Jeb probably just handed 2016 to Hillary

[Yorktown]

GW is the recent president with the lowest image among voters:

[img][/img]

Not to mention historians:

In 2008, the History News Network unscientific poll of 109 professional historians found that 98% believe that the George W. Bush presidency is a failure.
A 2010 Siena College poll of 238 Presidential scholars found that Bush was ranked 39th out of 43,

Assuming Jeb is the most likely Republican finalist, his recent statements probably spell doom for him:

• Jeb: George W. Bush is a top foreign policy adviser
http://edition.cnn.com/2015/05/07/politics/jeb-george-w-bush-adviser/

• Jeb Bush: ‘I would have invaded Iraq’ like my brother did
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/05/jeb-bush-i-would-have-invaded-iraq-like-my-brother-did/


And he was already trailing in the polls: National President - CNN/Opinion Research

Clinton (D) 56
Bush (R) 39
Clinton (D) +17.0

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/elections/2016/

[hrmjustin]

1. Good!

[yeoman6987]

5. He has a long road before Hillary

I don't see him as the nominee. It will probably be Walker.

[hrmjustin]

6. Walker or Rubio.

[yeoman6987]

7. Oh yeah. Forgot about him. You are right he may get it.

[msongs]

2. hillary can't use the "I would have invaded Iraq" quote lol nt

[Dawson Leery]

3. Aside from Cruz the kook, Jebby is the weakest candidate for the GOP.

[Backwoodsrider]

30. but he knows where the money is

GOP prez candidate is probably going to win through attrition

[Sheepshank]

39. Makes one wonder what he knows and has on Mittens

to convince home to drop out of the GOP race?

[AtomicKitten]

4. Hillary voting to invade Iraq defuses that line of attack.

[Hoyt]

11. Except she voted to give bush the authority to do what is necessary.

bush did what wasn't necessary.

[AtomicKitten]

16. lame excuse for poor judgment

https://www.iraqbodycount.org/

[stevenleser]

19. It's not a lame excuse. It's what was plainly discussed as the reason for the vote at the time.

And the same justifications were used for UN Security Council resolution 1441 a few weeks later and received a unanimous vote on the UN Security Council including several countries that tend to vote against us just for spite.

[AtomicKitten]

21. Bernie Sanders got it right, wasn't bamboozled by horseshit,

... and exercised good judgment in voting no on the "worst foreign policy blunder in the history of the United States."

[stevenleser]

22. Guessing right on a boolean proposition isn't particularly praise-worthy.

And if you are going to claim that those who voted "Yea" missed something, you have to blame Russia, China, Syria, France, the UK, Germany, Mauritania, and the other members, temporary and permanent of the UN Security Council at the time, several of whom were not in favor of the war several months later.

It is revisionist history to blame Democrats who voted Yea on the IWR for the war that happened that flied in the face of what IWR was actually for.

[AtomicKitten]

23. It's called due diligence as opposed to craven political motivation.

[stevenleser]

24. No, there was no due diligence to be had. There was no firm evidence either way. That was why it was

necessary to pass IWR and UN Sec Res 1441 to pressure Iraq to let the UN Weapons Inspectors into the country.

The UN Weapons Inspectors provided the due diligence in the reports they issued in January 2003, February 2003 and their final report on March 7th 2003, 12 days before the war.

The only crime and responsibility here lies with the administration who ignored those reports after supposedly fighting to get the inspectors back into Iraq for nearly a year and a half and went to war despite those reports.

[AtomicKitten]

25. Nonsense.

Weakass, stomach-turning, despicable ass-covering nonsense.

[stevenleser]

26. Then explain why the entire world wanted the UN Weapons inspectors back in Iraq.

If there was due diligence to be had without them, why did the entire world want this?

The version of this story that you seem to be clinging to doesn't work. It's rife with revisionist history. It's a story that those who want to blame Democrats for the Iraq war have concocted but it has fatal flaws.

[NYC_SKP]

8. Yes, those primaries were harsh. Next week's general election is clinton all the way.

WTH with this early prognostication?

Jury please note: prognostication is NOT a bad word.

Umkay?

[delrem]

9. Jeb just decided the Dem primary in favor of Hillary. Get used to it.

They have the same backers - and they are, after all, family friends.

Now the only problem will be distinguishing Hillary from Jeb.

[NYC_SKP]

10. If both are out of the running I'll be happy. One down.

eom

[Sheepshank]

40. I wonder if any Republican nominee will be promoting and expanding Obamacare?

I wonder if the Republican nominee will roll back womens' rights?

I wonder if the Republican nominee will be pushing to privitize SS?

I wonder if the Republican nominee will be pushing to increase minimum wage?

I wonder what kind of a SCOTUS a Republican nominee will press onto the nation?

I don't have to wonder about any of those things with HRC.

THE FUCKING REPUBLICAN=DEM lie constantly being promoted on DU is pure crappola and is a load of putrid, disgusting, dog shit.

