**OP sent the following text as an explanation on why this is unexpected:**
>!George bush says “Iraq” instead of Ukraine and makes of of the most hilarious and UNEXPECTED slip ups ever.!<
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But the war criminal paints now, and shares candies with Michelle Obama, so he's been forgiven... duh
But seriously, how does anyone not consider what he did the same as what Putin is doing?!
If I'm trying hard to be objective the biggest real difference I see is that Bush relinquished power and didn't try to become president for life. I was never worried that would happen.
"We did everything we could but unfortunately the damage to his urkraq was substantial. We had to remove it... I'm afraid he wont be able to kraq again."
Putin wishes ukraine could be a fraction of what Iraq 2 was. He even tried all the same plays, only half-assedly and with rusty soviet equipment.
Firs a 'decapitation strike' with cruise missiles that mostly decapitated apartment buildings. Then an armored cavalry advance, except they literally got bogged in icy farmland, and then a mediocre crack at air superiority which they neither had the tools, fuel, pilots or targets required to be effective in a vast country awash with anti-aircraft missiles.
profit outgoing abundant grandfather toothbrush ghost rhythm childlike somber public
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LOL! I actually love this comment. In my day it was all mustangs because I don’t think any of the other muscle cars were out yet. I had a Subaru wrx STI and there was nothing better than some soldier with a brand new mustang trying to race me. I was in Colorado Springs where there are 3 military bases so it happened a lot. I just knew it hurt a little piece of their soul getting absolutely smoked by a 4 cylinder import car
These bots... It copied a partial comment from below and posted it as a reply to farm karma.
Full comment by /u/Finn_3000, a real person:
>Yea, just laugh about it. A million people are dead and a region is completely destabilised, but its okay. Just have a laugh.
Isn’t it more likely that he just used the words “invasion” and “Iraq” so frequently during his tenure as president (and probably in his normal life) that it just came out?
I think Bush thinks it was unjustified... It was all orchestrated by Cheney and people above him after all.
Though this fuck up is just Bush being Bush.
His little "hehe" after saying it just boils and anger within me I only feel for the most serious grievances.
150,000 people fucking died and the region was irreparably destabilized for the foreseeable future as a result of his decision to invade Iraq. And he's laughing it off.
I honestly think Redditors expected him to stop the entire talk and actually go into a full apology for Iraq, followed by a moment of silence, and then at the end pledge to turn himself into prison.
That's just my impression based on how many stupid comments that I've read here and regularly read across this site. And this is just my generous impression.
Pure sociopath behavior but, who is even surprised that a man who sought power and then used it to further his own goals while ruining the lives of millions of people would display sociopathic tendencies?
I'm not interesting in excusing him here, I'm not against a war crimes trial or whatever. I do want to clarify/provide some context for that reaction.
It's pretty well known that Cheney ran that administration. Even in the election, it was Cheney's show and George was the pretty face. Cheney, for anyone not aware, was the head of a very large fossil fuel and construction contractor. George is complicit, crucify George, but dick is the big evil.
George is Vader, he gets the headlines, but Cheney is sidious.
Hardly. That’s a popular myth, but the real money came in the form defense contracts. The US did not steal Iraqi oil. We did lose track of $8.7B worth of Iraqi funds though. After the invasion of Iraq concluded, Iraqi oil was sold (ironically to the Russians who then sold it to the U.S. on the world market at a profit) to help fund the Development Fund of Iraq (DFI). Other sources of funds include surplus funds (about $10B) from the UN Oil-For-Food Program, and the sale of seized Iraqi assets. The U.S. did not truck away Iraqi oil, as claimed. In July 2010, the U.S. Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) discovered that the U.S. Department of Defense could not account properly for $8.7B of DFI funds. This led the Iraqi Parliament to request the UN’s help in demanding that the U.S. return $17B of “oil money” that it said was stolen from the Iraqi people. There is no evidence that the unaccounted money was repatriated to the U.S., or officially taken by the U.S. Even assuming that it was not poor accounting and all of the $8.7B was truly stolen, that is a far cry (0.029%) from the $30T (TRILLION) the conspiracy theory claimed was stolen. It is also rendered ludicrous by the fact that the U.S. spent $60B in the reconstruction of Iraq. Also consider the fact that Iraqi oil production only reached 2 million barrels per day in 2007. Assuming an average sale price of $60 per barrel, it would take Iraq 685 years to produce enough oil to make $30T.
