Street Journal column.
“Clearly the networks have made that decision now, where you’d have to call it [global warming stories] advocacy.”
— NBC News Capitol Hill correspondent Andrea Mitchell at a September 16, 1989 global warming conference at the Smithsonian Institution as quoted by David Brooks in an October 5, 1989 Wall Street Journal column.
— Washington Post “Book World” editor Marie Arana in a contribution to the Post’s “daily in-house electronic critiques,” as quoted by Post media reporter Howard Kurtz in an October 3, 2005 article.
Newsweek’s Evan Thomas: “Is this attack [on public broadcasting’s budget] going to make NPR a little less liberal?”
NPR legal correspondent Nina Totenberg: “I don’t think we’re liberal to begin with and I think if you would listen, Evan, you would know that.”
Thomas: “I do listen to you and you’re not that liberal, but you’re a little bit liberal.”
Totenberg: “No, I don’t think so. I don’t think that’s a fair criticism, I really don’t — any more than, any more than you would say that Newsweek is liberal.”
Thomas: “I think Newsweek is a little liberal.”
— Exchange on the June 26, 2005 Inside Washington.
“There is, Hugh, I agree with you, a deep anti-military bias in the media. One that begins from the premise that the military must be lying, and that American projection of power around the world must be wrong. I think that that is a hangover from Vietnam, and I think it’s very dangerous. That’s different from the media doing it’s job of challenging the exercise of power without fear or favor.”
— ABC News White House correspondent Terry Moran talking with Los Angeles-based national radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt, May 17, 2005.
“I believe it is true that a significant chunk of the press believes that Democrats are incompetent but good-hearted, and Republicans are very efficient but evil.”
— Wall Street Journal political editor John Harwood on the April 23, 2005 Inside Washington.
“I worked for the New York Times for 25 years. I could probably count on one hand, in the Washington bureau of the New York Times, people who would describe themselves as people of faith....I think one of the real built-in biases in the media is towards secularism....You want diversity in the newsroom, not because of some quota, but because you have to have diversity to cover the story well and cover all aspects of a society. And you don’t have religious people making the decisions about where coverage is focused. And I think that’s one of the faults.”
— Former New York Times reporter Steve Roberts, now a journalism professor at George Washington University, on CNN’s Reliable Sources, March 27, 2005.
“Personally, I have a great affection for CBS News....But I stopped watching it some time ago. The unremitting liberal orientation finally became too much for me. I still check in, but less and less frequently. I increasingly drift to NBC News and Fox and MSNBC.”
— Former CBS News President Van Gordon Sauter in an op-ed published January 13, 2005 in the Los Angeles Times.
Joe Scarborough: “Is there a liberal bias in the media or is the bias towards getting the story first and getting the highest ratings, therefore, making the most money?”
Former ABC 20/20 anchor Hugh Downs: “Well, I think the latter, by far. And, of course, when the word ‘liberal’ came to be a pejorative word, you began to wonder, you have to say that the press doesn’t want to be thought of as merely liberal. But people tend to be more liberated in their thought when they are closer to events and know a little more about what the background of what’s happening. So, I suppose, in that respect, there is a liberal, if you want to call it a bias. The press is a little more in touch with what’s happening.”
— MSNBC’s Scarborough Country, January 10, 2005.
“Does anybody really think there wouldn’t have been more scrutiny if this [CBS’s bogus 60 Minutes National Guard story] had been about John Kerry?”
— Former 60 Minutes Executive Producer Don Hewitt at a January 10, 2005 meeting at CBS News, as quoted later that day by Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s Hardball.
“The notion of a neutral, non-partisan mainstream press was, to me at least, worth holding onto. Now it’s pretty much dead, at least as the public sees things. The seeds of its demise were sown with the best of intentions in the late 1960s, when the AMMP [American Mainstream Media Party] was founded in good measure (and ironically enough) by CBS. Old folks may remember the moment: Walter Cronkite stepped from behind the podium of presumed objectivity to become an outright foe of the war in Vietnam. Later, he and CBS’s star White House reporter, Dan Rather, went to painstaking lengths to make Watergate understandable to viewers, which helped seal Richard Nixon’s fate as the first President to resign. The crusades of Vietnam and Watergate seemed like a good idea at the time, even a noble one, not only to the press but perhaps to a majority of Americans. The problem was that, once the AMMP declared its existence by taking sides, there was no going back. A party was born.”
— Newsweek’s chief political reporter, Howard Fineman, “The ‘Media Party’ is over: CBS’ downfall is just the tip of the iceberg,” January 11 , 2005.
“Most members of the establishment media live in Washington and New York. Most of them don’t drive pickup trucks, most of them don’t have guns, most of them don’t go to NASCAR, and every day we’re not out in areas that care about those things and deal with those things as part of their daily lives, we are out of touch with a lot of America and with a lot of America that supports George W. Bush.”
— ABC News Political Director Mark Halperin during live television coverage immediately before John Kerry’s concession speech on November 3, 2004.
“I know a lot of you believe that most people in the news business are liberal. Let me tell you, I know a lot of them, and they were almost evenly divided this time. Half of them liked Senator Kerry; the other half hated President Bush.”
— CBS’s Andy Rooney on the November 7, 2004 60 Minutes.
