Worst Presidents of all Time:

[U2Edge]

In Gallup's average approval ratings, W actually does a little better than Obama.

OVERALL AVERAGE APPROVAL RATING WHILE PRESIDENT:

John F. Kennedy - 70%
Dwight D. Eisenhower - 65%
George H.W. Bush - 61%
Lyndon B. Johnson - 55%
Bill Clinton - 55%
Ronald Reagan - 53%
George W. Bush - 49%
Richard Nixon - 49%
Barack Obama - 48%
Gerald Ford - 47%
Jimmy Carter - 46%
Harry S. Truman - 45%
Donald J. Trump - 40%

Dubya is an interesting case

He had over 80% approval after 9-11 down to 28% when he left office

That man used up a lot of political capital

But W. won re-election which is more significant than any poll. Plus Truman's lowest numbers, 22% approval, were worse than Bush, yet Truman today is consider one of the greatest Presidents of all time. W's standing has already improved from where it was 10 years ago and I expect it will continue to improve in the future. As time passes, it allows for more objective and less emotional and political evaluations.

W ran as a wartime president in 2004 and still barely defeated Kerry.

Truman was despised because he fired MacArthur
History showed it was a wise move

Bush won the 2004 election with the first MAJORITY in the popular vote since 1988.

What you don't mention here is that in all the intervening elections: 1992, 1996 and 2000 -- there were significant third party candies running.

Same reason Nixon (1968), Truman (1948), Wilson (1912), and Lincoln (1860) fell short, among several others.

Sixteen years. Bush beat John Kerry by a larger margin in the popular vote than Hillary beat Trump by.

It was only close if your going by the electoral college and what happened in Ohio. Bush won Ohio by 120,000 votes. But if Bush had lost Ohio and the election, he still would have been the winner of the popular vote.

Truman's poll numbers were due to his handling of the Korean War. People were upset by the sudden early promise of victory being wiped out at the end of 1950, and the long slog back and forth over the next few years. People felt Truman had failed to manage and prosecute the war effectively.

I uh, think Truman had a bit more than that going on.

​

In 1992, the third party candidate hurt the loser, George H.W. Bush. The impact on Clinton was minimal. Also in 1996, the third party Challenger hurt Dole, not Clinton who was the winner. So these were not elections where the winners opportunity to get a majority were stolen by a third party candidate, because the third party candidate impacted the loser. As for the year 2000 and Ralph Nader's run, he ran again in 2004, so that would not count either.

So yes, George W. Bush winning by the first majority in the popular vote since 1988 was a big deal. Especially when you consider that Hollywood and the Music community launched the largest effort by each of those groups in their history to prevent George W. Bush from being re-elected. George W. Bush's victory in 2004 was a powerful one. He also helped Republicans increase their majorities in the Senate and the House Of Representatives. I have fond memories of that campaign as I volunteered every day after work for hours for several months all the way to election night. It was a sweet victory!

 

[rightwinger]

Dubya is an interesting case

He had over 80% approval after 9-11 down to 28% when he left office

That man used up a lot of political capital

Much like Lyndon Johnson. An unpopular war destroyed his presidency.
I didn't like Bush Jr. either, he FUBAR'D immigration, punted economic policies to the same people Obama did and was probably the worst war time President ever.
The difference between Bush and Obama economically was not that much. And the media completely gave Obama a pass on the wars in the M.E. If you had no other means of communication besides CNN, MSNBC, NYT etc. - you would have thought the wars ended the day Obama took office...just like the protest fizzeled and virtually disappeared.

I think Bush 43 would have made a good President if not for 9-11

His Bush Doctrine in the war on terror resulted in two unnecessary invasions and upset the entire region

Those invasions were necessary and long overdue. Afghanistan is far better off today than it was back in the year 2000. Iraq currently has a murder rate lower than California did in 1990. Kuwaiti Oil and Saudi Oil have never been safer from foreign attack, seizure or sabotage. The invasions removed regimes that were threatening to the United States and the world just like the regimes of the Axis powers during World War II. Its a great thing. Few if anyone will be writing any books in the future about how it would be great if the Taliban came back to power in Afghanistan, and Saddam's regime came back to power in Iraq. Then again, you do get a tiny minority of extremist that fantasize about Hitler today.

Those invasions were misguided and unnecessary

Afghanistan seemed prudent at the time, but given how quickly Bush abandoned the war on terror there, it was not that critical

Bin Laden ended up in Pakistan and the Taliban are still waiting in the wings

Both invasions were necessary and accomplished a lot of good of U.S. security. Two threatening regimes were removed from power. Saddam had survived the post-Gulf War years of containment. He had essentially wrestled free of most sanctions and the weapons embargo that had been put on to contain him. He was starting to make Billions of dollars a year through illegal oil sales. Money talks, and oil is money. It was only a matter of time before SADDAM would succeed in rebuilding his past military capabilities. The United States and other member states had responsibility to bring Iraq into compliance with UN Security council resolutions in regards to WMD and remaining problems resulting from Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait in 1990. Kuwait was owed Billions of dollars in damages and thousands of Kuwaiti's were still missing and unaccounted for. As mentioned before, the United States was already engaged in active combat of one sort of another every year in Iraq due to Iraqi violations from 1991 to 2003. The containment mechanisms of sanctions and the weapons embargo had fallen apart. Anything and everything were flowing across the Turkish/Iraqi border, the Syrian/Iraqi border, the Jordanian/Iraqi border and even the Iranian/Iraqi border. There was also no way to know what Iraq still had in terms of WMD or when they would develop new programs. Inspectors had been kicked out of the country and even if they were later let back in, they would never be able to properly due their job due to Iraqi harassment. In hindsight, Saddam should have been removed in 1991, but the general feeling back then was that the defeat in the Gulf War was too big for Saddam to survive. No one seriously believe he would still be leading Iraq by 1996. An internal replacement by Iraqi's would be far less costly than an invasion. But unfortunately, Saddam survived, and the means of containing him crumbled. That made it a necessity to remove Saddam. Failing to remove him in 2003 or soon after would have resulted in the rebuilding of Saddam's military capabilities, both conventional and un-conventional and a new crises in Kuwait or Saudi Arabia which would put the entire global economy in jeopardy. It was the United States and other members states of the UN to never let what happened to Kuwait in August 1990 ever happen again. It was clear that the only way to insure it would never happen again by 2003, was through Saddam's removal. Saddam's potential means of again threatening the global economy's most vital region made regime change the only option.

Every administration since Bush left office has taken events in Iraq seriously, although Obama made the massive mistake of prematurely withdrawing US forces at the end of 2011. US troops have been in Iraq since 2014, and the results have been fantastic. The United States has finally essentially achieved its goals with the new Iraqi Government, stable enough within its own country, and not a threat to its neighbors. The new Iraqi government has even become a bridge for discussion and negotiation between Iran and Saudi Arabia. All these things are good for the region and the world, and would not be possible if Saddam were still in power. If Saddam had remained in power, the United States would already be fighting or facing a far more costly war with Saddam's regime armed with new weapons easily purchased on the world market. The cost of dealing with a rearmed Saddam would mean far heavier US casualties, and far heavier civilian casualties, let alone the risk to Kuwaiti oil and Saudi oil so vital to the global economy. So in the long run, the removal of Saddam has been a big win for Iraqi's, the region, and the world.

Not invading Afghanistan in 2001 would have just let the terrorist problem fester and get worse. The United States made a mistake of abandoning Afghanistan after the Soviets left in 1989. The results were not good, and help to lead to the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York City and Washington D.C.. In order to prevent such attacks of that scale from happening again, at minimum the United States had to remove the Taliban government. In the years since 2001, the United States has helped the new Afghan government and military grow in size and capability. There are 34 provinces in Afghanistan, each with a provincial capital. Over the past 18 years the Taliban have only taken one of those provincial capitals, but lost it to the Afghanistan military within weeks. This is a far cry from the Taliban's capabilities in the mid-1990s, when it only took them two years to take over 90% of the provincial capitals in the country. So the U.S. invasion has been good for Afghanistan, the region, and the world. The terrorist threat is reduced, the Afghan military and government continue to improve their capabilities every year. The Afghanistan military is suffering heavy casualties, since the United States drew down its forces from 100,000 to just 14,000. But, despite the drawdown of U.S. forces, the Afghan military continues to hold on to all the provincial capitals in the country. They now just need to reduce the casualties their taking in fighting the Taliban and increase their control and coverage of the more rural areas of the country.

Counter insurgency and nation building are difficult projects that often require lots of time and persistence to work. A decade at a minimum, but usually much more than that. The investment in both Afghanistan and Iraq has been worth it because of the national and global security threats involved. Back in 2008, there were 180,000 US military personal in Iraq and 35,000 US personal in Afghanistan. A combined 215,000. Today, those numbers are 5,000 and 14,000. A combined 19,000. That just goes to show how much things have improved.

They were threats to nobody outside their borders
Many nations still around today with despotic leaders

Bush’s rapid abandonment of Afghanistan and Mission Accomplished déclaration showed how little he understood the complexities of nation building

We are still there today

Cost us close to 10,000 US lives, 100s of thousand of Iraq and Afghan lives and trillions of dollars that could have been better spent elsewhere

 

[rightwinger]

I agree Bushs lies did more damage than Trumps.
That is why I rank Bush lower

In Gallup's average approval ratings, W actually does a little better than Obama.

OVERALL AVERAGE APPROVAL RATING WHILE PRESIDENT:

John F. Kennedy - 70%
Dwight D. Eisenhower - 65%
George H.W. Bush - 61%
Lyndon B. Johnson - 55%
Bill Clinton - 55%
Ronald Reagan - 53%
George W. Bush - 49%
Richard Nixon - 49%
Barack Obama - 48%
Gerald Ford - 47%
Jimmy Carter - 46%
Harry S. Truman - 45%
Donald J. Trump - 40%

Dubya is an interesting case

He had over 80% approval after 9-11 down to 28% when he left office

That man used up a lot of political capital

But W. won re-election which is more significant than any poll. Plus Truman's lowest numbers, 22% approval, were worse than Bush, yet Truman today is consider one of the greatest Presidents of all time. W's standing has already improved from where it was 10 years ago and I expect it will continue to improve in the future. As time passes, it allows for more objective and less emotional and political evaluations.

W ran as a wartime president in 2004 and still barely defeated Kerry.

Truman was despised because he fired MacArthur
History showed it was a wise move

Bush won the 2004 election with the first MAJORITY in the popular vote since 1988. Sixteen years. Bush beat John Kerry by a larger margin in the popular vote than Hillary beat Trump by. It was only close if your going by the electoral college and what happened in Ohio. Bush won Ohio by 120,000 votes. But if Bush had lost Ohio and the election, he still would have been the winner of the popular vote.

Truman's poll numbers were due to his handling of the Korean War. People were upset by the sudden early promise of victory being wiped out at the end of 1950, and the long slog back and forth over the next few years. People felt Truman had failed to manage and prosecute the war effectively.

MacArthur blundered in the Korean War by ignoring Truman’s guidance to contain the war at the 38th parallel
His march to the Yalu River forced Chinas hand and led to tens of thousands of US casualties

 

[U2Edge]

In Gallup's average approval ratings, W actually does a little better than Obama.

OVERALL AVERAGE APPROVAL RATING WHILE PRESIDENT:

John F. Kennedy - 70%
Dwight D. Eisenhower - 65%
George H.W. Bush - 61%
Lyndon B. Johnson - 55%
Bill Clinton - 55%
Ronald Reagan - 53%
George W. Bush - 49%
Richard Nixon - 49%
Barack Obama - 48%
Gerald Ford - 47%
Jimmy Carter - 46%
Harry S. Truman - 45%
Donald J. Trump - 40%

Dubya is an interesting case

He had over 80% approval after 9-11 down to 28% when he left office

That man used up a lot of political capital

But W. won re-election which is more significant than any poll. Plus Truman's lowest numbers, 22% approval, were worse than Bush, yet Truman today is consider one of the greatest Presidents of all time. W's standing has already improved from where it was 10 years ago and I expect it will continue to improve in the future. As time passes, it allows for more objective and less emotional and political evaluations.

W ran as a wartime president in 2004 and still barely defeated Kerry.

