Tuesday, July 1, 2014
The Axis of Ham-Handed Policies, Bush Style
According to Antiwar.com's Scott Horton, the the deal that President Clinton had made with North Korea (fuel oil, money, and light water reactors in exchange for them relinquishing their nuclear weapons enrichment program) was actually working and it wasn't until President Bush reneged on the deal (once again, not listening to Powell) in 2002 that the North Korean regime resumed it's weapons program. He also points out that the six bombs that the North Koreans now have are all 100% plutonium and, so, yes, the assertion made by Bush that the government was enriching uranium was undoubtedly false. This is all pretty damning stuff and if in fact it can ever be validated - "Bush Bombs" (what Mr. Horton refers to those six bombs as), indeed.
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5 comments:
GWB, elected to office twice. Playing to the fears and reality of 9/11 he was able to advance rather idiotic agenda, Afghanistan excepted of course. Although he. couldn't even get the job done there cause he had to turn to Iraq. Big scare over phantom WMD and all.
Yep, historians are going to have a blast with the dude's legacy down the road. Oh, did I mention his poor (very) economic and fiscal policies?
I hate say it, but GWB indeed managed to screw up his wet dream.
I agree with you on the foreign policy point and, while I partially agree with you on the economy, I still maintain that the biggest villain there was Greenspan and his reckless policies of artificially low interest rates, easy money, and a propensity to bail shit out (the dude bailed out the Mexican Peso!!). That, and I would insist that this goal of upping home ownership regardless of ability to pay was a hard-core bipartisan fiasco.
Your points on overly cheap money is valid. The practice of sucking potential home owners through artificially low mortgage payments that ballooned in 5 years was simply unethical and immoral. Although it's hard to understand how anyone would fail to see the crises looming ahead when they signed their home mortgage agreement.
The only 2 people who really saw this meltdown coming were Peter Schiff and Ron Paul, and not a single person listened.
The bad loans would not have happened without the government interfering to back them up. The "banksters" won't gamble their money this way, of course, unless Uncle Sam makes it easy.
The mortgage crisis was a result of government regulation. It would not have have happened if left to a popularly-controlled economy (free market).
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RN said: "Big scare over phantom WMD and all."
As Saddam had been stockpiling hundreds of WMD, and these were found after the invasion, they were about as "phantom" as a hit to the head with a two-by-four.
You can reasonable assert "trumped up", "oversold" WMD threat (which is what Bush, and Pelosi and Clinton and others did), but you can't say they didn't exist.
"Yep, historians are going to have a blast with the dude's legacy down the road"
And that of the left-winger elected after Bush, who, instead of cleaning up the messes, chose to make so many of them worse. Much worse, in the case of his economic and fiscal policies.
"Although it's hard to understand how anyone would fail to see the crises looming ahead when they signed their home mortgage agreement."
Excellent point, there, RN. This being the fault of these home buyers who were clearly told the terms, and yet chose to enter into something they might not be able to pay for. The false "predatory lending" claim is leveled at those who are more the victims in this than anything.
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