“There’s one other base here: the media. Let’s talk a little media bias here. The media, I think, wants Kerry to win. And I think they’re going to portray Kerry and Edwards — I’m talking about the establishment media, not Fox, but — they’re going to portray Kerry and Edwards as being young and dynamic and optimistic and all, there’s going to be this glow about them that some, is going to be worth, collectively, the two of them, that’s going to be worth maybe 15 points.”
— Newsweek’s Evan Thomas on Inside Washington, July 10, 2004.
The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz: “You’ve said on the program Inside Washington that because of the portrayal of Kerry and Edwards as ‘young and dynamic and optimistic,’ that that’s worth maybe 15 points.”
Newsweek’s Evan Thomas: “Stupid thing to say. It was completely wrong. But I do think that, I do think that the mainstream press, I’m not talking about the blogs and Rush and all that, but the mainstream press favors Kerry. I don’t think it’s worth 15 points. That was just a stupid thing to say.”
Kurtz: “Is it worth five points?”
Thomas: “Maybe, maybe.”
— Exchange on CNN’s Reliable Sources, October 17, 2004.
Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham: “The work of the evening, obviously, is to connect George W. Bush to the great war leaders of the modern era. You’re going to hear about Churchill projecting power against public opinion....”
MSNBC’s Chris Matthews: “But Iraq was a popular cause when he first started it. It wasn’t like Churchill speaking against the Nazis.”
Meacham: “That’s not the way the Republican Party sees it. They think that all of us and the New York Times are against them.”
Matthews: “Well, they’re right about the New York Times, and they may be right about all of us.”
— Exchange shortly after 8:30pm EDT during MSNBC’s live convention coverage, August 30, 2004.
“Of course it is....These are the social issues: gay rights, gun control, abortion and environmental regulation, among others. And if you think The Times plays it down the middle on any of them, you’ve been reading the paper with your eyes closed.”
— New York Times Public Editor Daniel Okrent in a July 25, 2004 column which appeared under a headline asking, “Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?”
“Like every other institution, the Washington and political press corps operate with a good number of biases and predilections. They include, but are not limited to, a near-universal shared sense that liberal political positions on social issues like gun control, homosexuality, abortion, and religion are the default, while more conservative positions are ‘conservative positions.’...”
“The press, by and large, does not accept President Bush’s justifications for the Iraq war....It does not accept the proposition that the Bush tax cuts helped the economy....It remains fixated on the unemployment rate....The worldview of the dominant media can be seen in every frame of video and every print word choice that is currently being produced about the presidential race.”
— From the February 10, 2004 edition of ABCNews.com’s “The Note,” a daily political memo assembled by ABC News political director Mark Halperin and his staff.
Jack Cafferty: “Can you say liberal? And the liberal talk radio station Air America debuts today....The question is, does America need additional ‘liberal’ media outlets?...”
Bill Hemmer: “I think it’s a good question....Why hasn’t a liberal radio station or TV network never taken off before?”
Cafferty: “We have them. Are you, did you just get off a vegetable truck from the South Bronx? They’re everywhere....What do they call this joint? The Clinton News Network?”
— Exchange on CNN’s American Morning, March 31, 2004.
“I think most claims of liberal media bias are overblown. At the same time, I do think that reporters often let their cultural predilections drive their coverage of social issues, and the coverage of the gay marriage amendment offers a perfect example....Why do reporters assume that the amendment is a fringe concern? Perhaps because nearly all live in big cities, among educated, relatively affluent peers, who hold liberal views on social matters. In Washington and New York, gay marriage is an utterly mainstream proposition. Unfortunately, in most of the country, it’s not.”
— New Republic Senior Editor Jonathan Chait, CBSNews.com, March 1, 2004.
“Where I work at ABC, people say ‘conservative’ the way people say ‘child molester.’”
— ABC 20/20 co-anchor John Stossel to CNSNews.com reporter Robert Bluey, in a story posted January 28, 2004.
“I think they [most reporters] are on the humane side, and that would appear to many to be on the liberal side. A lot of newspaper people — and to a lesser degree today, the TV people — come up through the ranks, through the police-reporting side, and they see the problems of their fellow man, beginning with their low salaries — which newspaper people used to have anyway — and right on through their domestic quarrels, their living conditions. The meaner side of life is made visible to most young reporters. I think it affects their sentimental feeling toward their fellow man and that is interpreted by some less-sensitive people as being liberal.”
— Former CBS Evening News anchor Walter Cronkite to Time magazine’s Richard Zoglin in an interview published in the magazine’s November 3, 2003 edition.
“I thought he [former CBS News correspondent Bernard Goldberg] made some very good points. There is just no question that I, among others, have a liberal bias. I mean, I’m consistently liberal in my opinions. And I think some of the, I think Dan [Rather] is transparently liberal. Now, he may not like to hear me say that. I always agree with him, too, but I think he should be more careful.”
— CBS’s 60 Minutes commentator Andy Rooney on Goldberg’s book, Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News, on CNN’s Larry King Live, June 5, 2002.
“Most of the time I really think responsible journalists, of which I hope I’m counted as one, leave our bias at the side of the table. Now it is true, historically in the media, it has been more of a liberal persuasion for many years. It has taken us a long time, too long in my view, to have vigorous conservative voices heard as widely in the media as they now are. And so I think yes, on occasion, there is a liberal instinct in the media which we need to keep our eye on, if you will.”
