""Bush may not have lied but he sure as hell didn't tell the whole truth"

First of all, I'm a conservative and normally vote for Republican candidates. This is not technically just another Bush bashing article. Plenty of dumbasses can parrot what the talking heads are pissed about without giving anything much real thought.

Secondly, I do have a legit reason for the rant. I voted for Bush, twice. So I have a responsibility to comment since this is partially my fault.

I do NOT dislike George W. I respected him a great deal when he was my Governer when I lived in Texas. He did a lot of good things while Gov so I expected the same when he became President. At first everything seemed good. He had a HUGE mess from the Clinton White-House to clean up and didn't do it the heavy handed way that most newly elected Presidents (such as Clinton) do when they first take office.

After 9-11 his focus shifted, and should have, towards more foreign security concerns. Problem was that a lot of things started happening that didn't really need to. The Patriot act for one. Basically, when you look at it a piece at a time, it's an amalgimation of restrictions that the Feds have been trying to implement for years. As far as I'm concerned more good could be done by people simply caring enough about others enough to start paying attention enough to see suspiious activity AND reporting it to the proper authorities. Unfortunately we are all worthless and lazy and would rather have some Orwellian watchdog keeping us "safe". If most of us are unwilling to "get involved" when someone is breaking into a car they probably won't be active enough to become involved when hey see a potential act of terrorism.

I'm getting a little off topic.

Bush did not lie about Iraq. It's well documented that Iraq had a capacity to produce and stockpile so-called WMD's. We ought to know, we gave him the capability or at least turned a blind eye while others did.

I'm going to use a Law Enforcement analogy. Let's see if this makes sense. I get information that someone is manufacturing meth, good information. An informant provides me with all kinds of really juicy stuff that is dead-on probable cause to immediately obtain a search and siezure warrant. Now, instead of just getting the warrant immediately, I wait. Instead I call him every day for 2 weeks and tell him that I know that he has a meth lab and that if he doesn't allow the narcotics task force to search his home then by gosh I'm coming to get him.

Would anybody be surprised that after 2-weeks when I finally served that warrant I didn't find anything? No, of course not. Would it make since if I let his druggy buddies or buyers have a say on when I could serve my warrant. Don't be an idiot.

14 months. 1 year and 2 months, Bush taunted Sadam with fire and brimstone BS while waiting for the UN to pull their thumbs out of their ass. Thumbs so deep in the Iraqi Oil for Money scandal pie that they couldn't get it out.

Some fun facts. During the 8 year war between Iran and Iraq, the United States backed Sadam Hussein because we hated Iran (remember the Iran Hostage issue in 80?) We provided him with weapons and chemical / bio weapons by either directly prividing them or by turning a blind eye while other countries did. Are you ready for the names of those other countries? Russia, China, France, and Germany (the major players anyway) sound familiar. The same countries trying to stall or prohibit the entry of the US into Iraq prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom. It's not liek we really made that much of an effort to push the issue. It would be mighty embarassing if we had gone in hard charging and found a bunch of reactor components with Russian instrcutions, centrifuges provided by the French, etc.

It was stupid that we went to so much effort to come up with an acceptable reason to enter Iraq. We had a great reason. We were responsible for his remaining in power and culpable for what he did while in power. We had a responsibility to remove Sadam.

However, we are not all that great at accepting responsibility for our national security snafus. Allowing the French to maintain Vietnam as a territory after WW2 for instance.

Bush could have admitted the wrongdoing that has added to the problems in the region. While we aren't solely responsible as some would suggest, we do have some share in it. That doesn't make attacking and killing our citizens acceptable.

Instead Bush did what most politicians do, fell back on saying what they think the lowest common denominator will accept as truth instead of trying to explain what really is truthful.

Please forgive the rambling nature of this post. It's 3am my time and I'm exhausted. Good night for now.