Truman was despised because he fired MacArthur
History showed it was a wise move

Bush won the 2004 election with the first MAJORITY in the popular vote since 1988. Sixteen years. Bush beat John Kerry by a larger margin in the popular vote than Hillary beat Trump by. It was only close if your going by the electoral college and what happened in Ohio. Bush won Ohio by 120,000 votes. But if Bush had lost Ohio and the election, he still would have been the winner of the popular vote.

Truman's poll numbers were due to his handling of the Korean War. People were upset by the sudden early promise of victory being wiped out at the end of 1950, and the long slog back and forth over the next few years. People felt Truman had failed to manage and prosecute the war effectively.

MacArthur blundered in the Korean War by ignoring Truman’s guidance to contain the war at the 38th parallel
His march to the Yalu River forced Chinas hand and led to tens of thousands of US casualties

Truman was not against going over the 38th parallel and was advised by MacArthur and others that China would not intervene if they did. Truman did not think going over the 38th parallel was worth it if China intervened, but was advised by MacArthur and others that this was a remote possibility.

In any event, the advance north of the 38th parallel should have been a slow cautious one, where formations remained in a steady line across the peninsula regardless of mountainous terrain. It also should have not gone any further than about 20 to 30 miles north of Pyongyang as a defensive line there would be defending the thinnest part of the peninsula an advantage for the defender. Going north all the way to the Yalu River was ridiculous because defending the border there with China would take twice as many troops because it was twice as long. It would also give up a buffer zone between China and South Korea which a smaller North Korea would serve.

Instead, though there was a rapid chaotic advance mainly on the thin road system in North Korea. Large gaps formed between the United States divisions and other UN formations. This put US and UN forces in an extremely vulnerable positions as they advanced north.

In any event, despite the mistakes that were made, defending South Korea was important and in the long run successful. The mistakes made were much more MacArthur and Truman's other military advisors. But Truman was the President, the Commander In Chief, and so the public took it out on him.

 

[Pogo]

Dubya is an interesting case

He had over 80% approval after 9-11 down to 28% when he left office

That man used up a lot of political capital

But W. won re-election which is more significant than any poll. Plus Truman's lowest numbers, 22% approval, were worse than Bush, yet Truman today is consider one of the greatest Presidents of all time. W's standing has already improved from where it was 10 years ago and I expect it will continue to improve in the future. As time passes, it allows for more objective and less emotional and political evaluations.

W ran as a wartime president in 2004 and still barely defeated Kerry.

Truman was despised because he fired MacArthur
History showed it was a wise move

Bush won the 2004 election with the first MAJORITY in the popular vote since 1988.

What you don't mention here is that in all the intervening elections: 1992, 1996 and 2000 -- there were significant third party candies running.

Same reason Nixon (1968), Truman (1948), Wilson (1912), and Lincoln (1860) fell short, among several others.

Sixteen years. Bush beat John Kerry by a larger margin in the popular vote than Hillary beat Trump by.

It was only close if your going by the electoral college and what happened in Ohio. Bush won Ohio by 120,000 votes. But if Bush had lost Ohio and the election, he still would have been the winner of the popular vote.

Truman's poll numbers were due to his handling of the Korean War. People were upset by the sudden early promise of victory being wiped out at the end of 1950, and the long slog back and forth over the next few years. People felt Truman had failed to manage and prosecute the war effectively.

I uh, think Truman had a bit more than that going on.

​

In 1992, the third party candidate hurt the loser, George H.W. Bush. The impact on Clinton was minimal. Also in 1996, the third party Challenger hurt Dole, not Clinton who was the winner. So these were not elections where the winners opportunity to get a majority were stolen by a third party candidate, because the third party candidate impacted the loser. As for the year 2000 and Ralph Nader's run, he ran again in 2004, so that would not count either.

You don't know any of that to be true.

Speculation, wishful thinking and a five dollar bill will get you a cup of pretentiousness at Starbucks.

I did leave out 1996. Again nobody got a majority of the PV and again there was a third party siphoning votes.

 

[U2Edge]

Much like Lyndon Johnson. An unpopular war destroyed his presidency.
I didn't like Bush Jr. either, he FUBAR'D immigration, punted economic policies to the same people Obama did and was probably the worst war time President ever.
The difference between Bush and Obama economically was not that much. And the media completely gave Obama a pass on the wars in the M.E. If you had no other means of communication besides CNN, MSNBC, NYT etc. - you would have thought the wars ended the day Obama took office...just like the protest fizzeled and virtually disappeared.

I think Bush 43 would have made a good President if not for 9-11

His Bush Doctrine in the war on terror resulted in two unnecessary invasions and upset the entire region

Those invasions were necessary and long overdue. Afghanistan is far better off today than it was back in the year 2000. Iraq currently has a murder rate lower than California did in 1990. Kuwaiti Oil and Saudi Oil have never been safer from foreign attack, seizure or sabotage. The invasions removed regimes that were threatening to the United States and the world just like the regimes of the Axis powers during World War II. Its a great thing. Few if anyone will be writing any books in the future about how it would be great if the Taliban came back to power in Afghanistan, and Saddam's regime came back to power in Iraq. Then again, you do get a tiny minority of extremist that fantasize about Hitler today.

Those invasions were misguided and unnecessary

Afghanistan seemed prudent at the time, but given how quickly Bush abandoned the war on terror there, it was not that critical

Bin Laden ended up in Pakistan and the Taliban are still waiting in the wings

Both invasions were necessary and accomplished a lot of good of U.S. security. Two threatening regimes were removed from power. Saddam had survived the post-Gulf War years of containment. He had essentially wrestled free of most sanctions and the weapons embargo that had been put on to contain him. He was starting to make Billions of dollars a year through illegal oil sales. Money talks, and oil is money. It was only a matter of time before SADDAM would succeed in rebuilding his past military capabilities. The United States and other member states had responsibility to bring Iraq into compliance with UN Security council resolutions in regards to WMD and remaining problems resulting from Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait in 1990. Kuwait was owed Billions of dollars in damages and thousands of Kuwaiti's were still missing and unaccounted for. As mentioned before, the United States was already engaged in active combat of one sort of another every year in Iraq due to Iraqi violations from 1991 to 2003. The containment mechanisms of sanctions and the weapons embargo had fallen apart. Anything and everything were flowing across the Turkish/Iraqi border, the Syrian/Iraqi border, the Jordanian/Iraqi border and even the Iranian/Iraqi border. There was also no way to know what Iraq still had in terms of WMD or when they would develop new programs. Inspectors had been kicked out of the country and even if they were later let back in, they would never be able to properly due their job due to Iraqi harassment. In hindsight, Saddam should have been removed in 1991, but the general feeling back then was that the defeat in the Gulf War was too big for Saddam to survive. No one seriously believe he would still be leading Iraq by 1996. An internal replacement by Iraqi's would be far less costly than an invasion. But unfortunately, Saddam survived, and the means of containing him crumbled. That made it a necessity to remove Saddam. Failing to remove him in 2003 or soon after would have resulted in the rebuilding of Saddam's military capabilities, both conventional and un-conventional and a new crises in Kuwait or Saudi Arabia which would put the entire global economy in jeopardy. It was the United States and other members states of the UN to never let what happened to Kuwait in August 1990 ever happen again. It was clear that the only way to insure it would never happen again by 2003, was through Saddam's removal. Saddam's potential means of again threatening the global economy's most vital region made regime change the only option.

Every administration since Bush left office has taken events in Iraq seriously, although Obama made the massive mistake of prematurely withdrawing US forces at the end of 2011. US troops have been in Iraq since 2014, and the results have been fantastic. The United States has finally essentially achieved its goals with the new Iraqi Government, stable enough within its own country, and not a threat to its neighbors. The new Iraqi government has even become a bridge for discussion and negotiation between Iran and Saudi Arabia. All these things are good for the region and the world, and would not be possible if Saddam were still in power. If Saddam had remained in power, the United States would already be fighting or facing a far more costly war with Saddam's regime armed with new weapons easily purchased on the world market. The cost of dealing with a rearmed Saddam would mean far heavier US casualties, and far heavier civilian casualties, let alone the risk to Kuwaiti oil and Saudi oil so vital to the global economy. So in the long run, the removal of Saddam has been a big win for Iraqi's, the region, and the world.

Not invading Afghanistan in 2001 would have just let the terrorist problem fester and get worse. The United States made a mistake of abandoning Afghanistan after the Soviets left in 1989. The results were not good, and help to lead to the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York City and Washington D.C.. In order to prevent such attacks of that scale from happening again, at minimum the United States had to remove the Taliban government. In the years since 2001, the United States has helped the new Afghan government and military grow in size and capability. There are 34 provinces in Afghanistan, each with a provincial capital. Over the past 18 years the Taliban have only taken one of those provincial capitals, but lost it to the Afghanistan military within weeks. This is a far cry from the Taliban's capabilities in the mid-1990s, when it only took them two years to take over 90% of the provincial capitals in the country. So the U.S. invasion has been good for Afghanistan, the region, and the world. The terrorist threat is reduced, the Afghan military and government continue to improve their capabilities every year. The Afghanistan military is suffering heavy casualties, since the United States drew down its forces from 100,000 to just 14,000. But, despite the drawdown of U.S. forces, the Afghan military continues to hold on to all the provincial capitals in the country. They now just need to reduce the casualties their taking in fighting the Taliban and increase their control and coverage of the more rural areas of the country.

Counter insurgency and nation building are difficult projects that often require lots of time and persistence to work. A decade at a minimum, but usually much more than that. The investment in both Afghanistan and Iraq has been worth it because of the national and global security threats involved. Back in 2008, there were 180,000 US military personal in Iraq and 35,000 US personal in Afghanistan. A combined 215,000. Today, those numbers are 5,000 and 14,000. A combined 19,000. That just goes to show how much things have improved.

They were threats to nobody outside their borders
Many nations still around today with despotic leaders

Bush’s rapid abandonment of Afghanistan and Mission Accomplished déclaration showed how little he understood the complexities of nation building

We are still there today

Cost us close to 10,000 US lives, 100s of thousand of Iraq and Afghan lives and trillions of dollars that could have been better spent elsewhere

Tell that to people in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Israel. Kuwait was invaded and annexed. The first invasion and annexation of another country since Adolf Hitler did it in the 1940s! There are tens of thousands of people in Kuwait still missing from that action. The cut off of Kuwaiti and Iraqi oil in 1990 caused the 1991 recession. The environmental damage of blowing up all the Kuwaiti oil wells and dumping stored oil into the Persian Gulf was immense. Saudi Arabia had its territory briefly invaded during the 1991 Gulf War, and there was a daily barrage of Scud Missiles raining down on various cities in the Kingdom. Same with Israel, as the whole country huddled in basements with their gas masks on for weeks on end as Iraqi Scud Missiles penetrated Israeli air space and territory. Hundreds of thousands of Iranian soldiers were Killed by Saddam's forces. Multiple cities in Iran were bombed by the Iraqi Air Force and attacked by Ballistic Missiles. Then there is the most wide spread use of WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION by any leader of a country since World War I. Sarin Gas and Mustard Gas.

Not a threat to anyone outside their borders? Only the most ignorant and delusional of people would make that claim.

The issue is not a despotic leader, the issue is invasions and attacks on four different countries in the region. The use of weapons of mass destruction. The annexation of an independent state. The seizure and sabotage of natural resources vital to the global economy. The damage done to the environment. There has never been a leader of a country more worthy of regime change since World War II, and that purely based on his activities outside Iraq's borders.

Afghanistan was NEVER abandoned. The total number of troops in Afghanistan DOUBLED as the Invasion of Iraq commenced. The mission accomplish message was just meant to congratulate the troops. It was picked up as a meme by Democrats to attack Bush with, for their own personal political motives. The person who did not understand NATION BUILDING was Barack Obama who prematurely withdrew troops in 2011, creating the biggest setback of the entire operation.

Yes, the United States is still in Iraq today, but with 5,000 troops instead of the 180,000 that were there in 2008. The United States is still in Afghanistan, but with 14,000 troops down from the 100,000 that were there in 2011. Huge improvements in both cases.

The United States is also still in Germany, Italy, Japan, and Korea. In fact, are troop levels in some of those countries are greater than even Afghanistan in 2019.

