When Was The Last Time You Watched All Of This - I Mean All Five Minutes Of It

[Hissyspit]

He knew Americans were dying.

He knew more would be dying.

He didn't care.

He's still President of the United States.





http://www.thememoryhole.com/911/bush-911.htm

5-Minute Video of George W. Bush on the Morning of 9/11

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>>> This footage, obtained and presented exclusively by The Memory Hole, shows President Bush sitting in a Florida classroom for 5 minutes after he was told that the second Twin Tower has been hit and that America was being attacked...


http://www.imgred.com/

0:00 Andrew Card Tells Bush



2:10

http://www.imgred.com/

4:30

ALSO THIS FROM THE MEMORY HOLE:

http://www.thememoryhole.com/mil/bushsr-iraq.htm

Reasons Not to Invade Iraq
by George Bush Sr.

>>> On 21 September 2002, The Memory Hole posted an extract from an essay by George Bush Sr. and Brent Scowcroft, in which they explain why they didn't have the military push into Iraq and topple Saddam during Gulf War 1. Although there are differences between the Iraq situations in 1991 and 2002-3, Bush's key points apply to both.

But a funny thing happened. Fairly recently, Time pulled the essay off of their site. It used to be at this link, which now gives a 404 error. If you go to the table of contents for the issue in which the essay appeared (2 March 1998), "Why We Didn't Remove Saddam" is conspicuously absent.

Because of this erasure, we're posting the entire essay below the portion we originally excerpted. Below that, you'll find a copy of the actual page from the magazine, courtesy of Bruce Koball and Boing Boing.

"Why We Didn't Remove Saddam"

George Bush and Brent Scowcroft
Time (2 March 1998)

The end of effective Iraqi resistance came with a rapidity which surprised us all, and we were perhaps psychologically unprepared for the sudden transition from fighting to peacemaking. True to the guidelines we had established, when we had achieved our strategic objectives (ejecting Iraqi forces from Kuwait and eroding Saddam's threat to the region) we stopped the fighting. But the necessary limitations placed on our objectives, the fog of war, and the lack of "battleship Missouri" surrender unfortunately left unresolved problems, and new ones arose.

We were disappointed that Saddam's defeat did not break his hold on power, as many of our Arab allies had predicted and we had come to expect. President Bush repeatedly declared that the fate of Saddam Hussein was up to the Iraqi people. Occasionally, he indicated that removal of Saddam would be welcome, but for very practical reasons there was never a promise to aid an uprising. While we hoped that popular revolt or coup would topple Saddam, neither the U.S. nor the countries of the region wished to see the breakup of the Iraqi state. We were concerned about the long-term balance of power at the head of the Gulf. Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in "mission creep," and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under those circumstances, furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-cold war world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the U.N.'s mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different--and perhaps barren--outcome.

We discussed at length forcing Saddam himself to accept the terms of Iraqi defeat at Safwan--just north of the Kuwait-Iraq border--and thus the responsibility and political consequences for the humiliation of such a devastating defeat. In the end, we asked ourselves what we would do if he refused. We concluded that we would be left with two options: continue the conflict until he backed down, or retreat from our demands. The latter would have sent a disastrous signal. The former would have split our Arab colleagues from the coalition and, de facto, forced us to change our objectives. Given those unpalatable choices, we allowed Saddam to avoid personal surrender and permitted him to send one of his generals. Perhaps we could have devised a system of selected punishment, such as air strikes on different military units, which would have proved a viable third option, but we had fulfilled our well-defined mission; Safwan was waiting.

As the conflict wound down, we felt a sense of urgency on the part of the coalition Arabs to get it over with and return to normal. This meant quickly withdrawing U.S. forces to an absolute minimum. Earlier there had been some concern in Arab ranks that once they allowed U.S. forces into the Middle East, we would be there to stay. Saddam's propaganda machine fanned these worries. Our prompt withdrawal helped cement our position with our Arab allies, who now trusted us far more than they ever had. We had come to their assistance in their time of need, asked nothing for ourselves, and left again when the job was done. Despite some criticism of our conduct of the war, the Israelis too had their faith in us solidified. We had shown our ability--and willingness--to intervene in the Middle East in a decisive way when our interests were challenged. We had also crippled the military capability of one of their most bitter enemies in the region. Our new credibility (coupled with Yasser Arafat's need to redeem his image after backing the wrong side in the war) had a quick and substantial payoff in the form of a Middle East peace conference in Madrid.

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[NMDemDist2]

1. and IIRC he stayed another 30+ minutes for phot ops didn't he? n/t

[MadBadger]

2. Wasnt in seven minutes?

Bill Maher brings it up a lot and always says seven.

[Casper Alabaster]

3. No memory hole here,

and I only have dial-up.
Both Als (black and white) have more power and ideas than the pretend war-President.
Impeachment proceedings should've commenced right then....

[maggiegault]

4. I Believe He Sat There Because In The Back Of His Mind...

...he knew that the government had some role in its occurrence.

He has a "yikes, the shit's going down!" look on his face. Anyone else would have hightailed it out of there.

Do you realize how, relatively speaking, the world is not just a smoking hole after that day? It frightens me to think that * has access to the nuke you lurr weaponry.

[EFerrari]

5. The whole Bush residency has followed the same pattern.

He let us die on 9/11.

He let us die in Katrina.

He took us to Iraq to line his cronies' pockets.

Impeach this felon already. We WISH he'd only gotten blow jobs instead of killing us. :mad: