Although there’s no basis for such claims, this is typical of the current extreme anti-Bush/anti-Republican partisanship. The fact that this level of rhetoric is countenanced, even encouraged, by Democratic party leaders and officials because it serves their ends is all the more troubling. It’s hurting the political discourse in this country and creates an atmosphere of irrationality verging on paranoia. But I guess that is not something that concerns you – if you’ve even noticed. That’s too bad, especially since such flames of anger and hatred, once fanned, can be hard to extinguish.
Besides misinterpreting facts like Cheney’s history with Halliburton, people like you seem unable to distinguish between lies and errors of fact. You say Bush “lied,” but what do we really know about these alleged lies? We know that Bush and a whole host of others, both inside and outside his administration and inside and outside this country, appear to have gotten certain facts wrong. Getting facts wrong is not necessarily lying. But you either cannot see the difference or deliberately attempt to blur that distinction. I’m not sure which is worse for you, though inflammatory allegations of “lies,” while they may be emotionally satisfying for some, only add to the fire now being fanned that threatens to consume our political house.
Some people think the best way to make their case is by name calling, as you have done above. But that is not how to make any kind of rational argument. “Dummy Rums” (he’s anything but dumb, by the way), “Con-artist Rice,” “George King Liar Bush,” are all just examples of this irrational and despicable tendency.
What about your claim regarding the Bush family and the Saudis? (I note you confuse the Saudi ruling family with the bin Laden clan, but I won’t go into that one here.) No one denies that George Bush Sr. had a relationship with the Saudis. Why shouldn’t he? He is and was a businessman and investor. Nevertheless, neither of the Bushes who’ve served as president have ever been shown to have cut the Saudis any special slack where the interests of this country were at stake. The most obvious example is that after 9/11 George W. Bush correctly went after Saudi money streams and put pressure on the Saudi leadership to start rolling up Al Qaeda networks in their own country.
Of course, this is a complex world. We need a stable Saudi Arabia and we need the continued accessibility of Mideast oil, so it’s in our interest to work with an oil-rich country like Saudi Arabia. Is that a bad thing? Well, it’s a fact of our economic life, however much we might wish to hide behind our two oceans or find less problematic energy sources.
Take the oil away and it’s virtually guaranteed that the U.S. would encounter some very hard times. The consequent damage to national prosperity would hurt all of us, especially those who are part of the usual Democratic constituency. I can just imagine your response if Bush’s policies were to cause the Saudis to become radicalized or result in de-stabilizing their state.
The same people who today allude to nefarious “conspiracies” between Bush and the Saudis or Bush and the bin Ladens would be the first to start screaming about how Bush doesn’t know how to get along with our critical friends in the Mideast (just as they now decry his lack of success in pleasing “friends” like France and Germany). Or they’d be shouting from the rooftops, or other venue of protest, that this only proved Bush was a bully and an imperialist.