Spending on both wars per year from 2001 through 2019 has amounted to just a fraction of the total defense budget each year. As a percentage of GDP, defense spending NEVER topped 5% in any year from 2001 through 2018. In contrast during the peacetime of the 1980s, the United States spent an average of 6% of GDP every year on defense. So on a historical basis, the wars were cheap.

In terms of human cost, the Russian invasion of Afghanistan cost over a 1 million lives and led to massive numbers of refugees in Pakistan and Iran. By comparison with the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, total lives lost in Afghanistan, civilian life is less than 10% of the 9 year Soviet invasion and Occupation.

As for Iraq, far more Iraqi's died in the Iran/Iraq war than have died in violence since 2003. In addition, military operations of this scale, done in World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam produced civilian casualties that were in the millions. Iraq's losses since 2003 are tiny compared to that. They are also tiny compared to the 1.7 million deaths caused by Saddam's actions from 1979 to 2003.

U.S. losses in terms those killed by violence or dying from wounds resulting from violence is about 5,100 for both Iraq and Afghanistan combined. The other deaths were from accidents and natural causes that occur to military personal everywhere, regardless of whether their in the United States or a foreign country. Even adding those in, the total has still not reached 7,000 after 18 years. Contrast that with U.S. killed by violence losses in World War I, 53,000, World War II 295,000, Korea 36,000, or Vietnam 48,000, and you can see that in many ways the Iraqi and Afghan wars were managed much better.

In ever metric used, in every cost benefit analysis, both operation Iraqi Freedom and operation Enduring Freedom are WINS for the United States, the people of Iraq, the people of Afghanistan, the region these countries are in, as well as the rest of the world.

I don't know anyone who believes that in 2019 these countries or the regions they are in, would benefit from the return of the Taliban to power or the return of Saddam to power.

 

[U2Edge]

But W. won re-election which is more significant than any poll. Plus Truman's lowest numbers, 22% approval, were worse than Bush, yet Truman today is consider one of the greatest Presidents of all time. W's standing has already improved from where it was 10 years ago and I expect it will continue to improve in the future. As time passes, it allows for more objective and less emotional and political evaluations.

W ran as a wartime president in 2004 and still barely defeated Kerry.

Truman was despised because he fired MacArthur
History showed it was a wise move

Bush won the 2004 election with the first MAJORITY in the popular vote since 1988.

What you don't mention here is that in all the intervening elections: 1992, 1996 and 2000 -- there were significant third party candies running.

Same reason Nixon (1968), Truman (1948), Wilson (1912), and Lincoln (1860) fell short, among several others.

Sixteen years. Bush beat John Kerry by a larger margin in the popular vote than Hillary beat Trump by.

It was only close if your going by the electoral college and what happened in Ohio. Bush won Ohio by 120,000 votes. But if Bush had lost Ohio and the election, he still would have been the winner of the popular vote.

Truman's poll numbers were due to his handling of the Korean War. People were upset by the sudden early promise of victory being wiped out at the end of 1950, and the long slog back and forth over the next few years. People felt Truman had failed to manage and prosecute the war effectively.

I uh, think Truman had a bit more than that going on.

​

In 1992, the third party candidate hurt the loser, George H.W. Bush. The impact on Clinton was minimal. Also in 1996, the third party Challenger hurt Dole, not Clinton who was the winner. So these were not elections where the winners opportunity to get a majority were stolen by a third party candidate, because the third party candidate impacted the loser. As for the year 2000 and Ralph Nader's run, he ran again in 2004, so that would not count either.

You don't know any of that to be true.

Speculation, wishful thinking and a five dollar bill will get you a cup of pretentiousness at Starbucks.

I did leave out 1996. Again nobody got a majority of the PV and again there was a third party siphoning votes.

Based on polling that I have seen in the past, and anecdotal evidence, I know that its true.

You can claim otherwise all you want to, but it will NEVER change the fact, that Bush popular vote majority win in 2004, was the first popular vote majority win since 1988. A popular vote majority win is nothing to shrug about either in the very BLUE STATE/RED STATE partisan environment. Hillary only got 48.02% of the popular vote in 2016 which Democrats love to brag about. WELL guess what, W. got 50.73% of the popular vote in 2004! The 5th largest popular vote win since 1972!

 

[Pogo]

W ran as a wartime president in 2004 and still barely defeated Kerry.

Truman was despised because he fired MacArthur
History showed it was a wise move

Bush won the 2004 election with the first MAJORITY in the popular vote since 1988.

What you don't mention here is that in all the intervening elections: 1992, 1996 and 2000 -- there were significant third party candies running.

Same reason Nixon (1968), Truman (1948), Wilson (1912), and Lincoln (1860) fell short, among several others.

Sixteen years. Bush beat John Kerry by a larger margin in the popular vote than Hillary beat Trump by.

It was only close if your going by the electoral college and what happened in Ohio. Bush won Ohio by 120,000 votes. But if Bush had lost Ohio and the election, he still would have been the winner of the popular vote.

Truman's poll numbers were due to his handling of the Korean War. People were upset by the sudden early promise of victory being wiped out at the end of 1950, and the long slog back and forth over the next few years. People felt Truman had failed to manage and prosecute the war effectively.

I uh, think Truman had a bit more than that going on.

​

In 1992, the third party candidate hurt the loser, George H.W. Bush. The impact on Clinton was minimal. Also in 1996, the third party Challenger hurt Dole, not Clinton who was the winner. So these were not elections where the winners opportunity to get a majority were stolen by a third party candidate, because the third party candidate impacted the loser. As for the year 2000 and Ralph Nader's run, he ran again in 2004, so that would not count either.

You don't know any of that to be true.

Speculation, wishful thinking and a five dollar bill will get you a cup of pretentiousness at Starbucks.

I did leave out 1996. Again nobody got a majority of the PV and again there was a third party siphoning votes.

Based on polling that I have seen in the past, and anecdotal evidence, I know that its true.

No, you do not. You're speculating. Go and interview every Perot voter and maybe you'll have an idea then but "anecdotal evidence", isn't.

You can claim otherwise all you want to

I wouldn't want to. I don't profess to know otherwise any more than you can 'know' your speculation. What I do know is that that is an unknown. One of those unknowns we know we don't know.

but it will NEVER change the fact, that Bush popular vote majority win in 2004, was the first popular vote majority win since 1988. A popular vote majority win is nothing to shrug about either in the very BLUE STATE/RED STATE partisan environment. Hillary only got 48.02% of the popular vote in 2016 which Democrats love to brag about. WELL guess what, W. got 50.73% of the popular vote in 2004! The 5th largest popular vote win since 1972!

Irrelevant. You're still leaving out the siphoning effect of a significant third party challenge, as I noted when you first posted this. It's still just as true. And that makes it a different comparator. A three-way race can be won with as little as 33.34%.

"5th largest since 1972". Cute.

 

[rightwinger]

I think Bush 43 would have made a good President if not for 9-11

His Bush Doctrine in the war on terror resulted in two unnecessary invasions and upset the entire region

Those invasions were necessary and long overdue. Afghanistan is far better off today than it was back in the year 2000. Iraq currently has a murder rate lower than California did in 1990. Kuwaiti Oil and Saudi Oil have never been safer from foreign attack, seizure or sabotage. The invasions removed regimes that were threatening to the United States and the world just like the regimes of the Axis powers during World War II. Its a great thing. Few if anyone will be writing any books in the future about how it would be great if the Taliban came back to power in Afghanistan, and Saddam's regime came back to power in Iraq. Then again, you do get a tiny minority of extremist that fantasize about Hitler today.

Those invasions were misguided and unnecessary

Afghanistan seemed prudent at the time, but given how quickly Bush abandoned the war on terror there, it was not that critical

Bin Laden ended up in Pakistan and the Taliban are still waiting in the wings

Both invasions were necessary and accomplished a lot of good of U.S. security. Two threatening regimes were removed from power. Saddam had survived the post-Gulf War years of containment. He had essentially wrestled free of most sanctions and the weapons embargo that had been put on to contain him. He was starting to make Billions of dollars a year through illegal oil sales. Money talks, and oil is money. It was only a matter of time before SADDAM would succeed in rebuilding his past military capabilities. The United States and other member states had responsibility to bring Iraq into compliance with UN Security council resolutions in regards to WMD and remaining problems resulting from Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait in 1990. Kuwait was owed Billions of dollars in damages and thousands of Kuwaiti's were still missing and unaccounted for. As mentioned before, the United States was already engaged in active combat of one sort of another every year in Iraq due to Iraqi violations from 1991 to 2003. The containment mechanisms of sanctions and the weapons embargo had fallen apart. Anything and everything were flowing across the Turkish/Iraqi border, the Syrian/Iraqi border, the Jordanian/Iraqi border and even the Iranian/Iraqi border. There was also no way to know what Iraq still had in terms of WMD or when they would develop new programs. Inspectors had been kicked out of the country and even if they were later let back in, they would never be able to properly due their job due to Iraqi harassment. In hindsight, Saddam should have been removed in 1991, but the general feeling back then was that the defeat in the Gulf War was too big for Saddam to survive. No one seriously believe he would still be leading Iraq by 1996. An internal replacement by Iraqi's would be far less costly than an invasion. But unfortunately, Saddam survived, and the means of containing him crumbled. That made it a necessity to remove Saddam. Failing to remove him in 2003 or soon after would have resulted in the rebuilding of Saddam's military capabilities, both conventional and un-conventional and a new crises in Kuwait or Saudi Arabia which would put the entire global economy in jeopardy. It was the United States and other members states of the UN to never let what happened to Kuwait in August 1990 ever happen again. It was clear that the only way to insure it would never happen again by 2003, was through Saddam's removal. Saddam's potential means of again threatening the global economy's most vital region made regime change the only option.

Every administration since Bush left office has taken events in Iraq seriously, although Obama made the massive mistake of prematurely withdrawing US forces at the end of 2011. US troops have been in Iraq since 2014, and the results have been fantastic. The United States has finally essentially achieved its goals with the new Iraqi Government, stable enough within its own country, and not a threat to its neighbors. The new Iraqi government has even become a bridge for discussion and negotiation between Iran and Saudi Arabia. All these things are good for the region and the world, and would not be possible if Saddam were still in power. If Saddam had remained in power, the United States would already be fighting or facing a far more costly war with Saddam's regime armed with new weapons easily purchased on the world market. The cost of dealing with a rearmed Saddam would mean far heavier US casualties, and far heavier civilian casualties, let alone the risk to Kuwaiti oil and Saudi oil so vital to the global economy. So in the long run, the removal of Saddam has been a big win for Iraqi's, the region, and the world.

Not invading Afghanistan in 2001 would have just let the terrorist problem fester and get worse. The United States made a mistake of abandoning Afghanistan after the Soviets left in 1989. The results were not good, and help to lead to the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York City and Washington D.C.. In order to prevent such attacks of that scale from happening again, at minimum the United States had to remove the Taliban government. In the years since 2001, the United States has helped the new Afghan government and military grow in size and capability. There are 34 provinces in Afghanistan, each with a provincial capital. Over the past 18 years the Taliban have only taken one of those provincial capitals, but lost it to the Afghanistan military within weeks. This is a far cry from the Taliban's capabilities in the mid-1990s, when it only took them two years to take over 90% of the provincial capitals in the country. So the U.S. invasion has been good for Afghanistan, the region, and the world. The terrorist threat is reduced, the Afghan military and government continue to improve their capabilities every year. The Afghanistan military is suffering heavy casualties, since the United States drew down its forces from 100,000 to just 14,000. But, despite the drawdown of U.S. forces, the Afghan military continues to hold on to all the provincial capitals in the country. They now just need to reduce the casualties their taking in fighting the Taliban and increase their control and coverage of the more rural areas of the country.

Counter insurgency and nation building are difficult projects that often require lots of time and persistence to work. A decade at a minimum, but usually much more than that. The investment in both Afghanistan and Iraq has been worth it because of the national and global security threats involved. Back in 2008, there were 180,000 US military personal in Iraq and 35,000 US personal in Afghanistan. A combined 215,000. Today, those numbers are 5,000 and 14,000. A combined 19,000. That just goes to show how much things have improved.