— ABC anchor Peter Jennings appearing on CNN’s Larry King Live, April 10, 2002
“[Journalists] have a certain worldview based on being in Manhattan...that isn’t per se liberal, but if you look at people there, they lean’ in that direction.”
— Columbia Journalism Review publisher David Laventhol, as reported in “Leaning on the Media” by Mark Jurkowitz, The Boston Globe, January 17, 2002.
“There is a liberal bias. It’s demonstrable. You look at some statistics. About 85 percent of the reporters who cover the White House vote Democratic, they have for a long time. There is a, particularly at the networks, at the lower levels, among the editors and the so-called infrastructure, there is a liberal bias. There is a liberal bias at Newsweek, the magazine I work for — most of the people who work at Newsweek live on the upper West Side in New York and they have a liberal bias....[ABC White House reporter] Brit Hume’s bosses are liberal and they’re always quietly denouncing him as being a right-wing nut.”
— Newsweek Washington Bureau Chief Evan Thomas on Inside Washington, May 12, 1996.
“Everybody knows that there’s a liberal, that there’s a heavy liberal persuasion among correspondents.....Anybody who has to live with the people, who covers police stations, covers county courts, brought up that way, has to have a degree of humanity that people who do not have that exposure don’t have, and some people interpret that to be liberal. It’s not a liberal, it’s humanitarian and that’s a vastly different thing.”
— Former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite at the March 21, 1996 Radio & TV Correspondents Dinner.
“There are lots of reasons fewer people are watching network news, and one of them, I’m more convinced than ever, is that our viewers simply don’t trust us. And for good reason. The old argument that the networks and other `media elites’ have a liberal bias is so blatantly true that it’s hardly worth discussing anymore. No, we don’t sit around in dark corners and plan strategies on how we’re going to slant the news. We don’t have to. It comes naturally to most reporters.....Mr. Engberg’s report set new standards for bias....Can you imagine, in your wildest dreams, a network news reporter calling Hillary Clinton’s health care plan ‘wacky?’...
“‘Reality Check’ suggests the viewers are going to get the facts. And then they can make up their mind. As Mr. Engberg might put it: ‘Time Out!’ You’d have a better chance of getting the facts someplace else — like Albania.”
— CBS reporter Bernard Goldberg on an anti-flat tax story by CBS reporter Eric Engberg, February 13, 1996 Wall Street Journal op-ed.
“I think this is another reflection of the overwhelming journalistic tilt towards liberalism and those programs. Now, the question is whether that’s bad or not, and that’s another debate. But the idea that many of us, and my colleagues deny that there is this kind of bias is nuts, because there is in our world — I forget what the surveys show, but most of us are Democratic and probably most of us line up in the fairly liberal world.”
— Time Washington contributing editor Hugh Sidey responding to a caller who asked if journalists are in favor of affirmative action, July 21, 1995 C-SPAN Washington Journal.
“As much as we try to think otherwise, when you’re covering someone like yourself, and your position in life is insecure, she’s your mascot. Something in you roots for her. You’re rooting for your team. I try to get that bias out, but for many of us it’s there.”
— Time Senior Writer Margaret Carlson quoted in The Washington Post, March 7, 1994.
“I think liberalism lives — the notion that we don’t have to stay where we are as a society, we have promises to keep, and it is liberalism, whether people like it or not, which has animated all the years of my life. What on Earth did conservatism ever accomplish for our country? It was people who wanted to change things for the better.”
— Charles Kuralt talking with Morley Safer on the CBS special, One for the Road with Charles Kuralt, May 5, 1994.
“I won’t make any pretense that the ‘American Agenda’ [segments on World News Tonight] is totally neutral. We do take a position. And I think the public wants us now to take a position. If you give both sides and ‘Well, on the one hand this and on the other that’ — I think people kind of really want you to help direct their thinking on some issues.”
— ABC News reporter Carole Simpson on CNBC’s Equal Time, August 9, 1994.
“I think we are aware, as everybody who works in the media is, that the old stereotype of the liberal bent happens to be true, and we’re making a concerted effort to really look for more from the other, without being ponderous or lecturing or trying to convert people to another way of thinking.”
— ABC World News Tonight Executive Producer Emily Rooney, September 27, 1993 Electronic Media.
“The group of people I’ll call The Press — by which I mean several dozen political journalists of my acquaintance, many of whom the Buchanan administration may someday round up on suspicion of having Democratic or even liberal sympathies — was of one mind as the season’s first primary campaign shuddered toward its finish. I asked each of them, one after another, this question: If you were a New Hampshire Democrat, whom would you vote for? The answer was always the same; and the answer was always Clinton. In this group, in my experience, such unanimity is unprecedented....
“Almost none is due to calculations about Clinton being ‘electable’...and none at all is due to belief in Clinton’s denials in the Flowers business, because no one believes these denials. No, the real reason members of The Press like Clinton is simple, and surprisingly uncynical: they think he would make a very good, perhaps a great, President. Several told me they were convinced that Clinton is the most talented presidential candidate they have ever encountered, JFK included.”
— New Republic Senior Editor Hendrik Hertzberg, March 9, 1992 issue.
“We’re unpopular because the press tends to be liberal, and I don’t think we can run away from that. And I think we’re unpopular with a lot of conservatives and Republicans this time because the White House press corps by and large detested George Bush, probably for good and sufficient reason, they certainly can cite chapter and verse. But their real contempt for him showed through in their reporting in a way that I think got up the nose of the American people.”