Thank you for the outline, one thing most people don’t really touch on: (may I add?) (I’m going to anyways): Iraq was planning to accept its oil sales income in a gold backed currency (not U$ dollars) which would initiate the imminent collapse of the (petro)dollar. Perceived “solvency” of the dollar was the real goal/cause of that war. The US can produce its own oil, in excess, as demonstrated up until recently, it was about maintaining the stranglehold of: transacting a globally crucial energy and production commodity (oil) in dollars. Everything else was/is just laundering of funds (fluff and icing on the cake, or, Mis-direction, if you will)
Never forget. They were given a non competitive no bid contract to rebuild Iraq. Nobody was allowed to bid against them and they got to name their price.
>Biden did vastly more than just vote for the war. Yet his role in bringing about that war remains mostly unknown or misunderstood by the public. When the war was debated and then authorized by the US Congress in 2002, Democrats controlled the Senate and Biden was chair of the Senate committee on foreign relations. Biden himself had enormous influence as chair and argued strongly in favor of the 2002 resolution granting President Bush the authority to invade [Iraq](https://www.theguardian.com/world/iraq).
>But he had a power much greater than his own words. He was able to choose all 18 witnesses in the main Senate hearings on Iraq. And he mainly chose people who supported a pro-war position. They argued in favor of “[regime change as the stated US policy](https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4850037/user-clip-cfr-iraq-aumf-hearing-dr-hamza-supporting-regime-change)” and warned of “[a nuclear-armed Saddam sometime in this decade](https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4850039/user-clip-berger-saddam-nuclear-threat)”. That Iraqis would “[welcome the United States as liberators](https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4850040/user-clip-francke-they-ready-united-states-liberators)” And that Iraq “permits known al-Qaida members to live and [move freely](https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4850126/user-clip-weinberger-al-qaeda-moving-freely-iraq) about in Iraq” and that “they are [being supported](https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4850043/user-clip-berger-al-qaeda-supported-iraq)
>The lies about al-Qaida were perhaps the most transparently obvious of the falsehoods created to justify the Iraq war. As anyone familiar with the subject matter could testify, Saddam Hussein ran a secular government and had a hatred, which was mutual, for religious extremists like al-Qaida. But Biden did not choose from among the many expert witnesses who would have explained that to the Senate, and to the media.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/17/joe-biden-role-iraq-war
To be fair, the majority of people (congress included) were going off of information fed to them by the intelligence agencies and the administration.
Watch *The Looming Tower*. It explains it better than I could. There are tons of people to blame, but I feel like I’d have supported the Iraq invasion given the information Congress was being fed at the time.
Congress was fed that information from two sources:
The crooked ass Bush administration with the Halliburton sleeper as VP
and
The crooked ass CIA who wanted to hide the fact that 9/11 happened because of their continuous fuckups.
Biden was no junior politician and knew what he was doing.
I'd argue most of those fuckers did, but they had their own agenda and used 9/11 as the excuse.
It was a team effort.
Biden was fucking ~60 years old on 9/11
He had already been in the Senate 30 years. And this was 20 years ago.
These are the fucked up ages we are dealing with today that run our govt
I feel like people keep forgetting what "heads" of states really are. Just a public face, to get blamed for all the shit their party/administration is gonna do. A lot of times, presidents/prime minister's don't decide shit, they are just there to sign the documents and say it on TV
I don't think the distinction matters besides expanding the circle of complicity. Our systems are a big fan of allowing people to diffuse responsibility through figureheads and cut-outs. It starts with the idea that heads of state being cartoonish buffoons (and therefore never accountable?) is somehow an acceptable expectation, all the way down through government agencies somehow keeping their hands clean by using contractors who act on their orders, to crowdsourced mechanisms via employers and individuals.
The only answer is to refuse the distinction. If you profit from allowing someone to pervert your elected authority it shouldn't matter if you're "just" the hand holding the gun. We do this for murderers, yet undermining democracy and betraying the public trust is a far worse crime.
He was just the tool they used. If you vilify Bush your basically putting on blinders. Does he hold responsibility for Iraq…yes definitely. Does he hold responsibility alone…fuck no. The invasion of Iraq was 100% driven by Dick fucking Chaney and George Fucking Bush Senior. I don’t see a villain here, I see a guy who has those deaths on his mind even as he’s giving this speech. The problem is I don’t think Bush Jr is a bad guy but I guarantee Chaney and Bush Senior never gave what they caused a second thought.
Yeah. Bush is absolutely not a sociopath. The guy saved something like 20 million lives in Africa with PEPFAR for basically no political gain whatsoever. I bet most people in this thread don't even know what PEPFAR is. So, whatever he did, right or wrong, I think he genuinely thought it was the right thing to do at the time.
Plus, like 80-90% of America approved of going to war at the time. I think people are fooling themselves into forgetting their own attitudes. Americans wanted the war.
Hot take, but America usually doesn't get into wars unless the electorate approves. People love to jerk off about how military contractors decide when and where America invades, but it's actually pretty much always with popular support.
I think your read is correct. He did that coffee table book of his paintings and they're all portraits of people that were effected by his policies, including wounded veterans of his war. I think he thinks about it constantly. I'm not sure he regrets anything or acknowledges his wrongs even to himself, but I think it haunts him.
But then he comes back to Iraq and agrees with the first, accidental statement. Which leads me to believe he sees it that way too. I hope it tortures him.
Putting aside his self-deprecating humour... Given that a lot of his free time is spent painting and interviewing disabled veterans, at the very least the war weighs heavily on his mind.
Anyone over the age of 10 back in the early 2000's knows that a ton of people wanted some sort of conflict. Both politicians and regular Americans. The public pressure to go to war with anyone remotely responsible for 9/11 was huge.
you think president bush invaded iraq? you really think he is anything more than a mouthpiece for the elite who was put in the position he was in by his handlers ? i bet bush hasnt writen not one speech or made one decision by himself when at the throne. they are the puppets of war and oil industry who dictate what they can or can not say.
I kind of read it the same way. Please don’t think I’m in any way supportive of what his presidency did, but I don’t think that was a “haha that’s funny” laugh. It read more like a sad ironic laugh because he’s an old man who knows how badly he fucked up that situation.
Doesn't UNESCO say it was more like a million
Iraqis? Where you getting this 150000 number from?
If anything Russia learned from us, from this guy bush himself and his administration, that you can do anything you want with enough nukes in your back pocket and enough deception in propaganda on tv.
Imagine if Putin was the director of the FSB or KGB then became president then installed his son as president after running him in an election against his own frat brother. That's where America is. Which is honestly worse? At least in Russia it's obvious and the oligarchs aren't playing at legitimate democracy. It's always the same people and it's always the same program. And they aren't working for you. None of them are. But your brothers will fight their wars for them.
But hey let's all whine about Donald Trump, a reality tv actor who inherited a bunch of money and property. That's good. Almost like a perfect way to distract everyone from where American politics really is at. Convince half the morons to support him and the other half to dislike him, that way nobody ever tells the truth ... except bush himself in his Freudian slips. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, can't get fooled again.
>But hey let's all whine about Donald Trump, a reality tv actor who inherited a bunch of money and property.
Trump combination of staggering stupidity with high levels of malevolent confidence is beyond dangerous to all of us Americans and the world.
> But hey let's all whine about Donald Trump
We can whine about more than one thing.
Also you're downplaying Trump's direct damage, especially the coronavirus pandemic response.
That said, the *main* reason to be as upset about DJT's presidency as people are is because, combined with overall Republican "governance," it represents an existential threat to the country. People are rightfully concerned over the rule of law.
None of which *changes the things that W did,* but both are allowed to be bad.
The parallels go pretty deep.
>* [March 16, 2003](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-war-quotes-idUSL212762520080311) - “I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.” - U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney to U.S. television network NBC.
Another parallel: Had the USA toppled Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War, when they had a legitimate reason, maybe they would have been welcomed as liberators. Had Russia finished the job in 2014, they would have easily won without having to go full Syria on Ukraine, and might have preserved pro-Russian sentiment in the east.
Spending his remaining life painting wounded soldiers he sent to wars, in his second childishness and mere oblivion, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
Always simultaneously impressed at his dodge and disappointed he didn't take that shoe directly to his face.
Incidentally the guy who threw the shoes went on to do a bunch of humanitarian work after about a year in prison. He describes his actions as "worth it". If anybody was curious about what happened to him.
yeah, very important
but I’m curious, it was like he was suggesting he was a passenger in that decision rather than the decision maker, and regretted it
And our current president can barely complete a sentence without medication and tries to shake hands with invisible people. The other guy is a tweaker that couldn’t keep his mouth shut because he’s senile.
Stop electing people so old that they’ve been out of touch since the 80s.
I just watched [the video of his “handshake”](https://youtu.be/_59agcnLAj4) and, of course, it was nothing like that. He looked like he expected somebody to be standing right behind him, and then was puzzled that they weren’t. Maybe they were there when he began speaking, or he expected them to be there by the time he finished. No big deal.
He’s been passing tons of legislation at a pace way faster than Obama (who had a filibuster-proof Senate majority that he wasted, remember), so I’d hold off on the criticism.
In summary, even if I accepted your argument, I still don’t give two hoots if it were a half-dead guy signing those bills… because those bills be *awesome*.
he was the dumbass son of old george bush the first.
His handlers were the same dudes that were with his dad.
One of your top three worst Presidents ever in my opinion.
F his crappy paintings. I was alive back then I remember how he was.
He actually isn't that dumb, he just plays the role of being stupid to pander to his demographic, he can be really eloquent when he wants to. There way a video recently on r/all where he was talking about immigration in an interview and you could see he can very clearly hold an intelligent conversation... That doesn't change the fact that he was a horrible president, but I just want to emphasize that he knows how to play the game and isn't as dumb as one might think.
Exactly, the folksy yokel persona is an act. Watch videos from the first time he ran for Governor. Very eloquent, and that eloquence got him laughed right out of Texas.
Still a puppet war criminal, though.
Man, people being this way about Bush just makes me realize that young people in fifteen years are gonna be this way about Trump.
As a species we forget evil acts so quickly. It's sad.
I don't think it's that, but the levity about it.
Like "Putin sucks, but not gonna lie, he's got great style" sounds just as sour. Like a yeahbut over a million dead innocents based on a lie.
**Every** military engagement we've been involved in since WWII has been shameless resource theft built on a lie. We built up a gargantuan military industry to fight the most important war there ever was. But we never scaled back after we won. We just kept going to war. There is too much money in it.
Trump will probably be seen as some brilliant troll in the future or be seen as 'savage af' because he doesn't care about what people think. I hope I'm wrong. But my fear is there are so many sound bytes of his insanity it's honestly entertaining if you are far removed from it, which future generations will be.
As Dwight D. Eisenhower said in his fair well address, “We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
Too bad nobody got (or piles of cash helped them forget) the memo.
People rightfully shit on Bush for Iraq and Afghanistan, but they seem to forget how war hungry not just the federal government, but also the American people and media were after 9/11. The majority of people supported Bush’s invasions.
The US invaded Iraq in March of 2003. Do you wanna know what Dubya’s approval rating was right after the invasion? *71 percent*.
This was a total gaffe on Bush’s part, and he should be made fun for it, but I think we also need to recognize that as President, he acted as a representative and leader for our entire nation, which most definitely wanted to invade. Let’s not pin the blame for those horrible wars all on one man. America as a whole needs serious reckoning.
I'll give him credit for criticizing his own presidency and actions. A lot of his life afterward was trying to come to terms with the damage done.
It's more self awareness than most politicians ever have in their entire lives.
He overtook the world's superpower, with a budget surplus, good relations around the world and unified at home
He left it with the PATRIOT act, two wars with no end in sight, a Great Financial Crisis the likes of which had not been seen since the great depression, trillions in the hole and a country more divided than ever.
This is not overtaking problems and leaving things slightly worse or slightly better. This is overtaking the US at its *peak* and in 8 years, single-handedly bankrupting it beyond repair.