They were threats to nobody outside their borders
Many nations still around today with despotic leaders

Bush’s rapid abandonment of Afghanistan and Mission Accomplished déclaration showed how little he understood the complexities of nation building

We are still there today

Cost us close to 10,000 US lives, 100s of thousand of Iraq and Afghan lives and trillions of dollars that could have been better spent elsewhere

Tell that to people in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Israel. Kuwait was invaded and annexed. The first invasion and annexation of another country since Adolf Hitler did it in the 1940s! There are tens of thousands of people in Kuwait still missing from that action. The cut off of Kuwaiti and Iraqi oil in 1990 caused the 1991 recession. The environmental damage of blowing up all the Kuwaiti oil wells and dumping stored oil into the Persian Gulf was immense. Saudi Arabia had its territory briefly invaded during the 1991 Gulf War, and there was a daily barrage of Scud Missiles raining down on various cities in the Kingdom. Same with Israel, as the whole country huddled in basements with their gas masks on for weeks on end as Iraqi Scud Missiles penetrated Israeli air space and territory. Hundreds of thousands of Iranian soldiers were Killed by Saddam's forces. Multiple cities in Iran were bombed by the Iraqi Air Force and attacked by Ballistic Missiles. Then there is the most wide spread use of WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION by any leader of a country since World War I. Sarin Gas and Mustard Gas.

Not a threat to anyone outside their borders? Only the most ignorant and delusional of people would make that claim.

The issue is not a despotic leader, the issue is invasions and attacks on four different countries in the region. The use of weapons of mass destruction. The annexation of an independent state. The seizure and sabotage of natural resources vital to the global economy. The damage done to the environment. There has never been a leader of a country more worthy of regime change since World War II, and that purely based on his activities outside Iraq's borders.

Afghanistan was NEVER abandoned. The total number of troops in Afghanistan DOUBLED as the Invasion of Iraq commenced. The mission accomplish message was just meant to congratulate the troops. It was picked up as a meme by Democrats to attack Bush with, for their own personal political motives. The person who did not understand NATION BUILDING was Barack Obama who prematurely withdrew troops in 2011, creating the biggest setback of the entire operation.

Yes, the United States is still in Iraq today, but with 5,000 troops instead of the 180,000 that were there in 2008. The United States is still in Afghanistan, but with 14,000 troops down from the 100,000 that were there in 2011. Huge improvements in both cases.

The United States is also still in Germany, Italy, Japan, and Korea. In fact, are troop levels in some of those countries are greater than even Afghanistan in 2019.

Spending on both wars per year from 2001 through 2019 has amounted to just a fraction of the total defense budget each year. As a percentage of GDP, defense spending NEVER topped 5% in any year from 2001 through 2018. In contrast during the peacetime of the 1980s, the United States spent an average of 6% of GDP every year on defense. So on a historical basis, the wars were cheap.

In terms of human cost, the Russian invasion of Afghanistan cost over a 1 million lives and led to massive numbers of refugees in Pakistan and Iran. By comparison with the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, total lives lost in Afghanistan, civilian life is less than 10% of the 9 year Soviet invasion and Occupation.

As for Iraq, far more Iraqi's died in the Iran/Iraq war than have died in violence since 2003. In addition, military operations of this scale, done in World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam produced civilian casualties that were in the millions. Iraq's losses since 2003 are tiny compared to that. They are also tiny compared to the 1.7 million deaths caused by Saddam's actions from 1979 to 2003.

U.S. losses in terms those killed by violence or dying from wounds resulting from violence is about 5,100 for both Iraq and Afghanistan combined. The other deaths were from accidents and natural causes that occur to military personal everywhere, regardless of whether their in the United States or a foreign country. Even adding those in, the total has still not reached 7,000 after 18 years. Contrast that with U.S. killed by violence losses in World War I, 53,000, World War II 295,000, Korea 36,000, or Vietnam 48,000, and you can see that in many ways the Iraqi and Afghan wars were managed much better.

In ever metric used, in every cost benefit analysis, both operation Iraqi Freedom and operation Enduring Freedom are WINS for the United States, the people of Iraq, the people of Afghanistan, the region these countries are in, as well as the rest of the world.

I don't know anyone who believes that in 2019 these countries or the regions they are in, would benefit from the return of the Taliban to power or the return of Saddam to power.

I supported Dessert Storm

Bush 41 got Saddam out of Kuwait and he resisted the temptation to invade Iraq. Knew we didn’t want those problems

Bush 43 and Cheney should have known better

 

[U2Edge]

Bush won the 2004 election with the first MAJORITY in the popular vote since 1988.

What you don't mention here is that in all the intervening elections: 1992, 1996 and 2000 -- there were significant third party candies running.

Same reason Nixon (1968), Truman (1948), Wilson (1912), and Lincoln (1860) fell short, among several others.

Sixteen years. Bush beat John Kerry by a larger margin in the popular vote than Hillary beat Trump by.

It was only close if your going by the electoral college and what happened in Ohio. Bush won Ohio by 120,000 votes. But if Bush had lost Ohio and the election, he still would have been the winner of the popular vote.

Truman's poll numbers were due to his handling of the Korean War. People were upset by the sudden early promise of victory being wiped out at the end of 1950, and the long slog back and forth over the next few years. People felt Truman had failed to manage and prosecute the war effectively.

I uh, think Truman had a bit more than that going on.

​

In 1992, the third party candidate hurt the loser, George H.W. Bush. The impact on Clinton was minimal. Also in 1996, the third party Challenger hurt Dole, not Clinton who was the winner. So these were not elections where the winners opportunity to get a majority were stolen by a third party candidate, because the third party candidate impacted the loser. As for the year 2000 and Ralph Nader's run, he ran again in 2004, so that would not count either.

You don't know any of that to be true.

Speculation, wishful thinking and a five dollar bill will get you a cup of pretentiousness at Starbucks.

I did leave out 1996. Again nobody got a majority of the PV and again there was a third party siphoning votes.

Based on polling that I have seen in the past, and anecdotal evidence, I know that its true.

No, you do not. You're speculating. Go and interview every Perot voter and maybe you'll have an idea then but "anecdotal evidence", isn't.

You can claim otherwise all you want to

I wouldn't want to. I don't profess to know otherwise any more than you can 'know' your speculation. What I do know is that that is an unknown. One of those unknowns we know we don't know.

but it will NEVER change the fact, that Bush popular vote majority win in 2004, was the first popular vote majority win since 1988. A popular vote majority win is nothing to shrug about either in the very BLUE STATE/RED STATE partisan environment. Hillary only got 48.02% of the popular vote in 2016 which Democrats love to brag about. WELL guess what, W. got 50.73% of the popular vote in 2004! The 5th largest popular vote win since 1972!

Irrelevant. You're still leaving out the siphoning effect of a significant third party challenge, as I noted when you first posted this. It's still just as true. And that makes it a different comparator. A three-way race can be won with as little as 33.34%.

"5th largest since 1972". Cute.

Regardless, Bush won with the first majority in the popular vote since 1988. Your the one that's using speculation to claim that somehow it does not count. There was a third party challenger in 2004 named Ralph Nader.

Hillary Clinton is praised all the time for her popular vote win against Trump which was 48.02%. Bush's popular vote win was an actual majority at 50.75% back in 2004.

Winning a majority in the popular vote for President has not been easy since 1972. In fact, since 1972, only two Presidents have received 53% or more in the popular vote. Reagan got 58.77% in 1984 and George H.W. Bush got 53.37% of the popular vote in 1988. The country is heavily divided. Probably the most divided its every been in its history with the exception of the Civil War. So winning 50.75% of the popular vote as Bush did in this partisan environment is a major victory.

I'm sure Biden will be the next President, but his popular vote victory over Trump might not be as high is Bush's in 2004. It certainly won't be above 53%.

 

[rightwinger]

What you don't mention here is that in all the intervening elections: 1992, 1996 and 2000 -- there were significant third party candies running.

Same reason Nixon (1968), Truman (1948), Wilson (1912), and Lincoln (1860) fell short, among several others.


I uh, think Truman had a bit more than that going on.

​

In 1992, the third party candidate hurt the loser, George H.W. Bush. The impact on Clinton was minimal. Also in 1996, the third party Challenger hurt Dole, not Clinton who was the winner. So these were not elections where the winners opportunity to get a majority were stolen by a third party candidate, because the third party candidate impacted the loser. As for the year 2000 and Ralph Nader's run, he ran again in 2004, so that would not count either.

You don't know any of that to be true.

Speculation, wishful thinking and a five dollar bill will get you a cup of pretentiousness at Starbucks.

I did leave out 1996. Again nobody got a majority of the PV and again there was a third party siphoning votes.

Based on polling that I have seen in the past, and anecdotal evidence, I know that its true.

No, you do not. You're speculating. Go and interview every Perot voter and maybe you'll have an idea then but "anecdotal evidence", isn't.

You can claim otherwise all you want to

I wouldn't want to. I don't profess to know otherwise any more than you can 'know' your speculation. What I do know is that that is an unknown. One of those unknowns we know we don't know.

but it will NEVER change the fact, that Bush popular vote majority win in 2004, was the first popular vote majority win since 1988. A popular vote majority win is nothing to shrug about either in the very BLUE STATE/RED STATE partisan environment. Hillary only got 48.02% of the popular vote in 2016 which Democrats love to brag about. WELL guess what, W. got 50.73% of the popular vote in 2004! The 5th largest popular vote win since 1972!

Irrelevant. You're still leaving out the siphoning effect of a significant third party challenge, as I noted when you first posted this. It's still just as true. And that makes it a different comparator. A three-way race can be won with as little as 33.34%.

"5th largest since 1972". Cute.

Regardless, Bush won with the first majority in the popular vote since 1988. Your the one that's using speculation to claim that somehow it does not count. There was a third party challenger in 2004 named Ralph Nader.

Hillary Clinton is praised all the time for her popular vote win against Trump which was 48.02%. Bush's popular vote win was an actual majority at 50.75% back in 2004.

Winning a majority in the popular vote for President has not been easy since 1972. In fact, since 1972, only two Presidents have received 53% or more in the popular vote. Reagan got 58.77% in 1984 and George H.W. Bush got 53.37% of the popular vote in 1988. The country is heavily divided. Probably the most divided its every been in its history with the exception of the Civil War. So winning 50.75% of the popular vote as Bush did in this partisan environment is a major victory.

I'm sure Biden will be the next President, but his popular vote victory over Trump might not be as high is Bush's in 2004. It certainly won't be above 53%.

Interesting selection of 53% as a demarcation point

Obama got 52.9% of the popular vote in 2008. Is that why you chose to list those with 53% and above or was it purely coincidental?

I wouldn’t want to accuse you of cherry picking

 

[Pogo]

What you don't mention here is that in all the intervening elections: 1992, 1996 and 2000 -- there were significant third party candies running.

Same reason Nixon (1968), Truman (1948), Wilson (1912), and Lincoln (1860) fell short, among several others.


I uh, think Truman had a bit more than that going on.

​

In 1992, the third party candidate hurt the loser, George H.W. Bush. The impact on Clinton was minimal. Also in 1996, the third party Challenger hurt Dole, not Clinton who was the winner. So these were not elections where the winners opportunity to get a majority were stolen by a third party candidate, because the third party candidate impacted the loser. As for the year 2000 and Ralph Nader's run, he ran again in 2004, so that would not count either.

You don't know any of that to be true.

Speculation, wishful thinking and a five dollar bill will get you a cup of pretentiousness at Starbucks.

I did leave out 1996. Again nobody got a majority of the PV and again there was a third party siphoning votes.

Based on polling that I have seen in the past, and anecdotal evidence, I know that its true.

No, you do not. You're speculating. Go and interview every Perot voter and maybe you'll have an idea then but "anecdotal evidence", isn't.

You can claim otherwise all you want to

I wouldn't want to. I don't profess to know otherwise any more than you can 'know' your speculation. What I do know is that that is an unknown. One of those unknowns we know we don't know.

but it will NEVER change the fact, that Bush popular vote majority win in 2004, was the first popular vote majority win since 1988. A popular vote majority win is nothing to shrug about either in the very BLUE STATE/RED STATE partisan environment. Hillary only got 48.02% of the popular vote in 2016 which Democrats love to brag about. WELL guess what, W. got 50.73% of the popular vote in 2004! The 5th largest popular vote win since 1972!

Irrelevant. You're still leaving out the siphoning effect of a significant third party challenge, as I noted when you first posted this. It's still just as true. And that makes it a different comparator. A three-way race can be won with as little as 33.34%.

"5th largest since 1972". Cute.

Regardless, Bush won with the first majority in the popular vote since 1988. Your the one that's using speculation to claim that somehow it does not count. There was a third party challenger in 2004 named Ralph Nader.

Hillary Clinton is praised all the time for her popular vote win against Trump which was 48.02%. Bush's popular vote win was an actual majority at 50.75% back in 2004.

Winning a majority in the popular vote for President has not been easy since 1972. In fact, since 1972, only two Presidents have received 53% or more in the popular vote. Reagan got 58.77% in 1984 and George H.W. Bush got 53.37% of the popular vote in 1988. The country is heavily divided. Probably the most divided its every been in its history with the exception of the Civil War. So winning 50.75% of the popular vote as Bush did in this partisan environment is a major victory.

I'm sure Biden will be the next President, but his popular vote victory over Trump might not be as high is Bush's in 2004. It certainly won't be above 53%.

There is always a third, fourth, fifth, party. What I said was a significant third party. Most significantly Perot in both 1992 and 1996. You can't treat an election with an extraDuopoly candy pulling 19% of the vote off the table, with the same comparison standard as one with no significant third party siphoning their votes, and claim that 50.1% means the same thing. It doesn't. Simple statistical math. You're employing a false comparison.

 

[Pogo]

Those invasions were necessary and long overdue. Afghanistan is far better off today than it was back in the year 2000. Iraq currently has a murder rate lower than California did in 1990. Kuwaiti Oil and Saudi Oil have never been safer from foreign attack, seizure or sabotage. The invasions removed regimes that were threatening to the United States and the world just like the regimes of the Axis powers during World War II. Its a great thing. Few if anyone will be writing any books in the future about how it would be great if the Taliban came back to power in Afghanistan, and Saddam's regime came back to power in Iraq. Then again, you do get a tiny minority of extremist that fantasize about Hitler today.

Those invasions were misguided and unnecessary

Afghanistan seemed prudent at the time, but given how quickly Bush abandoned the war on terror there, it was not that critical

Bin Laden ended up in Pakistan and the Taliban are still waiting in the wings

Both invasions were necessary and accomplished a lot of good of U.S. security. Two threatening regimes were removed from power. Saddam had survived the post-Gulf War years of containment. He had essentially wrestled free of most sanctions and the weapons embargo that had been put on to contain him. He was starting to make Billions of dollars a year through illegal oil sales. Money talks, and oil is money. It was only a matter of time before SADDAM would succeed in rebuilding his past military capabilities. The United States and other member states had responsibility to bring Iraq into compliance with UN Security council resolutions in regards to WMD and remaining problems resulting from Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait in 1990. Kuwait was owed Billions of dollars in damages and thousands of Kuwaiti's were still missing and unaccounted for. As mentioned before, the United States was already engaged in active combat of one sort of another every year in Iraq due to Iraqi violations from 1991 to 2003. The containment mechanisms of sanctions and the weapons embargo had fallen apart. Anything and everything were flowing across the Turkish/Iraqi border, the Syrian/Iraqi border, the Jordanian/Iraqi border and even the Iranian/Iraqi border. There was also no way to know what Iraq still had in terms of WMD or when they would develop new programs. Inspectors had been kicked out of the country and even if they were later let back in, they would never be able to properly due their job due to Iraqi harassment. In hindsight, Saddam should have been removed in 1991, but the general feeling back then was that the defeat in the Gulf War was too big for Saddam to survive. No one seriously believe he would still be leading Iraq by 1996. An internal replacement by Iraqi's would be far less costly than an invasion. But unfortunately, Saddam survived, and the means of containing him crumbled. That made it a necessity to remove Saddam. Failing to remove him in 2003 or soon after would have resulted in the rebuilding of Saddam's military capabilities, both conventional and un-conventional and a new crises in Kuwait or Saudi Arabia which would put the entire global economy in jeopardy. It was the United States and other members states of the UN to never let what happened to Kuwait in August 1990 ever happen again. It was clear that the only way to insure it would never happen again by 2003, was through Saddam's removal. Saddam's potential means of again threatening the global economy's most vital region made regime change the only option.

Every administration since Bush left office has taken events in Iraq seriously, although Obama made the massive mistake of prematurely withdrawing US forces at the end of 2011. US troops have been in Iraq since 2014, and the results have been fantastic. The United States has finally essentially achieved its goals with the new Iraqi Government, stable enough within its own country, and not a threat to its neighbors. The new Iraqi government has even become a bridge for discussion and negotiation between Iran and Saudi Arabia. All these things are good for the region and the world, and would not be possible if Saddam were still in power. If Saddam had remained in power, the United States would already be fighting or facing a far more costly war with Saddam's regime armed with new weapons easily purchased on the world market. The cost of dealing with a rearmed Saddam would mean far heavier US casualties, and far heavier civilian casualties, let alone the risk to Kuwaiti oil and Saudi oil so vital to the global economy. So in the long run, the removal of Saddam has been a big win for Iraqi's, the region, and the world.

Not invading Afghanistan in 2001 would have just let the terrorist problem fester and get worse. The United States made a mistake of abandoning Afghanistan after the Soviets left in 1989. The results were not good, and help to lead to the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York City and Washington D.C.. In order to prevent such attacks of that scale from happening again, at minimum the United States had to remove the Taliban government. In the years since 2001, the United States has helped the new Afghan government and military grow in size and capability. There are 34 provinces in Afghanistan, each with a provincial capital. Over the past 18 years the Taliban have only taken one of those provincial capitals, but lost it to the Afghanistan military within weeks. This is a far cry from the Taliban's capabilities in the mid-1990s, when it only took them two years to take over 90% of the provincial capitals in the country. So the U.S. invasion has been good for Afghanistan, the region, and the world. The terrorist threat is reduced, the Afghan military and government continue to improve their capabilities every year. The Afghanistan military is suffering heavy casualties, since the United States drew down its forces from 100,000 to just 14,000. But, despite the drawdown of U.S. forces, the Afghan military continues to hold on to all the provincial capitals in the country. They now just need to reduce the casualties their taking in fighting the Taliban and increase their control and coverage of the more rural areas of the country.

Counter insurgency and nation building are difficult projects that often require lots of time and persistence to work. A decade at a minimum, but usually much more than that. The investment in both Afghanistan and Iraq has been worth it because of the national and global security threats involved. Back in 2008, there were 180,000 US military personal in Iraq and 35,000 US personal in Afghanistan. A combined 215,000. Today, those numbers are 5,000 and 14,000. A combined 19,000. That just goes to show how much things have improved.

They were threats to nobody outside their borders
Many nations still around today with despotic leaders

Bush’s rapid abandonment of Afghanistan and Mission Accomplished déclaration showed how little he understood the complexities of nation building

We are still there today

Cost us close to 10,000 US lives, 100s of thousand of Iraq and Afghan lives and trillions of dollars that could have been better spent elsewhere

Tell that to people in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Israel. Kuwait was invaded and annexed. The first invasion and annexation of another country since Adolf Hitler did it in the 1940s! There are tens of thousands of people in Kuwait still missing from that action. The cut off of Kuwaiti and Iraqi oil in 1990 caused the 1991 recession. The environmental damage of blowing up all the Kuwaiti oil wells and dumping stored oil into the Persian Gulf was immense. Saudi Arabia had its territory briefly invaded during the 1991 Gulf War, and there was a daily barrage of Scud Missiles raining down on various cities in the Kingdom. Same with Israel, as the whole country huddled in basements with their gas masks on for weeks on end as Iraqi Scud Missiles penetrated Israeli air space and territory. Hundreds of thousands of Iranian soldiers were Killed by Saddam's forces. Multiple cities in Iran were bombed by the Iraqi Air Force and attacked by Ballistic Missiles. Then there is the most wide spread use of WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION by any leader of a country since World War I. Sarin Gas and Mustard Gas.

Not a threat to anyone outside their borders? Only the most ignorant and delusional of people would make that claim.

The issue is not a despotic leader, the issue is invasions and attacks on four different countries in the region. The use of weapons of mass destruction. The annexation of an independent state. The seizure and sabotage of natural resources vital to the global economy. The damage done to the environment. There has never been a leader of a country more worthy of regime change since World War II, and that purely based on his activities outside Iraq's borders.

Afghanistan was NEVER abandoned. The total number of troops in Afghanistan DOUBLED as the Invasion of Iraq commenced. The mission accomplish message was just meant to congratulate the troops. It was picked up as a meme by Democrats to attack Bush with, for their own personal political motives. The person who did not understand NATION BUILDING was Barack Obama who prematurely withdrew troops in 2011, creating the biggest setback of the entire operation.

Yes, the United States is still in Iraq today, but with 5,000 troops instead of the 180,000 that were there in 2008. The United States is still in Afghanistan, but with 14,000 troops down from the 100,000 that were there in 2011. Huge improvements in both cases.

The United States is also still in Germany, Italy, Japan, and Korea. In fact, are troop levels in some of those countries are greater than even Afghanistan in 2019.

Spending on both wars per year from 2001 through 2019 has amounted to just a fraction of the total defense budget each year. As a percentage of GDP, defense spending NEVER topped 5% in any year from 2001 through 2018. In contrast during the peacetime of the 1980s, the United States spent an average of 6% of GDP every year on defense. So on a historical basis, the wars were cheap.

In terms of human cost, the Russian invasion of Afghanistan cost over a 1 million lives and led to massive numbers of refugees in Pakistan and Iran. By comparison with the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, total lives lost in Afghanistan, civilian life is less than 10% of the 9 year Soviet invasion and Occupation.

As for Iraq, far more Iraqi's died in the Iran/Iraq war than have died in violence since 2003. In addition, military operations of this scale, done in World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam produced civilian casualties that were in the millions. Iraq's losses since 2003 are tiny compared to that. They are also tiny compared to the 1.7 million deaths caused by Saddam's actions from 1979 to 2003.

U.S. losses in terms those killed by violence or dying from wounds resulting from violence is about 5,100 for both Iraq and Afghanistan combined. The other deaths were from accidents and natural causes that occur to military personal everywhere, regardless of whether their in the United States or a foreign country. Even adding those in, the total has still not reached 7,000 after 18 years. Contrast that with U.S. killed by violence losses in World War I, 53,000, World War II 295,000, Korea 36,000, or Vietnam 48,000, and you can see that in many ways the Iraqi and Afghan wars were managed much better.

In ever metric used, in every cost benefit analysis, both operation Iraqi Freedom and operation Enduring Freedom are WINS for the United States, the people of Iraq, the people of Afghanistan, the region these countries are in, as well as the rest of the world.

I don't know anyone who believes that in 2019 these countries or the regions they are in, would benefit from the return of the Taliban to power or the return of Saddam to power.

I supported Dessert Storm

Bush 41 got Saddam out of Kuwait and he resisted the temptation to invade Iraq. Knew we didn’t want those problems

Bush 43 and Cheney should have known better

IIRC, back in the '90s The Dick did know better. But then he's a whore so he'll "know" whatever fits the opportunity. Just like Rump.

 

[U2Edge]

Those invasions were necessary and long overdue. Afghanistan is far better off today than it was back in the year 2000. Iraq currently has a murder rate lower than California did in 1990. Kuwaiti Oil and Saudi Oil have never been safer from foreign attack, seizure or sabotage. The invasions removed regimes that were threatening to the United States and the world just like the regimes of the Axis powers during World War II. Its a great thing. Few if anyone will be writing any books in the future about how it would be great if the Taliban came back to power in Afghanistan, and Saddam's regime came back to power in Iraq. Then again, you do get a tiny minority of extremist that fantasize about Hitler today.

Those invasions were misguided and unnecessary

Afghanistan seemed prudent at the time, but given how quickly Bush abandoned the war on terror there, it was not that critical

Bin Laden ended up in Pakistan and the Taliban are still waiting in the wings

Both invasions were necessary and accomplished a lot of good of U.S. security. Two threatening regimes were removed from power. Saddam had survived the post-Gulf War years of containment. He had essentially wrestled free of most sanctions and the weapons embargo that had been put on to contain him. He was starting to make Billions of dollars a year through illegal oil sales. Money talks, and oil is money. It was only a matter of time before SADDAM would succeed in rebuilding his past military capabilities. The United States and other member states had responsibility to bring Iraq into compliance with UN Security council resolutions in regards to WMD and remaining problems resulting from Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait in 1990. Kuwait was owed Billions of dollars in damages and thousands of Kuwaiti's were still missing and unaccounted for. As mentioned before, the United States was already engaged in active combat of one sort of another every year in Iraq due to Iraqi violations from 1991 to 2003. The containment mechanisms of sanctions and the weapons embargo had fallen apart. Anything and everything were flowing across the Turkish/Iraqi border, the Syrian/Iraqi border, the Jordanian/Iraqi border and even the Iranian/Iraqi border. There was also no way to know what Iraq still had in terms of WMD or when they would develop new programs. Inspectors had been kicked out of the country and even if they were later let back in, they would never be able to properly due their job due to Iraqi harassment. In hindsight, Saddam should have been removed in 1991, but the general feeling back then was that the defeat in the Gulf War was too big for Saddam to survive. No one seriously believe he would still be leading Iraq by 1996. An internal replacement by Iraqi's would be far less costly than an invasion. But unfortunately, Saddam survived, and the means of containing him crumbled. That made it a necessity to remove Saddam. Failing to remove him in 2003 or soon after would have resulted in the rebuilding of Saddam's military capabilities, both conventional and un-conventional and a new crises in Kuwait or Saudi Arabia which would put the entire global economy in jeopardy. It was the United States and other members states of the UN to never let what happened to Kuwait in August 1990 ever happen again. It was clear that the only way to insure it would never happen again by 2003, was through Saddam's removal. Saddam's potential means of again threatening the global economy's most vital region made regime change the only option.

Every administration since Bush left office has taken events in Iraq seriously, although Obama made the massive mistake of prematurely withdrawing US forces at the end of 2011. US troops have been in Iraq since 2014, and the results have been fantastic. The United States has finally essentially achieved its goals with the new Iraqi Government, stable enough within its own country, and not a threat to its neighbors. The new Iraqi government has even become a bridge for discussion and negotiation between Iran and Saudi Arabia. All these things are good for the region and the world, and would not be possible if Saddam were still in power. If Saddam had remained in power, the United States would already be fighting or facing a far more costly war with Saddam's regime armed with new weapons easily purchased on the world market. The cost of dealing with a rearmed Saddam would mean far heavier US casualties, and far heavier civilian casualties, let alone the risk to Kuwaiti oil and Saudi oil so vital to the global economy. So in the long run, the removal of Saddam has been a big win for Iraqi's, the region, and the world.

Not invading Afghanistan in 2001 would have just let the terrorist problem fester and get worse. The United States made a mistake of abandoning Afghanistan after the Soviets left in 1989. The results were not good, and help to lead to the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York City and Washington D.C.. In order to prevent such attacks of that scale from happening again, at minimum the United States had to remove the Taliban government. In the years since 2001, the United States has helped the new Afghan government and military grow in size and capability. There are 34 provinces in Afghanistan, each with a provincial capital. Over the past 18 years the Taliban have only taken one of those provincial capitals, but lost it to the Afghanistan military within weeks. This is a far cry from the Taliban's capabilities in the mid-1990s, when it only took them two years to take over 90% of the provincial capitals in the country. So the U.S. invasion has been good for Afghanistan, the region, and the world. The terrorist threat is reduced, the Afghan military and government continue to improve their capabilities every year. The Afghanistan military is suffering heavy casualties, since the United States drew down its forces from 100,000 to just 14,000. But, despite the drawdown of U.S. forces, the Afghan military continues to hold on to all the provincial capitals in the country. They now just need to reduce the casualties their taking in fighting the Taliban and increase their control and coverage of the more rural areas of the country.

Counter insurgency and nation building are difficult projects that often require lots of time and persistence to work. A decade at a minimum, but usually much more than that. The investment in both Afghanistan and Iraq has been worth it because of the national and global security threats involved. Back in 2008, there were 180,000 US military personal in Iraq and 35,000 US personal in Afghanistan. A combined 215,000. Today, those numbers are 5,000 and 14,000. A combined 19,000. That just goes to show how much things have improved.

They were threats to nobody outside their borders
Many nations still around today with despotic leaders

Bush’s rapid abandonment of Afghanistan and Mission Accomplished déclaration showed how little he understood the complexities of nation building

We are still there today

Cost us close to 10,000 US lives, 100s of thousand of Iraq and Afghan lives and trillions of dollars that could have been better spent elsewhere

Tell that to people in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Israel. Kuwait was invaded and annexed. The first invasion and annexation of another country since Adolf Hitler did it in the 1940s! There are tens of thousands of people in Kuwait still missing from that action. The cut off of Kuwaiti and Iraqi oil in 1990 caused the 1991 recession. The environmental damage of blowing up all the Kuwaiti oil wells and dumping stored oil into the Persian Gulf was immense. Saudi Arabia had its territory briefly invaded during the 1991 Gulf War, and there was a daily barrage of Scud Missiles raining down on various cities in the Kingdom. Same with Israel, as the whole country huddled in basements with their gas masks on for weeks on end as Iraqi Scud Missiles penetrated Israeli air space and territory. Hundreds of thousands of Iranian soldiers were Killed by Saddam's forces. Multiple cities in Iran were bombed by the Iraqi Air Force and attacked by Ballistic Missiles. Then there is the most wide spread use of WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION by any leader of a country since World War I. Sarin Gas and Mustard Gas.

Not a threat to anyone outside their borders? Only the most ignorant and delusional of people would make that claim.

The issue is not a despotic leader, the issue is invasions and attacks on four different countries in the region. The use of weapons of mass destruction. The annexation of an independent state. The seizure and sabotage of natural resources vital to the global economy. The damage done to the environment. There has never been a leader of a country more worthy of regime change since World War II, and that purely based on his activities outside Iraq's borders.

Afghanistan was NEVER abandoned. The total number of troops in Afghanistan DOUBLED as the Invasion of Iraq commenced. The mission accomplish message was just meant to congratulate the troops. It was picked up as a meme by Democrats to attack Bush with, for their own personal political motives. The person who did not understand NATION BUILDING was Barack Obama who prematurely withdrew troops in 2011, creating the biggest setback of the entire operation.

Yes, the United States is still in Iraq today, but with 5,000 troops instead of the 180,000 that were there in 2008. The United States is still in Afghanistan, but with 14,000 troops down from the 100,000 that were there in 2011. Huge improvements in both cases.

The United States is also still in Germany, Italy, Japan, and Korea. In fact, are troop levels in some of those countries are greater than even Afghanistan in 2019.

Spending on both wars per year from 2001 through 2019 has amounted to just a fraction of the total defense budget each year. As a percentage of GDP, defense spending NEVER topped 5% in any year from 2001 through 2018. In contrast during the peacetime of the 1980s, the United States spent an average of 6% of GDP every year on defense. So on a historical basis, the wars were cheap.

In terms of human cost, the Russian invasion of Afghanistan cost over a 1 million lives and led to massive numbers of refugees in Pakistan and Iran. By comparison with the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, total lives lost in Afghanistan, civilian life is less than 10% of the 9 year Soviet invasion and Occupation.

As for Iraq, far more Iraqi's died in the Iran/Iraq war than have died in violence since 2003. In addition, military operations of this scale, done in World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam produced civilian casualties that were in the millions. Iraq's losses since 2003 are tiny compared to that. They are also tiny compared to the 1.7 million deaths caused by Saddam's actions from 1979 to 2003.

U.S. losses in terms those killed by violence or dying from wounds resulting from violence is about 5,100 for both Iraq and Afghanistan combined. The other deaths were from accidents and natural causes that occur to military personal everywhere, regardless of whether their in the United States or a foreign country. Even adding those in, the total has still not reached 7,000 after 18 years. Contrast that with U.S. killed by violence losses in World War I, 53,000, World War II 295,000, Korea 36,000, or Vietnam 48,000, and you can see that in many ways the Iraqi and Afghan wars were managed much better.

In ever metric used, in every cost benefit analysis, both operation Iraqi Freedom and operation Enduring Freedom are WINS for the United States, the people of Iraq, the people of Afghanistan, the region these countries are in, as well as the rest of the world.

I don't know anyone who believes that in 2019 these countries or the regions they are in, would benefit from the return of the Taliban to power or the return of Saddam to power.

I supported Dessert Storm

Bush 41 got Saddam out of Kuwait and he resisted the temptation to invade Iraq. Knew we didn’t want those problems

Bush 43 and Cheney should have known better

At the time, in 1991, with what was known, it was the best course of action. Everyone wanted to avoid the mess of invading a large country and staying for years to rebuild it. No one believed Saddam would last another 5 years in Iraq. Far better for Saddam to be handled internally. But Saddam survived, got out from under most sanctions and the weapons embargo, and suddenly you have a growing threat and the possibility of repeat of the events of August 1990 or something even worse. When that happened, Colin Powell and Dick Cheney both agreed that despite the cost the new an invasion would entail, it was worth it given the threat. To this day, both Colin Powell and Dick Cheney both agree that removing Saddam was the right move in 2003, despite the myths that seem to persist that the two men were polar opposites when it came to policy.

Iraq today is a much better country that it was in 2002 under Saddam. It has a much brighter future. The standard of living of the people continues to grow every year. Its now passed Morocco in standard of living and will soon pass Egypt. Iraq has a bright future now that it has a more stable government more concerned with the rights of its people and not interested in military conquest and military adventures as Saddam always was. Again, the murder rate for Iraq in 2018, was less than the murder rate in California in 1990. Its incredible how far Iraq has come in just 16 years. For the first time in its history, Iraq's oil wealth is being used for the people instead of military conquest for a ruling dictator. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, the chief national security concerns for the United States in the region due to their vast amounts of oil supply, are safer than they have ever been. Iraq is no longer seen as a threat to either country, even to little Kuwait. Iraq is also now becoming a bridge for discussion and better relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran. All of these things are fantastic, but none of them would have been possible with Saddam or one of Saddam's sons still ruling Iraq.

 

[U2Edge]

In 1992, the third party candidate hurt the loser, George H.W. Bush. The impact on Clinton was minimal. Also in 1996, the third party Challenger hurt Dole, not Clinton who was the winner. So these were not elections where the winners opportunity to get a majority were stolen by a third party candidate, because the third party candidate impacted the loser. As for the year 2000 and Ralph Nader's run, he ran again in 2004, so that would not count either.

You don't know any of that to be true.

Speculation, wishful thinking and a five dollar bill will get you a cup of pretentiousness at Starbucks.

I did leave out 1996. Again nobody got a majority of the PV and again there was a third party siphoning votes.

Based on polling that I have seen in the past, and anecdotal evidence, I know that its true.

No, you do not. You're speculating. Go and interview every Perot voter and maybe you'll have an idea then but "anecdotal evidence", isn't.

You can claim otherwise all you want to

I wouldn't want to. I don't profess to know otherwise any more than you can 'know' your speculation. What I do know is that that is an unknown. One of those unknowns we know we don't know.

but it will NEVER change the fact, that Bush popular vote majority win in 2004, was the first popular vote majority win since 1988. A popular vote majority win is nothing to shrug about either in the very BLUE STATE/RED STATE partisan environment. Hillary only got 48.02% of the popular vote in 2016 which Democrats love to brag about. WELL guess what, W. got 50.73% of the popular vote in 2004! The 5th largest popular vote win since 1972!

Irrelevant. You're still leaving out the siphoning effect of a significant third party challenge, as I noted when you first posted this. It's still just as true. And that makes it a different comparator. A three-way race can be won with as little as 33.34%.

"5th largest since 1972". Cute.

Regardless, Bush won with the first majority in the popular vote since 1988. Your the one that's using speculation to claim that somehow it does not count. There was a third party challenger in 2004 named Ralph Nader.

Hillary Clinton is praised all the time for her popular vote win against Trump which was 48.02%. Bush's popular vote win was an actual majority at 50.75% back in 2004.

Winning a majority in the popular vote for President has not been easy since 1972. In fact, since 1972, only two Presidents have received 53% or more in the popular vote. Reagan got 58.77% in 1984 and George H.W. Bush got 53.37% of the popular vote in 1988. The country is heavily divided. Probably the most divided its every been in its history with the exception of the Civil War. So winning 50.75% of the popular vote as Bush did in this partisan environment is a major victory.

I'm sure Biden will be the next President, but his popular vote victory over Trump might not be as high is Bush's in 2004. It certainly won't be above 53%.