— Time writer William A. Henry III on the PBS November 4, 1992 election-night special The Finish Line.
“Coverage of the campaign vindicated exactly what conservatives have been saying for years about liberal bias in the media. In their defense, journalists say that though they may have their personal opinions, as professionals they are able to correct for them when they write. Sounds nice, but I’m not buying any.”
— Former Newsweek reporter Jacob Weisberg in The New Republic, November 23, 1992 issue.
“There is no such thing as objective reporting...I’ve become even more crafty about finding the voices to say the things I think are true. That’s my subversive mission.”
— Boston Globe environmental reporter Dianne Dumanoski at an Utne Reader symposium May 17-20, 1990. Quoted by Micah Morrison in the July 1990 American Spectator.
“I do have an axe to grind...I want to be the little subversive person in television.”
— Barbara Pyle, CNN Environmental Editor and Turner Broadcasting Vice President for Environmental Policy, as quoted by David Brooks in the July 1990 American Spectator.
“I’m not sure it’s useful to include every single point of view simply in order to cover every base because you can come up with a program that’s virtually impossible for the audience to sort out.”
— PBS Senior Producer Linda Harrar commenting on PBS’s ten-part series, Race to Save The Planet, to MRC and reported in the December 1990 MediaWatch.
“As the science editor at Time I would freely admit that on this issue we have crossed the boundary from news reporting to advocacy.”
— Time Science Editor Charles Alexander at a September 16, 1989 global warming conference at the Smithsonian Institution as quoted by David Brooks in an October 5, 1989 Wall Street Journal column.
“Clearly the networks have made that decision now, where you’d have to call it [global warming stories] advocacy.”
— NBC News Capitol Hill correspondent Andrea Mitchell at a September 16, 1989 global warming conference at the Smithsonian Institution as quoted by David Brooks in an October 5, 1989 Wall Street Journal column.
The love and support for Obama is almost like a cult. The adoring, starry-eyed reporters, tossing softball questions have refused to investigate his relationships with terrorists, anti-semites and cop killers. Chris Matthews said Obama sent a thrill up his leg. Us magazine does a lovey-dovey cover of Barack and Michelle, then a hit piece on Palin with a huge headline screaming "LIES, BABIES, SCANDAL". I could go on and on.
2 out of 3 (66%) of all stories on Barack Obama have been positive in nature or tone.
1 out of 3 (33%) of all stories on Barack Obama have been critical in nature or tone.
The converse is true for John McCain:
1 out of 3 (33%) of all stories on John McCain have been positive in nature or tone.
2 out of 3 (66%) of all stories on John McCain have been critical in nature or tone.
These results are just based on the simple counting of news stories.
How much proof is enough?
QUOTE(Dan @ Nov 4 2008, 03:12 PM)
2 out of 3 (66%) of all stories on Barack Obama have been positive in nature or tone.
1 out of 3 (33%) of all stories on Barack Obama have been critical in nature or tone.
The converse is true for John McCain:
1 out of 3 (33%) of all stories on John McCain have been positive in nature or tone.
2 out of 3 (66%) of all stories on John McCain have been critical in nature or tone.
These results are just based on the simple counting of news stories.
How much proof is enough?
Just to footnote the source of those statistics you referenced:
http://www.cmpa.com/media_room_press_10_30_08.htm
My criticism of Mr. Bush is how he handled the things he had happen during his terms. I am discounting my criticism for the tough row he had to ho'. He just messed up things by his responses. That is just plain fact.
I think his legacy will be twofold. First and foremost, I think he will be remembered as the president who kept us safe for almost 7 years after 9/11. Weeks after 9/11 I recall a CNN poll asking Americans if they thought there would be another attack on US soil in the next 5 years. Over 80% said they did. Now, there can and will(and should be) arguments whether Bush and his admin had anything to do with that, but I still think history will view him as having kept the US safe from attack on our soil.
The other part of his legacy will most certainly be the Iraq war and the failed planning and execution up until 'the surge'. I have talked to military people who are huge GWB supporters and almost all of them say the failures of the Iraq wars first years will no doubt change military teaching, planning and execution in the years to come. I don't think history will look on GWB in a good light in regards to the Iraq war(nor do I necessarily think it should). But I do think he will get some credit for the 'successes' of the surge.
Remember, history tends to smooth many of the ups and downs and I think many of the things mentioned will get lost in time, but the 2 I mentioned are those that Bush will most be remembered for.
The other part of his legacy will most certainly be the Iraq war and the failed planning and execution up until 'the surge'. I have talked to military people who are huge GWB supporters and almost all of them say the failures of the Iraq wars first years will no doubt change military teaching, planning and execution in the years to come. I don't think history will look on GWB in a good light in regards to the Iraq war(nor do I necessarily think it should). But I do think he will get some credit for the 'successes' of the surge.
Remember, history tends to smooth many of the ups and downs and I think many of the things mentioned will get lost in time, but the 2 I mentioned are those that Bush will most be remembered for.
One of the interesting things I read today was that Harry Truman left office with a 22% approval rating. He is now the 7th most popular President of all time.
QUOTE(southsider2k7 @ Nov 5 2008, 12:00 PM)
One of the interesting things I read today was that Harry Truman left office with a 22% approval rating. He is now the 7th most popular President of all time.