[delrem]

42. It was a joke, Sheepshank.

Because the OP said "Jeb probably just handed 2016 to Hillary".

Get it?

[Sheepshank]

43. "Now the only problem will be distinguishing Hillary from Jeb. " this was your joke?

not seeing the funny in it...perhaps the sarcasm smilie may have helped.

[delrem]

44. Well, the Clinton and Bush families are close friends.

Have been for decades. You know that, right?

[Sheepshank]

45. so you weren't joking...? Do you follow and adhere to the politics of all of your friends?

what a stupid straw man.

[delrem]

46. It was a joke, Sheepshank.

And the Clinton and Bush families are close friends.

You do know that, right?

[John Poet]

41. Ouch. That'll leave a mark.

[DFW]

12. He hung himself out to dry on an extremist right wing site, of all places

On Newsmax, of all places, this appeared:
------------------------------------
Jeb Bush said Sunday that he would have authorized the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, though he acknowledged mistakes made after Saddam Hussein's downfall.

Bush, a presumed Republican presidential candidate who is the son and brother of two former presidents, pointed out that Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton voted in favor of authorizing the use of force in Iraq ahead of the invasion.

"I would have (authorized the invasion), and so would have Hillary Clinton, just to remind everybody," Bush told Fox News television in an interview to be aired late Monday.

"And so would almost everybody that was confronted with the intelligence they got."
--------------------------------

I doubt they realize how damaging this reads.

First of all, the resolution Hillary and so many other Democrats voted for authorized an invasion, SHOULD IT PROVE NECESSARY, a part that so many on both right and left conveniently tend to leave out. It never did prove necessary, so Hillary did NOT vote to authorize what Cheneybush did.

Also the phony "intelligence they got" was made up and provided by his brother's administration. So if Jeb, or his VP, decides to concoct more phony intelligence, he says we should act on it? Launch a ten year disastrous and costly military invasion based on fiction they wrote specifically for that purpose? Jeb just gave Rand Paul the gun AND the ammunition with which to demolish him in the first Fox Noise debate.

Iraq was by far the worst decision by a President since Herbert Hoover steered the US economy off a cliff. If Jeb is saying he would do it again, he just disqualified himself from the presidency in even stronger terms than he did when he said he'd let his religion guide his presidency, which Republicans will cheer. Only Democrats will see that for the unconstitutional insanity it truly is.

[Yorktown]

13. He's stuck because he can't admit his brother skewed the intelligence

I think it never happened under any other president in history that the Vice President himself went to the CIA offices in Langley to review the intelligence with the analysts to 'help' them select what was relevant or not.

The analysts were tickled pink and went along with the general color of the data that was expected of them. Very subtle salesmanship, Dick. Not a sound way to ensure policy decisions are made on the basis of solid, unbiased intelligence.

[DFW]

14. Cheney had a business agenda

Rather cold-hearted, if you ask me, but I still maintain that the Iraq invasion was a business decision taken by Cheney to save his company, Halliburton, and it was cloaked in the patriotic mumbo jumbo that he had Wolfowitz, Bush, Rice and Powell sell to the world. He picked out "intelligence" that supported his fiction, and made up the rest, which the rest of them obediently parroted.

Cheney was one of the few who KNEW flat out all along that the premise for the invasion was pure fiction, because he had access to the cold facts. Being able to manipulate these facts and alter them to suit his purposes was something he only could have done if he had the true data at his disposal in the first place.

[Yorktown]

15. I'd doubt that

Sure, Cheney is a repulsive individual, but I doubt even him would start a trillion dollars war just to make a few extra bucks.

[tavernier]

17. No, nothing as paltry as money.

Global domination, control and power... These are what drive Cheney's appetite. A few more million in his change pocket was just the gravy.

[Yorktown]

28. I still do not see what the Iraq fiasco gave to Cheney

In fact, I'm not far from thinking the Bush administration just sleep walked into that mess.

[DFW]

35. For starters 200,000 options of Halliburton Stcok for $1

Put into his blind trust when he took office, but he knew they were there. Halliburton was at $19 a share when he took office in 2001. Their government-awarded contracts during the first part of the Iraq invasion shot the stock up to $87. The difference between $87 and $19 is $68. Multiply $68 by 200,000 and you get $13,600,000. Subtract the $1 option price per share for the 200,000 shares, and you still have $13,400,000 pure profit left over, and that's just ONE tiny transaction by ONE Halliburton exec. Cheney didn't sleepwalk into that. Halliburton's move from Texas to the United Arab Emirates just before Cheney left office was no coincidence, either, if you ask me. Go with a search warrant to Dubai, and see what kind of reception you get.

[BillZBubb]

27. PNAC - neocons for big bucks and power.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

32. The invasion WAS "the mistake"

and every other mistake thereafter simply flowed from that first one IMHO

[DFW]

36. Only on a national basis

From Halliburton's point of view, it made all the sense in the world. From the point of view of Dick Cheney, part-time Halliburton CEO, asking him if he thought invading Iraq was a good idea is like asking the CEO of Exxon if he thinks pumping oil is a good idea.