There is always a third, fourth, fifth, party. What I said was a significant third party. Most significantly Perot in both 1992 and 1996. You can't treat an election with an extraDuopoly candy pulling 19% of the vote off the table, with the same comparison standard as one with no significant third party siphoning their votes, and claim that 50.1% means the same thing. It doesn't. Simple statistical math. You're employing a false comparison.

You can when the third party is pulling the vast majority of its votes from just one of the other two parties. You want to claim that is not the case, but have no proof. You say I have no proof. Well then its a wash. Given that, your back to the basic fact that Bush won a majority for the first time since 1988. Nothing is going to change that. Theorize all you want to. The success of a third party candidate simply shows the weakness of one of the two other candidates or both of them. So Bush's candidacy after 4 years as President was so strong that there was no significant third party challenge to him. More credit to Bush and his first four years in office. Its a fact. You can scream and cry about it all you want to, but nothing you say is going to change the fact that Bush got the first majority in the popular vote since 1988. A 16 year gap. A significant accomplishment for Bush. No amount of haranguing about what some third party attempt meant, or did, is going to change that.

 

[U2Edge]

Those invasions were misguided and unnecessary

Afghanistan seemed prudent at the time, but given how quickly Bush abandoned the war on terror there, it was not that critical

Bin Laden ended up in Pakistan and the Taliban are still waiting in the wings

Both invasions were necessary and accomplished a lot of good of U.S. security. Two threatening regimes were removed from power. Saddam had survived the post-Gulf War years of containment. He had essentially wrestled free of most sanctions and the weapons embargo that had been put on to contain him. He was starting to make Billions of dollars a year through illegal oil sales. Money talks, and oil is money. It was only a matter of time before SADDAM would succeed in rebuilding his past military capabilities. The United States and other member states had responsibility to bring Iraq into compliance with UN Security council resolutions in regards to WMD and remaining problems resulting from Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait in 1990. Kuwait was owed Billions of dollars in damages and thousands of Kuwaiti's were still missing and unaccounted for. As mentioned before, the United States was already engaged in active combat of one sort of another every year in Iraq due to Iraqi violations from 1991 to 2003. The containment mechanisms of sanctions and the weapons embargo had fallen apart. Anything and everything were flowing across the Turkish/Iraqi border, the Syrian/Iraqi border, the Jordanian/Iraqi border and even the Iranian/Iraqi border. There was also no way to know what Iraq still had in terms of WMD or when they would develop new programs. Inspectors had been kicked out of the country and even if they were later let back in, they would never be able to properly due their job due to Iraqi harassment. In hindsight, Saddam should have been removed in 1991, but the general feeling back then was that the defeat in the Gulf War was too big for Saddam to survive. No one seriously believe he would still be leading Iraq by 1996. An internal replacement by Iraqi's would be far less costly than an invasion. But unfortunately, Saddam survived, and the means of containing him crumbled. That made it a necessity to remove Saddam. Failing to remove him in 2003 or soon after would have resulted in the rebuilding of Saddam's military capabilities, both conventional and un-conventional and a new crises in Kuwait or Saudi Arabia which would put the entire global economy in jeopardy. It was the United States and other members states of the UN to never let what happened to Kuwait in August 1990 ever happen again. It was clear that the only way to insure it would never happen again by 2003, was through Saddam's removal. Saddam's potential means of again threatening the global economy's most vital region made regime change the only option.

Every administration since Bush left office has taken events in Iraq seriously, although Obama made the massive mistake of prematurely withdrawing US forces at the end of 2011. US troops have been in Iraq since 2014, and the results have been fantastic. The United States has finally essentially achieved its goals with the new Iraqi Government, stable enough within its own country, and not a threat to its neighbors. The new Iraqi government has even become a bridge for discussion and negotiation between Iran and Saudi Arabia. All these things are good for the region and the world, and would not be possible if Saddam were still in power. If Saddam had remained in power, the United States would already be fighting or facing a far more costly war with Saddam's regime armed with new weapons easily purchased on the world market. The cost of dealing with a rearmed Saddam would mean far heavier US casualties, and far heavier civilian casualties, let alone the risk to Kuwaiti oil and Saudi oil so vital to the global economy. So in the long run, the removal of Saddam has been a big win for Iraqi's, the region, and the world.

Not invading Afghanistan in 2001 would have just let the terrorist problem fester and get worse. The United States made a mistake of abandoning Afghanistan after the Soviets left in 1989. The results were not good, and help to lead to the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York City and Washington D.C.. In order to prevent such attacks of that scale from happening again, at minimum the United States had to remove the Taliban government. In the years since 2001, the United States has helped the new Afghan government and military grow in size and capability. There are 34 provinces in Afghanistan, each with a provincial capital. Over the past 18 years the Taliban have only taken one of those provincial capitals, but lost it to the Afghanistan military within weeks. This is a far cry from the Taliban's capabilities in the mid-1990s, when it only took them two years to take over 90% of the provincial capitals in the country. So the U.S. invasion has been good for Afghanistan, the region, and the world. The terrorist threat is reduced, the Afghan military and government continue to improve their capabilities every year. The Afghanistan military is suffering heavy casualties, since the United States drew down its forces from 100,000 to just 14,000. But, despite the drawdown of U.S. forces, the Afghan military continues to hold on to all the provincial capitals in the country. They now just need to reduce the casualties their taking in fighting the Taliban and increase their control and coverage of the more rural areas of the country.

Counter insurgency and nation building are difficult projects that often require lots of time and persistence to work. A decade at a minimum, but usually much more than that. The investment in both Afghanistan and Iraq has been worth it because of the national and global security threats involved. Back in 2008, there were 180,000 US military personal in Iraq and 35,000 US personal in Afghanistan. A combined 215,000. Today, those numbers are 5,000 and 14,000. A combined 19,000. That just goes to show how much things have improved.

They were threats to nobody outside their borders
Many nations still around today with despotic leaders

Bush’s rapid abandonment of Afghanistan and Mission Accomplished déclaration showed how little he understood the complexities of nation building

We are still there today

Cost us close to 10,000 US lives, 100s of thousand of Iraq and Afghan lives and trillions of dollars that could have been better spent elsewhere

Tell that to people in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Israel. Kuwait was invaded and annexed. The first invasion and annexation of another country since Adolf Hitler did it in the 1940s! There are tens of thousands of people in Kuwait still missing from that action. The cut off of Kuwaiti and Iraqi oil in 1990 caused the 1991 recession. The environmental damage of blowing up all the Kuwaiti oil wells and dumping stored oil into the Persian Gulf was immense. Saudi Arabia had its territory briefly invaded during the 1991 Gulf War, and there was a daily barrage of Scud Missiles raining down on various cities in the Kingdom. Same with Israel, as the whole country huddled in basements with their gas masks on for weeks on end as Iraqi Scud Missiles penetrated Israeli air space and territory. Hundreds of thousands of Iranian soldiers were Killed by Saddam's forces. Multiple cities in Iran were bombed by the Iraqi Air Force and attacked by Ballistic Missiles. Then there is the most wide spread use of WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION by any leader of a country since World War I. Sarin Gas and Mustard Gas.

Not a threat to anyone outside their borders? Only the most ignorant and delusional of people would make that claim.

The issue is not a despotic leader, the issue is invasions and attacks on four different countries in the region. The use of weapons of mass destruction. The annexation of an independent state. The seizure and sabotage of natural resources vital to the global economy. The damage done to the environment. There has never been a leader of a country more worthy of regime change since World War II, and that purely based on his activities outside Iraq's borders.

Afghanistan was NEVER abandoned. The total number of troops in Afghanistan DOUBLED as the Invasion of Iraq commenced. The mission accomplish message was just meant to congratulate the troops. It was picked up as a meme by Democrats to attack Bush with, for their own personal political motives. The person who did not understand NATION BUILDING was Barack Obama who prematurely withdrew troops in 2011, creating the biggest setback of the entire operation.

Yes, the United States is still in Iraq today, but with 5,000 troops instead of the 180,000 that were there in 2008. The United States is still in Afghanistan, but with 14,000 troops down from the 100,000 that were there in 2011. Huge improvements in both cases.

The United States is also still in Germany, Italy, Japan, and Korea. In fact, are troop levels in some of those countries are greater than even Afghanistan in 2019.

Spending on both wars per year from 2001 through 2019 has amounted to just a fraction of the total defense budget each year. As a percentage of GDP, defense spending NEVER topped 5% in any year from 2001 through 2018. In contrast during the peacetime of the 1980s, the United States spent an average of 6% of GDP every year on defense. So on a historical basis, the wars were cheap.

In terms of human cost, the Russian invasion of Afghanistan cost over a 1 million lives and led to massive numbers of refugees in Pakistan and Iran. By comparison with the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, total lives lost in Afghanistan, civilian life is less than 10% of the 9 year Soviet invasion and Occupation.

As for Iraq, far more Iraqi's died in the Iran/Iraq war than have died in violence since 2003. In addition, military operations of this scale, done in World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam produced civilian casualties that were in the millions. Iraq's losses since 2003 are tiny compared to that. They are also tiny compared to the 1.7 million deaths caused by Saddam's actions from 1979 to 2003.

U.S. losses in terms those killed by violence or dying from wounds resulting from violence is about 5,100 for both Iraq and Afghanistan combined. The other deaths were from accidents and natural causes that occur to military personal everywhere, regardless of whether their in the United States or a foreign country. Even adding those in, the total has still not reached 7,000 after 18 years. Contrast that with U.S. killed by violence losses in World War I, 53,000, World War II 295,000, Korea 36,000, or Vietnam 48,000, and you can see that in many ways the Iraqi and Afghan wars were managed much better.

In ever metric used, in every cost benefit analysis, both operation Iraqi Freedom and operation Enduring Freedom are WINS for the United States, the people of Iraq, the people of Afghanistan, the region these countries are in, as well as the rest of the world.

I don't know anyone who believes that in 2019 these countries or the regions they are in, would benefit from the return of the Taliban to power or the return of Saddam to power.

I supported Dessert Storm

Bush 41 got Saddam out of Kuwait and he resisted the temptation to invade Iraq. Knew we didn’t want those problems

Bush 43 and Cheney should have known better

IIRC, back in the '90s The Dick did know better. But then he's a whore so he'll "know" whatever fits the opportunity. Just like Rump.

There were conditions under which Desert Storm would have gone all the way to Baghdad back in 1991. Those did not materialize because Saddam accepted the ceacefire and Bush and his advisors did not believe Saddam would still be around 5 years later after such a major defeat. Things changed though and Saddam survived. The containment regime broke down. Those things changed the calculus about whether Saddam should be removed from power by force.

It actually became official policy under the Clinton administration to bring about regime change in Iraq, though not necessarily through the use of a ground invasion. Bill Clinton bombed Iraq every year he was in office.

This was not just Dick Cheney's idea. Both Bill Clinton and Colin Powell supported the ground invasion to remove Saddam from power in 2003. That new it would be costly, but it was the only effective option left to deal with Saddam, insure the safety and security of global energy supply coming from the Persian Gulf.

 

[Pogo]

You don't know any of that to be true.

Speculation, wishful thinking and a five dollar bill will get you a cup of pretentiousness at Starbucks.

I did leave out 1996. Again nobody got a majority of the PV and again there was a third party siphoning votes.

Based on polling that I have seen in the past, and anecdotal evidence, I know that its true.

No, you do not. You're speculating. Go and interview every Perot voter and maybe you'll have an idea then but "anecdotal evidence", isn't.

You can claim otherwise all you want to

I wouldn't want to. I don't profess to know otherwise any more than you can 'know' your speculation. What I do know is that that is an unknown. One of those unknowns we know we don't know.

but it will NEVER change the fact, that Bush popular vote majority win in 2004, was the first popular vote majority win since 1988. A popular vote majority win is nothing to shrug about either in the very BLUE STATE/RED STATE partisan environment. Hillary only got 48.02% of the popular vote in 2016 which Democrats love to brag about. WELL guess what, W. got 50.73% of the popular vote in 2004! The 5th largest popular vote win since 1972!

Irrelevant. You're still leaving out the siphoning effect of a significant third party challenge, as I noted when you first posted this. It's still just as true. And that makes it a different comparator. A three-way race can be won with as little as 33.34%.

"5th largest since 1972". Cute.