In case anyone missed this one in the News-Dispatch:
QUOTE(southsider2k7 @ Nov 5 2008, 12:00 PM)
One of the interesting things I read today was that Harry Truman left office with a 22% approval rating. He is now the 7th most popular President of all time.
With the emotions still so raw, it is almost impossible to imagine that ever being the case. Nixon is pretty much only remembered for Watergate, not bringing about the end of American involvement in the Vietnam War or starting the process of normalizing relations with China. Kennedy on the other hand is remembered for the Cuban missle crisis, but the escalation of American involvement in Vietnam and the Bay of Pigs are never really harped on.
If a strong democratic tradition takes root in Iraq, and it becomes a model state in the Middle East, maybe Bush will be looked on favorably in 30 years. I'm not putting any of my money on it though.
This has been interesting to see what people come up with. It is a little too soon to speak of legacy when the "boffo barbecue guest" is still the President.
QUOTE(mcstumper @ Nov 12 2008, 02:30 PM)
If a strong democratic tradition takes root in Iraq, and it becomes a model state in the Middle East, maybe Bush will be looked on favorably in 30 years. I'm not putting any of my money on it though.
The current Iraqi government has expressed a desire to see U.S. troops out of Iraq. If we leave, and 30 years from now Iraq is a failed state that looks like Somalia, how do you suppose Bush the younger is going to be ranked?
What I think Bush the younger is going to be remembered for is missing the opportunities of a century. After 9/11 he had huge approval numbers, and international backing on the mission to Afghanistan. Between his totally unjustified adventurism in Iraq (WMD's, anyone?), the unconstitutional and unconscionable holding of people at Guantanamo, 4th amendment violations everywhere by the DHS, I suspect GWB is going to look pretty bad in the history books of the future.
And as for Truman's 22 per cent approval rating, that happened shortly after he fired MacArthur -- a greatly beloved military commander who happened to need to be fired at the time.
He failed, as you correctly identified, at a crystalized moment in history. I actually do put the blame entirely on his shoulders; in truth, j'accuse the Neocons. Subsequent history bears out this indictment.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas...8012267354.html
function removeDebate(obj){ document.getElementById(obj).value = ''; } News Americas
Bush regrets Iraq war intelligence
The US has lost more than 4,200 soldiers in Iraq since the war began in 2003 [GETTY] George Bush, the US president, has said that he came to office "unprepared for war" and that his "biggest regret" is his country's "intelligence failure" on Iraq.
In an interview with ABC television's "World News Tonight", Bush also said he was "sorry" that the global economic meltdown was taking place and predicted that he would leave office on January 20 with his "head held high".
Bush has had record-low approval ratings after the botched government response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and in the wake of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the world financial crisis.
"The biggest regret of all the presidency has to have been the intelligence failure in Iraq," Bush said 50 days before president-elect Barack Obama's inauguration.
"I wish the intelligence had been different."
But Bush refused to say whether he would have ordered the March 2003 invasion if he had known Iraqi's former leader, Saddam Hussein, did not have weapons of mass destruction, calling it "an interesting question".
'Do-over'
"That is a do-over that I can't do. It's hard for me to speculate," said Bush, who declared as recently as last week that Saddam's ouster was "the right decision then - and it is the right decision today".
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians and more than 4,200 US troops have died in Iraq since Bush launched the war.
A months-long public campaign centered on the grounds - later proved false - that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction triggered the war.
"A lot of people put their reputations on the line and said the weapons of mass destruction is a reason to remove Saddam Hussein. It wasn't just people in my administration," Bush told ABC.
Asked what his greatest accomplishment was, Bush replied: "I keep recognising we're in a war against ideological thugs and keeping America safe."
Bush said he was sorry for the economic woes that have seen US firms failing [EPA] Asked what he was most unprepared for when he took office in January 2001, Bush replied: "I think I was unprepared for war. In other words, I didn't campaign and say, 'Please vote for me, I'll be able to handle an attack.'"
"I didn't anticipate war. Presidents - one of the things about the modern presidency is that the unexpected will happen," he said.
Bush, whose administration recently accepted a formal timeline for withdrawing from Iraq, also stood fast behind his refusal for years to set a pull-out timetable. "It would have compromised the principle that when you put kids into harm's way, you go in to win," he said.
'I am sorry'
Asked about the global economic crisis, Bush declared "I'm sorry it's happening, of course," but rejected any effort to blame his administration for inaction in the face of growing concerns.
"I'm the president during this period of time, but I think when the history of this period is written, people will realize a lot of the decisions that were made on Wall Street took place over a decade or so," he said.
Bush also described much of his time in office as "joyful" even though "the president ends up carrying a lot of people's grief in his soul during a presidency".
"I don't feel joyful when somebody loses their life, nor do I feel joyful when somebody loses a job. That concerns me," he said.
"But the idea of being able to serve a nation you love has been joyful."
Asked what Americans would say when he left office, Bush replied: "I hope they feel that this is a guy that came, didn't sell his soul for politics, had to make some tough decisions, and did so in a principled way. I will leave the presidency with my head held high."
Source: Agencies Feedback Number of comments : 16 David H. Vandal
United States 03/12/2008
Bush regrets
Bush did say he wished the intelligence on Iraq had been better, but he did not say it was his biggest regret. Bush' stated that his BIGGEST regret was "No weapons of mass destruction were found." That is an entirely different statement.
