Reflections on President Bush

1-20 As President Bush prepares to leave office, Yahoo has posted a news report about different news organizations around the world commenting on his leadership. Although 99% of them are overwhelmingly negative, here's what Erik Kirschbaum gleaned from Canada's Toronto Star.
"Goodbye to the worst president ever," it declared. "Bush was an unmitigated disaster, failing on the big issues from the invasion of Iraq to global warming, Hurricane Katrina and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression."

While I will admit I'm disappointed in some of President Bush's decisions, especially ones concerning the recent bailout and control given the Secretary of the Treasury and the Fed, he did some important things to help the United States.

The invasion of Iraq was essential because Saddam Hussein was a loose cannon who proved over and over that he would not cooperate with the U.N. and wanted to attack the United States. He invaded Kuwait because he was unable to keep prosperity in his own country on its own. Hussein also killed millions of his own people. Much evidence was found of WMD's (barely reported in the "mainstream" media), as well as evidence that he was trying to get the nuclear bomb. Add to this the training camps for Al-Queda and you get overwhelming evidence for ousting Saddam Hussein.

Bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq was another plus for President Bush. As freedom hopefully continues to grow in Iraq, other countries around it will hunger for freedom as well. I read last year that Baghdad is experiencing a huge growth explosion from babies being born there. The people are starting to get used to some level of stability and freedom and are rebuilding their lives. And President Bush is criticized for this?

Global warming was the second failure the Canadian paper attributed to Bush. Many reliable observations of global warming and the procedures used to calculate it have proved that global warming is a myth. One volcano spewing millions of tons of debris into the atmosphere does more to affect the ozone layer than man could ever do. In fact, it has been quite a while since I've even heard scientists worry about the ozone layer. They're more worried about "climate change" now. "Climate change" happens every ten minutes here in Ohio! Are they worried about that? We've gone from snow to rain to sleet to sunshine all in one day. Surely scientists are worried about the confusion the world climate is in, just based on the climate data from Ohio!

Hurricane Katrina, also mentioned as a disaster for President Bush, was more a failure of the Democrats running Louisiana at the time and New Orleans than it ever was for President Bush. They ignored the repeated warnings that the dams would fail , and they dragged their feet on rescuing people until five days later.

Although President Bush has not helped the current economic crisis much, as I indicated earlier, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd are the primary ones responsible for the housing crisis and the collapse of many banks, not to mention Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. (They also happen to be Democrats, but that's not Bush's fault, either.) President Bush gave us a soaring economy for several years thanks to tax cuts, despite the 9/11 attacks.

What really needs to be looked at is how Democrats around the country have screwed up and blamed Bush for it and a liberal press that refuses to look at reality. Of course, some Republicans, John McCain, for instance, have gone along with Democrats in their wacky theories and thirst for government spending, but President Bush can't be blamed for this, either.

The main failure of President Bush (in my eyes) is his lack of communication to the public. He should have reminded people of the Twin Towers and Pentagon attacks more often and reported the successes in Iraq that the liberal press avoided and focused instead on car bombings and soldiers dying. We've lost the anger and desire to stop terrorists and blamed President Bush instead. I think the next four years will open our eyes as a country to all that President Bush really did to help and protect our country.