Regardless, Bush won with the first majority in the popular vote since 1988. Your the one that's using speculation to claim that somehow it does not count. There was a third party challenger in 2004 named Ralph Nader.

Hillary Clinton is praised all the time for her popular vote win against Trump which was 48.02%. Bush's popular vote win was an actual majority at 50.75% back in 2004.

Winning a majority in the popular vote for President has not been easy since 1972. In fact, since 1972, only two Presidents have received 53% or more in the popular vote. Reagan got 58.77% in 1984 and George H.W. Bush got 53.37% of the popular vote in 1988. The country is heavily divided. Probably the most divided its every been in its history with the exception of the Civil War. So winning 50.75% of the popular vote as Bush did in this partisan environment is a major victory.

I'm sure Biden will be the next President, but his popular vote victory over Trump might not be as high is Bush's in 2004. It certainly won't be above 53%.

There is always a third, fourth, fifth, party. What I said was a significant third party. Most significantly Perot in both 1992 and 1996. You can't treat an election with an extraDuopoly candy pulling 19% of the vote off the table, with the same comparison standard as one with no significant third party siphoning their votes, and claim that 50.1% means the same thing. It doesn't. Simple statistical math. You're employing a false comparison.

You can when the third party is pulling the vast majority of its votes from just one of the other two parties. You want to claim that is not the case, but have no proof. You say I have no proof. Well then its a wash. Given that, your back to the basic fact that Bush won a majority for the first time since 1988. Nothing is going to change that. Theorize all you want to. The success of a third party candidate simply shows the weakness of one of the two other candidates or both of them. So Bush's candidacy after 4 years as President was so strong that there was no significant third party challenge to him. More credit to Bush and his first four years in office. Its a fact. You can scream and cry about it all you want to, but nothing you say is going to change the fact that Bush got the first majority in the popular vote since 1988. A 16 year gap. A significant accomplishment for Bush. No amount of haranguing about what some third party attempt meant, or did, is going to change that.

I don't KNOW that's the case and YOU DON'T EITHER. Not that complex dood.

You can't just plug in your own fake facts to make your theory work.

MOREOVER, having a significant third party challenge has nothing to do with how "strong" the incumbent (if there is one) is. That's another leap.

The point you're desperately aiming for here simply does not work. You can't compare a two-way race to a three-way race and claim 50.1% means the same in each. It doesn't.

 

[U2Edge]

Based on polling that I have seen in the past, and anecdotal evidence, I know that its true.

No, you do not. You're speculating. Go and interview every Perot voter and maybe you'll have an idea then but "anecdotal evidence", isn't.

You can claim otherwise all you want to

I wouldn't want to. I don't profess to know otherwise any more than you can 'know' your speculation. What I do know is that that is an unknown. One of those unknowns we know we don't know.

but it will NEVER change the fact, that Bush popular vote majority win in 2004, was the first popular vote majority win since 1988. A popular vote majority win is nothing to shrug about either in the very BLUE STATE/RED STATE partisan environment. Hillary only got 48.02% of the popular vote in 2016 which Democrats love to brag about. WELL guess what, W. got 50.73% of the popular vote in 2004! The 5th largest popular vote win since 1972!

Irrelevant. You're still leaving out the siphoning effect of a significant third party challenge, as I noted when you first posted this. It's still just as true. And that makes it a different comparator. A three-way race can be won with as little as 33.34%.

"5th largest since 1972". Cute.

Regardless, Bush won with the first majority in the popular vote since 1988. Your the one that's using speculation to claim that somehow it does not count. There was a third party challenger in 2004 named Ralph Nader.

Hillary Clinton is praised all the time for her popular vote win against Trump which was 48.02%. Bush's popular vote win was an actual majority at 50.75% back in 2004.

Winning a majority in the popular vote for President has not been easy since 1972. In fact, since 1972, only two Presidents have received 53% or more in the popular vote. Reagan got 58.77% in 1984 and George H.W. Bush got 53.37% of the popular vote in 1988. The country is heavily divided. Probably the most divided its every been in its history with the exception of the Civil War. So winning 50.75% of the popular vote as Bush did in this partisan environment is a major victory.

I'm sure Biden will be the next President, but his popular vote victory over Trump might not be as high is Bush's in 2004. It certainly won't be above 53%.

There is always a third, fourth, fifth, party. What I said was a significant third party. Most significantly Perot in both 1992 and 1996. You can't treat an election with an extraDuopoly candy pulling 19% of the vote off the table, with the same comparison standard as one with no significant third party siphoning their votes, and claim that 50.1% means the same thing. It doesn't. Simple statistical math. You're employing a false comparison.

You can when the third party is pulling the vast majority of its votes from just one of the other two parties. You want to claim that is not the case, but have no proof. You say I have no proof. Well then its a wash. Given that, your back to the basic fact that Bush won a majority for the first time since 1988. Nothing is going to change that. Theorize all you want to. The success of a third party candidate simply shows the weakness of one of the two other candidates or both of them. So Bush's candidacy after 4 years as President was so strong that there was no significant third party challenge to him. More credit to Bush and his first four years in office. Its a fact. You can scream and cry about it all you want to, but nothing you say is going to change the fact that Bush got the first majority in the popular vote since 1988. A 16 year gap. A significant accomplishment for Bush. No amount of haranguing about what some third party attempt meant, or did, is going to change that.

I don't KNOW that's the case and YOU DON'T EITHER. Not that complex dood.

You can't just plug in your own fake facts to make your theory work.

MOREOVER, having a significant third party challenge has nothing to do with how "strong" the incumbent (if there is one) is. That's another leap.

The point you're desperately aiming for here simply does not work. You can't compare a two-way race to a three-way race and claim 50.1% means the same in each. It doesn't.

Again, this is all just simple speculation by YOU!

FACT: Bush got 50.73% of the vote in 2004, the first majority in the popular vote since 1988. NOTHING YOU HAVE STATED HAS, OR WILL EVER, CHANGE THAT!

 

[Pogo]

No, you do not. You're speculating. Go and interview every Perot voter and maybe you'll have an idea then but "anecdotal evidence", isn't.

I wouldn't want to. I don't profess to know otherwise any more than you can 'know' your speculation. What I do know is that that is an unknown. One of those unknowns we know we don't know.

Irrelevant. You're still leaving out the siphoning effect of a significant third party challenge, as I noted when you first posted this. It's still just as true. And that makes it a different comparator. A three-way race can be won with as little as 33.34%.

"5th largest since 1972". Cute.

Regardless, Bush won with the first majority in the popular vote since 1988. Your the one that's using speculation to claim that somehow it does not count. There was a third party challenger in 2004 named Ralph Nader.

Hillary Clinton is praised all the time for her popular vote win against Trump which was 48.02%. Bush's popular vote win was an actual majority at 50.75% back in 2004.

Winning a majority in the popular vote for President has not been easy since 1972. In fact, since 1972, only two Presidents have received 53% or more in the popular vote. Reagan got 58.77% in 1984 and George H.W. Bush got 53.37% of the popular vote in 1988. The country is heavily divided. Probably the most divided its every been in its history with the exception of the Civil War. So winning 50.75% of the popular vote as Bush did in this partisan environment is a major victory.

I'm sure Biden will be the next President, but his popular vote victory over Trump might not be as high is Bush's in 2004. It certainly won't be above 53%.

There is always a third, fourth, fifth, party. What I said was a significant third party. Most significantly Perot in both 1992 and 1996. You can't treat an election with an extraDuopoly candy pulling 19% of the vote off the table, with the same comparison standard as one with no significant third party siphoning their votes, and claim that 50.1% means the same thing. It doesn't. Simple statistical math. You're employing a false comparison.

You can when the third party is pulling the vast majority of its votes from just one of the other two parties. You want to claim that is not the case, but have no proof. You say I have no proof. Well then its a wash. Given that, your back to the basic fact that Bush won a majority for the first time since 1988. Nothing is going to change that. Theorize all you want to. The success of a third party candidate simply shows the weakness of one of the two other candidates or both of them. So Bush's candidacy after 4 years as President was so strong that there was no significant third party challenge to him. More credit to Bush and his first four years in office. Its a fact. You can scream and cry about it all you want to, but nothing you say is going to change the fact that Bush got the first majority in the popular vote since 1988. A 16 year gap. A significant accomplishment for Bush. No amount of haranguing about what some third party attempt meant, or did, is going to change that.

I don't KNOW that's the case and YOU DON'T EITHER. Not that complex dood.

You can't just plug in your own fake facts to make your theory work.

MOREOVER, having a significant third party challenge has nothing to do with how "strong" the incumbent (if there is one) is. That's another leap.

The point you're desperately aiming for here simply does not work. You can't compare a two-way race to a three-way race and claim 50.1% means the same in each. It doesn't.

Again, this is all just simple speculation by YOU!

FACT: Bush got 50.73% of the vote in 2004, the first majority in the popular vote since 1988. NOTHING YOU HAVE STATED HAS, OR WILL EVER, CHANGE THAT!

If you can't follow simple statistics there's no point in going on.

Your point is fake. And I've already explained why. You can't sit here and change how numbers work just because you'l like them to work a certain way. Can't be done.

 

[U2Edge]

Regardless, Bush won with the first majority in the popular vote since 1988. Your the one that's using speculation to claim that somehow it does not count. There was a third party challenger in 2004 named Ralph Nader.

Hillary Clinton is praised all the time for her popular vote win against Trump which was 48.02%. Bush's popular vote win was an actual majority at 50.75% back in 2004.

Winning a majority in the popular vote for President has not been easy since 1972. In fact, since 1972, only two Presidents have received 53% or more in the popular vote. Reagan got 58.77% in 1984 and George H.W. Bush got 53.37% of the popular vote in 1988. The country is heavily divided. Probably the most divided its every been in its history with the exception of the Civil War. So winning 50.75% of the popular vote as Bush did in this partisan environment is a major victory.

I'm sure Biden will be the next President, but his popular vote victory over Trump might not be as high is Bush's in 2004. It certainly won't be above 53%.

There is always a third, fourth, fifth, party. What I said was a significant third party. Most significantly Perot in both 1992 and 1996. You can't treat an election with an extraDuopoly candy pulling 19% of the vote off the table, with the same comparison standard as one with no significant third party siphoning their votes, and claim that 50.1% means the same thing. It doesn't. Simple statistical math. You're employing a false comparison.

You can when the third party is pulling the vast majority of its votes from just one of the other two parties. You want to claim that is not the case, but have no proof. You say I have no proof. Well then its a wash. Given that, your back to the basic fact that Bush won a majority for the first time since 1988. Nothing is going to change that. Theorize all you want to. The success of a third party candidate simply shows the weakness of one of the two other candidates or both of them. So Bush's candidacy after 4 years as President was so strong that there was no significant third party challenge to him. More credit to Bush and his first four years in office. Its a fact. You can scream and cry about it all you want to, but nothing you say is going to change the fact that Bush got the first majority in the popular vote since 1988. A 16 year gap. A significant accomplishment for Bush. No amount of haranguing about what some third party attempt meant, or did, is going to change that.

I don't KNOW that's the case and YOU DON'T EITHER. Not that complex dood.

You can't just plug in your own fake facts to make your theory work.

MOREOVER, having a significant third party challenge has nothing to do with how "strong" the incumbent (if there is one) is. That's another leap.

The point you're desperately aiming for here simply does not work. You can't compare a two-way race to a three-way race and claim 50.1% means the same in each. It doesn't.

Again, this is all just simple speculation by YOU!

FACT: Bush got 50.73% of the vote in 2004, the first majority in the popular vote since 1988. NOTHING YOU HAVE STATED HAS, OR WILL EVER, CHANGE THAT!

If you can't follow simple statistics there's no point in going on.

Your point is fake. And I've already explained why. You can't sit here and change how numbers work just because you'l like them to work a certain way. Can't be done.

Look in the mirror. That's what you do.

The fact that Bush won by the first majority in the popular vote, since 1988, is indisputable. You can spend endless amounts of time trying to qualify this or that, theorize that this means that or doesn't mean that. Go ahead. It won't change anything.

BUSH WAS THE FIRST PRESIDENT TO GET ABOVE 50% in the POPULAR VOTE SINCE 1988. That is an indisputable fact.

Next thing we know you'll be disputing the law of gravity or that George Bush was ever President of the United States.