Roberta Smith
Canada 03/12/2008
Regrets
I think that we all regret George W. Bush's intelligence.
militantpacifist
Spain 03/12/2008
Bush the Israeli proxy
Bush will be remembered as the idiot who implemented in the former democracy the israeli habits of torture, concentration camps, targeted assassinations, spying on its citizens, gaining money on mass murder by weapons sales and to "put food on your family". If he had any knowledge of Christianity he would have respected the lives of others. He's got no empathy.
RDV
United States 03/12/2008
800,000
I wonder how the 800,000 bodies found in mass graves in Iraq figure into this. Did they wish the US would have stayed home or come sooner? Do the Kurds think the disposal of Sadam was a blunder? No pancake is so flat it does not have two sides.
LUCKY COLLER
United States 03/12/2008
GEORGE BUSH
GEROGE BUSH HAS BEEN MALIGNED FOR ALL THE DEEDS HE WAS INFORMED TO UNDERTAKE,PRESENTED BY HIS AIDES, WOULD YOU NOT DO THE SAME, WHEN YOU HIRE THEM FOR YOU TRUST THEM? THINK,THERE ARE WORST THINGS IN THIS WORLD THAT GO ON EVERYDAY, SLAVE TRADE,HUMAN EXCHANGES,THIRD WORLD ATROSITIES, SOMALI,MID EAST,RUSSIA,INDIA...AND SO ON....SO HOW STUPID WAS HE?? COMPARED TO THE REST OF THE WORLD
Patanjali Ramlall
United States 03/12/2008
Bush and his so-called regret
Fellow earthlings, George Bush has no regrets for any of his actions. He only regrets that he will be leaving the White House in total disgrace and that he could not enact all of Karl Rove's plans with the rest of his buddies. There was no bad INFO or intelligence. This guy could not wait to invade and illegally occupy a sovereign nation for its oil, & land, to build bases through deceit and lies. Look at him now, no one listens to him. Good riddance, his evil ? HISTORICAL!
Patanjali Ramlall
United States 03/12/2008
Bush regrets Iraq war intelligence
Bush has no regrets for the invasion and illegal occupation of Iraq. Through deceit and lies he invaded a sovereign nation for oil, and land to build bases. He made up stories & tried to mislead the world. His only regret is that he could not do everything Karl Rove & Co. wanted. No one ever listens to him anymore. He has no shame and is leaving office in disgrace. Good riddance !! There was no misinformation or bad intelligence. His crimes are HISTORICAL, claiming God told him to invade Iraq.
John T. Marohn
United States 03/12/2008
Bush Regrets Iraq War Intelligence
Why has Mr Bush never denied the British MI6 memo which stated that the CIA "facts and intelligence were being fixed around" military action to remove Hussein? He had clearly decided to invade Iraq before the WMD issue.
Aracanga
Brazil 03/12/2008
Bush x intelligence failure
It is very elementary: you gather intelligence, but the most important it is to evaluate the information, and check the sources. It is amazing that the CIA did know it. It is very strange, indeed.
Klaus
Germany 03/12/2008
If he regrets, why doesnt he say sorry and go OUT there? :-)
Bush has time till Jan 2009 to get out of Irak, if he regrets sooo deeply :-)). HE and his Fathers private gang the CIA, arranged the fake "intelligence", now ..another "col. North Iran-Contras" is guilty again:-)
Usman Aliyu
Nigeria 03/12/2008
Regrets and Resposibilities
No matter what failure president Bush admitted to, would he admit respnsibliyu for the deaths, the hardships and the agony he had caused many a family?
majid
Canada 03/12/2008
Whatever Bush is saying now is meaningless. Bush and his warmonger team started all these problems because he already claimed that Iraq war is an act of God! He was not looking for the truth when he linked Saddam Regime with the ruthless Al Qaeda . Now your time is over and history will remember you as one of dumbest American Presidents America has ever had. Flagrant violations of human rights , ecomomic catastrophe, your lukewarm response to Katrina survivors are some of Bush legacy.
Ayub
Afghanistan 03/12/2008
Bush regretting?..
"Intelligence"is the key word here.Bush did not then,nor does he possess intelligence now,the idiot has a brain of a squirrel.Maybe i'm insulting the poor squirrel at least it can fetch food for itself.This Bushman couldn't find his A$$ on a clear day.Let's hope the new puppet Obama brings about some kinfd of change...
Ahmed
Afghanistan 03/12/2008
resentment of most of the population
I find it interesting that everyone is stuck on the WMD variable. After million(s) were persecuted under the former Iraqi regime, whether by ethnic cleansing, or random crimes against humanity. I find it quite disgusting that we did not lobby to go into Iraq prior to 2003 based on the human right violations alone. What worries me is that, the UN had implemented 15 years of sanctions that stripped the people of necessary rations needed to sustain living in a hell hole, leaving the executive -
Ahmed
Afghanistan 03/12/2008
resentment of most of the population
executive office relatively untouched. I did not hear cries to go into the country and save the people systematically annihilated from the regime. The US uses WMD's as a means to invade the country, and pushes its way to get UN approval, with success. Then everyone cries foul. This tells me one thing. "If it isnt your country, and doesn't directly affect you, then leave it alone, despite genocide (beyond contestation) is taking place." I have one thing to say. "SHAME ON US!"
john thomsen
United States 03/12/2008
Bush regrets
Like Hitler, Stalin, and other despotic heads of state, Bush needn't worry about "HIS LEGACY". History will inform generations of his arrogance and utter disconnect with reality. His legacy will be the profundity of the damage he has wrought on America and the world.