[karynnj]

33. Exactly - you state better what they voted for than anything I remember from the last decade

"First of all, the resolution Hillary and so many other Democrats voted for authorized an invasion, SHOULD IT PROVE NECESSARY,"

Not to mention, Bush, like many on the left and right, also conflate what was known in October 2002 and what was known in March 2003, when GWB started the invasion. When Bush called for the invasion in March, inspectors were already saying that they had not found WMD and Iraq was cooperating in allowing invasive inspections and even destroying their best missiles that were found to go too far when not loaded with warheads. The ONLY pressing need to invade given was that it would soon be too hot for our soldiers to invade!

In October, no investigators had been in for 4 years and it was likely that the sanctions regime would be ended internationally. Many people, especially Biden and Kerry, both on SFRC, called in summer 2002 for Bush to work with the UN and to consult Congress - and NOT use the 2001 authority to attack Iraq. Biden, in the 2008 race spoke of the concern about sanctions ending as a concern that drove many Democrats. The IWR called for working with the UN, which Bush started to do after the vote then abandoned when he saw he did not have the support of France and Germany. It also called for Iraq to allow invasive inspections.

Imagine that Bush had done what many Democrats, both against and for the IWR, were advocating for and used the fantastic option handed to him - that he was uninterested in because his goal was NEVER what he said it was. Imagine how strong he would have been in 2004 if - instead of going to war - he got a long term agreement to continue monitoring Iraq, while lifting the sanctions that had done so much damage over more than a decade. He could then have declared that his invasive inspections eliminated things like the missiles actually destroyed for having too long a range and that they eliminated the possibility that Iraq still had chemical weapons, while showing they had no nuclear weapons. ( Had the same authority in October 2002 been asked for by a President Kerry or a President Biden etc, there is no doubt in my mind that this is what they would have done. )

While still being a wartime President, Bush could have contrasted his monitoring Iraq with the horrible toll the sanctions had had under Clinton. (They started under GHWB, but he could have easily argued that they were never intended to be permanent.) How could any Democrat run against him for successfully doing what they called on him to do?

Note that NOT going to war with Iraq would have avoided so many negatives - no war, no increased debt, no Abu Ghraib. He would have run on being strong after 911, attacking Afghanistan to control AQ, and he would have had Iraq as an example of peacefully limiting a threat (even if partly falsely created) and run on the tax cuts (the Democrats had insured they extended to everyone - even though the biggest share of gain going to the 1%) and the drug benefit for Medicare. Bush could have stolen many issues that are usually Democratic.

To me, it is sad that the left was so angry over the IWR that they HELPED move part of the blame from Bush to the Congress for a decision he alone made. At this point,I have spoken to many intelligent people who are surprised when I tell them the vote was in October, the invasion in March -- as many have a false memory that directly connects the two - placing the vote and the decision at the same point in time -- as Jeb Bush does EXPLICITLY in this comment that they had the same intelligence. This ignores that HRC's vote occurred before the inspectors were in -- and Bush had the results of about 5 months of work by people like Hans Blix and El Baredi (IAEA) done after the vote.

[workinclasszero]

18. I don't see how Jebby makes it past the teahaddists

who own the rethug party now.

All the $$$ from the wall street faction is not going to buy him the love of Jade Helm 15 nutcases or the Randian religious right true believers or the racist anti gay/hispanic/black haters either.

I'm hoping the thug ticket will be Cruz/Walker. If that doesn't motivate america toward a massive landslide win for Hillary, this country deserves everything a neo nazi ticket like that will bring, I suppose.

[R.Quinn]

20. Hmm

"Assuming Jeb is the most likely Republican finalist..."

That's quite an assumption. 2016 is not yet his to give. I see him as rather unlikely for the nomination for the very fact that he is a Bush. The neocons are warmongering idiots, but even they wouldn't be that stupid (although I have been wrong before).

By my estimation, you will likely be looking at a Rand or Cruz challenger come 2016.

[Yorktown]

29. I don't think either stands a chance

Paul: minority libertarian platform
Cruz: repeats Baptist mantras too closely to be taken seriously by anyone

[Backwoodsrider]

34. yep no chance

I live in rural area and have noticed some gun toting beer drinking facebook friends talking about what most GOP candidate are trying to sell right now and the locals they are saying "WTF is he talking about I just don't want Obama to take our guns". This wide open primary is bringing the GOP dishonest insanity to light.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

31. It's scary enough knowing that Jeb takes advice from his brother on anything

let alone on Iraq.

However, what's scariest to me is that there are no limitations on how many terms Dick Cheney can serve as VP.

[Left coast liberal]

37. He must not want the gig...or why would he say such a thing?

[november3rd]

38. Bernie

Sanders is gonna blow away all the competition.