Bush regrets Iraq war intelligence
The US has lost more than 4,200 soldiers in Iraq since the war began in 2003 [GETTY] George Bush, the US president, has said that he came to office "unprepared for war" and that his "biggest regret" is his country's "intelligence failure" on Iraq.In an interview with ABC television's "World News Tonight", Bush also said he was "sorry" that the global economic meltdown was taking place and predicted that he would leave office on January 20 with his "head held high".
Bush has had record-low approval ratings after the botched government response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and in the wake of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the world financial crisis.
"The biggest regret of all the presidency has to have been the intelligence failure in Iraq," Bush said 50 days before president-elect Barack Obama's inauguration.
"I wish the intelligence had been different."
But Bush refused to say whether he would have ordered the March 2003 invasion if he had known Iraqi's former leader, Saddam Hussein, did not have weapons of mass destruction, calling it "an interesting question".
'Do-over'
"That is a do-over that I can't do. It's hard for me to speculate," said Bush, who declared as recently as last week that Saddam's ouster was "the right decision then - and it is the right decision today".
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians and more than 4,200 US troops have died in Iraq since Bush launched the war.
A months-long public campaign centered on the grounds - later proved false - that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction triggered the war.
"A lot of people put their reputations on the line and said the weapons of mass destruction is a reason to remove Saddam Hussein. It wasn't just people in my administration," Bush told ABC.
Asked what his greatest accomplishment was, Bush replied: "I keep recognising we're in a war against ideological thugs and keeping America safe."
Bush said he was sorry for the economic woes that have seen US firms failing [EPA] Asked what he was most unprepared for when he took office in January 2001, Bush replied: "I think I was unprepared for war. In other words, I didn't campaign and say, 'Please vote for me, I'll be able to handle an attack.'""I didn't anticipate war. Presidents - one of the things about the modern presidency is that the unexpected will happen," he said.
Bush, whose administration recently accepted a formal timeline for withdrawing from Iraq, also stood fast behind his refusal for years to set a pull-out timetable. "It would have compromised the principle that when you put kids into harm's way, you go in to win," he said.
'I am sorry'
Asked about the global economic crisis, Bush declared "I'm sorry it's happening, of course," but rejected any effort to blame his administration for inaction in the face of growing concerns.
"I'm the president during this period of time, but I think when the history of this period is written, people will realize a lot of the decisions that were made on Wall Street took place over a decade or so," he said.
Bush also described much of his time in office as "joyful" even though "the president ends up carrying a lot of people's grief in his soul during a presidency".
"I don't feel joyful when somebody loses their life, nor do I feel joyful when somebody loses a job. That concerns me," he said.
"But the idea of being able to serve a nation you love has been joyful."
Asked what Americans would say when he left office, Bush replied: "I hope they feel that this is a guy that came, didn't sell his soul for politics, had to make some tough decisions, and did so in a principled way. I will leave the presidency with my head held high."
Source: Agencies Feedback Number of comments : 16 David H. Vandal
United States 03/12/2008
Bush regrets
Bush did say he wished the intelligence on Iraq had been better, but he did not say it was his biggest regret. Bush' stated that his BIGGEST regret was "No weapons of mass destruction were found." That is an entirely different statement.
Roberta Smith
Canada 03/12/2008
Regrets
I think that we all regret George W. Bush's intelligence.
militantpacifist
Spain 03/12/2008
Bush the Israeli proxy
Bush will be remembered as the idiot who implemented in the former democracy the israeli habits of torture, concentration camps, targeted assassinations, spying on its citizens, gaining money on mass murder by weapons sales and to "put food on your family". If he had any knowledge of Christianity he would have respected the lives of others. He's got no empathy.
RDV
United States 03/12/2008
800,000
I wonder how the 800,000 bodies found in mass graves in Iraq figure into this. Did they wish the US would have stayed home or come sooner? Do the Kurds think the disposal of Sadam was a blunder? No pancake is so flat it does not have two sides.
LUCKY COLLER
United States 03/12/2008
GEORGE BUSH
GEROGE BUSH HAS BEEN MALIGNED FOR ALL THE DEEDS HE WAS INFORMED TO UNDERTAKE,PRESENTED BY HIS AIDES, WOULD YOU NOT DO THE SAME, WHEN YOU HIRE THEM FOR YOU TRUST THEM? THINK,THERE ARE WORST THINGS IN THIS WORLD THAT GO ON EVERYDAY, SLAVE TRADE,HUMAN EXCHANGES,THIRD WORLD ATROSITIES, SOMALI,MID EAST,RUSSIA,INDIA...AND SO ON....SO HOW STUPID WAS HE?? COMPARED TO THE REST OF THE WORLD
Patanjali Ramlall
United States 03/12/2008
Bush and his so-called regret
Fellow earthlings, George Bush has no regrets for any of his actions. He only regrets that he will be leaving the White House in total disgrace and that he could not enact all of Karl Rove's plans with the rest of his buddies. There was no bad INFO or intelligence. This guy could not wait to invade and illegally occupy a sovereign nation for its oil, & land, to build bases through deceit and lies. Look at him now, no one listens to him. Good riddance, his evil ? HISTORICAL!
Patanjali Ramlall
United States 03/12/2008
Bush regrets Iraq war intelligence
Bush has no regrets for the invasion and illegal occupation of Iraq. Through deceit and lies he invaded a sovereign nation for oil, and land to build bases. He made up stories & tried to mislead the world. His only regret is that he could not do everything Karl Rove & Co. wanted. No one ever listens to him anymore. He has no shame and is leaving office in disgrace. Good riddance !! There was no misinformation or bad intelligence. His crimes are HISTORICAL, claiming God told him to invade Iraq.
John T. Marohn
United States 03/12/2008
Bush Regrets Iraq War Intelligence
Why has Mr Bush never denied the British MI6 memo which stated that the CIA "facts and intelligence were being fixed around" military action to remove Hussein? He had clearly decided to invade Iraq before the WMD issue.
Aracanga
Brazil 03/12/2008
Bush x intelligence failure
It is very elementary: you gather intelligence, but the most important it is to evaluate the information, and check the sources. It is amazing that the CIA did know it. It is very strange, indeed.
Klaus
Germany 03/12/2008
If he regrets, why doesnt he say sorry and go OUT there? :-)
Bush has time till Jan 2009 to get out of Irak, if he regrets sooo deeply :-)). HE and his Fathers private gang the CIA, arranged the fake "intelligence", now ..another "col. North Iran-Contras" is guilty again:-)
Usman Aliyu
Nigeria 03/12/2008
Regrets and Resposibilities
No matter what failure president Bush admitted to, would he admit respnsibliyu for the deaths, the hardships and the agony he had caused many a family?
majid
Canada 03/12/2008
Whatever Bush is saying now is meaningless. Bush and his warmonger team started all these problems because he already claimed that Iraq war is an act of God! He was not looking for the truth when he linked Saddam Regime with the ruthless Al Qaeda . Now your time is over and history will remember you as one of dumbest American Presidents America has ever had. Flagrant violations of human rights , ecomomic catastrophe, your lukewarm response to Katrina survivors are some of Bush legacy.
Ayub
Afghanistan 03/12/2008
Bush regretting?..
"Intelligence"is the key word here.Bush did not then,nor does he possess intelligence now,the idiot has a brain of a squirrel.Maybe i'm insulting the poor squirrel at least it can fetch food for itself.This Bushman couldn't find his A$$ on a clear day.Let's hope the new puppet Obama brings about some kinfd of change...
Ahmed
Afghanistan 03/12/2008
resentment of most of the population
I find it interesting that everyone is stuck on the WMD variable. After million(s) were persecuted under the former Iraqi regime, whether by ethnic cleansing, or random crimes against humanity. I find it quite disgusting that we did not lobby to go into Iraq prior to 2003 based on the human right violations alone. What worries me is that, the UN had implemented 15 years of sanctions that stripped the people of necessary rations needed to sustain living in a hell hole, leaving the executive -
Ahmed
Afghanistan 03/12/2008
resentment of most of the population
executive office relatively untouched. I did not hear cries to go into the country and save the people systematically annihilated from the regime. The US uses WMD's as a means to invade the country, and pushes its way to get UN approval, with success. Then everyone cries foul. This tells me one thing. "If it isnt your country, and doesn't directly affect you, then leave it alone, despite genocide (beyond contestation) is taking place." I have one thing to say. "SHAME ON US!"
john thomsen
United States 03/12/2008
Bush regrets
Like Hitler, Stalin, and other despotic heads of state, Bush needn't worry about "HIS LEGACY". History will inform generations of his arrogance and utter disconnect with reality. His legacy will be the profundity of the damage he has wrought on America and the world.
QUOTE(Roger Kaputnik @ Dec 3 2008, 02:09 PM)
Like Hitler, Stalin, and other despotic heads of state, Bush needn't worry about "HIS LEGACY". History will inform generations of his arrogance and utter disconnect with reality. His legacy will be the profundity of the damage he has wrought on America and the world.
Ummm...Roger, is this part of the huge quote that you cut and pasted in order to "remove debate", or is this one that you came up with yourself? Hitler? Stalin? Wow.
function removePerspective(obj)
good call! If the Gentle Reader goes to the post on the 3rd, he will notice that it is in its entirety an article from the BBC, including comments from readers around the world. None of it is my own. I posted it to enrich the conversation. Unfortunately, the articles do not get posted how they actually look on the BBC site, which I encourage the Gentle Reader to go to.
QUOTE(Roger Kaputnik @ Dec 9 2008, 08:44 AM)
good call! If the Gentle Reader goes to the post on the 3rd, he will notice that it is in its entirety an article from the BBC, including comments from readers around the world. None of it is my own. I posted it to enrich the conversation. Unfortunately, the articles do not get posted how they actually look on the BBC site, which I encourage the Gentle Reader to go to.
Phew. Good. My opinion of you (which I'm sure matters not to you, as it should be) is restored.
QUOTE(jb9152 @ Dec 9 2008, 04:38 PM)
Phew. Good. My opinion of you (which I'm sure matters not to you, as it should be) is restored.
You know the old saying: Steal from me my purse, but leave to me my horse of a different color!
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