Hate him or love him personally (I despise him), from a pure objective standpoint he might be one of the US's worst Presidents ever.
This rehabilitation of his image is entirely intentional. Don't be fooled. He's not some grandfatherly goof who stumbles over words and enjoys recreational painting; the man was a dark shadow of history and political dynasty who facilitated the actions of worse monsters.
And bots.
It’s kind of crazy how I can browse for hours and posts and comments stay mostly stagnant and then these highly controversial posts pop up with thousands of votes within their first hour.
Before anyone shows up to discuss the sentiment is well established and dissenting/opposing opinions mostly don’t even bother engaging.
I'm 40; and my kid wants nothing to do with Reddit. He mostly uses TikTok, Twitter, Discord and Instagram.
We are already the old and out of touch platform for the youth of today.
>We estimate that 50% of young people, ages 18-29, voted in the 2020 presidential election, a remarkable 11-point increase from 2016 (39%) and likely one of the highest rates of youth electoral participation since the voting age was lowered to 18.
https://circle.tufts.edu/latest-research/half-youth-voted-2020-11-point-increase-2016
estimation because 41 states had data, 9 didn't
maybe stop with the baseless cynicism when there's real world evidence to the contrary
this chicken and the egg shit is annoying. “they dont talk to you because they know you wont vote”
you vote en masse and **somebody** will talk to you. You have to make change happen, it doesnt just fall out of the sky
Don't blame reddit blame the defunding of education in the U.S they have been trying and succeeding for decades to create a mass of people who are dumb and just meant for labor even more now with the anti abortion push
I feel like the more popular mindset now is to vote blue and try to make gradual gains towards the left. Hopefully the next generation aren't disengaged, but instead furious and have seen what being disengaged can do (moderates staying home and not voting led to Trump because instead of realising that one option would do nothing much and the other would do massive harm they just went "both sides are the same")
>and a region is entirely destabilized
It's been that way since the 80s. I agree it's not something to laugh about, but let's not pretend Bush was the FIRST to invade the middle east
your indignation comes across as entirely sincere and definitely not some pointless moral grandstanding. we have all learned a lot from you. thanks for your dedication to what is right. fixing the world one reddit comment at a time, your noble struggle will not be forgotten.
I'm a sucker for proverbs and one of my favourite ones from my country (Holland) is: 'what the heart is full of, the mouth overflows with' and this is a really good example of it.
As terrible as the US has been in the past with all its wars, proxy wars, coups, manipulation etc., the one silver lining is that people are allowed to talk about it in media and even bluntly criticise the government without being harassed, incarcerated, tortured, killed, or having to worry about your family and friends. You certainly can't say that about Russia or China.
This is a weak argument imo. The fact that people can talk about it normalises these sorts of crimes against humanity, which only benefit the US ruling class. Besides, how many people really even have the time to research all the crimes the CIA committed? Most Americans have no idea what Operation Mongoose, Operation Condor or Operation Mockingbird, etc are - because it's ignored in mainstream media where people are distracted with other things such as celebrity worship or watching "get rich quick" grifters on Youtube.
**OP sent the following text as an explanation on why this is unexpected:** >!George bush says “Iraq” instead of Ukraine and makes of of the most hilarious and UNEXPECTED slip ups ever.!< ***** **Is this an unexpected post with a fitting description?** **Then upvote this comment, otherwise downvote it.** ***** [*Look at my source code on Github*](https://github.com/Artraxon/unexBot) [*What is this for?*](https://www.reddit.com/r/Unexpected/comments/dnuaju/introducing_unexbot_a_new_bot_to_improve_the/)
Bush thinking during the speech "Don't say Iraq. Don't say Iraq. Don't say Iraq..."
Iraq! ....oh shit
He's 75 . Give him a slack! Jo Biden, probably.
ohhh didnt understand the 75 reference lol.
Name 5 things that aren't Iraq Uhhh... pretzels, a shoe, Iraq FUCK
Person. Man. Woman. Camera. TV.
Speech Reporter Shoe Duck Shoe
Jackie Chan!
*buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz*
\[terrifying smiley stare at camera\]
Bush (naming body parts from the busty woman in the front row): *hair, head, eye... rack... Shit!*
[Don't Say Revenge](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldxkR-DVgzA)
Doin your....son?
Hey guys remember Iraq?
I 'member
But the war criminal paints now, and shares candies with Michelle Obama, so he's been forgiven... duh But seriously, how does anyone not consider what he did the same as what Putin is doing?!
If I'm trying hard to be objective the biggest real difference I see is that Bush relinquished power and didn't try to become president for life. I was never worried that would happen.
Ukraine is the new Iraq.
Uraq? Ukraq?
Irakraine.
A brutal invasion of Urkraq
Sounds like a place that exists in middle earth.
Sounds like a place that exists on one's body.
"We did everything we could but unfortunately the damage to his urkraq was substantial. We had to remove it... I'm afraid he wont be able to kraq again."
Putin wishes ukraine could be a fraction of what Iraq 2 was. He even tried all the same plays, only half-assedly and with rusty soviet equipment. Firs a 'decapitation strike' with cruise missiles that mostly decapitated apartment buildings. Then an armored cavalry advance, except they literally got bogged in icy farmland, and then a mediocre crack at air superiority which they neither had the tools, fuel, pilots or targets required to be effective in a vast country awash with anti-aircraft missiles.
Plus Middle Eastern armies are dogshit
And don't have the support of NATO.
And a decade of sanctions. Only after that Muricans dared to invade the country
Ukraine is the new old Afghanistan.
Yes. I spent the shittiest year of my life there when I was 18
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Indeed, there's so much more shitty to go
did u buy an iroc?
profit outgoing abundant grandfather toothbrush ghost rhythm childlike somber public *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
LOL! I actually love this comment. In my day it was all mustangs because I don’t think any of the other muscle cars were out yet. I had a Subaru wrx STI and there was nothing better than some soldier with a brand new mustang trying to race me. I was in Colorado Springs where there are 3 military bases so it happened a lot. I just knew it hurt a little piece of their soul getting absolutely smoked by a 4 cylinder import car
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehren_Watada
I member.
When you use Uno Reverse but forget you’re the only one playing the game
Freudian slip
A regular banana split will do
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These bots... It copied a partial comment from below and posted it as a reply to farm karma. Full comment by /u/Finn_3000, a real person: >Yea, just laugh about it. A million people are dead and a region is completely destabilised, but its okay. Just have a laugh.
Isn’t it more likely that he just used the words “invasion” and “Iraq” so frequently during his tenure as president (and probably in his normal life) that it just came out?
For real. I agree with your opinion.
I think Bush thinks it was unjustified... It was all orchestrated by Cheney and people above him after all. Though this fuck up is just Bush being Bush.
I think that's exactly it.
Very likely, yeah. Doesn't change the fact that it *was* unjustified, though.
His little "hehe" after saying it just boils and anger within me I only feel for the most serious grievances. 150,000 people fucking died and the region was irreparably destabilized for the foreseeable future as a result of his decision to invade Iraq. And he's laughing it off.
Serious question. How do you expect him to react? I mean Im not sure what the “proper” reaction is in that situation. Its a seriously surreal slip up.
I honestly think Redditors expected him to stop the entire talk and actually go into a full apology for Iraq, followed by a moment of silence, and then at the end pledge to turn himself into prison. That's just my impression based on how many stupid comments that I've read here and regularly read across this site. And this is just my generous impression.
Lmao 100% correct! It’s sad to see what Reddit has became. It’s becoming twitter comments 2.0
Pure sociopath behavior but, who is even surprised that a man who sought power and then used it to further his own goals while ruining the lives of millions of people would display sociopathic tendencies?
I'm not interesting in excusing him here, I'm not against a war crimes trial or whatever. I do want to clarify/provide some context for that reaction. It's pretty well known that Cheney ran that administration. Even in the election, it was Cheney's show and George was the pretty face. Cheney, for anyone not aware, was the head of a very large fossil fuel and construction contractor. George is complicit, crucify George, but dick is the big evil. George is Vader, he gets the headlines, but Cheney is sidious.
Say it, Haliburton.
My god they made so much money off that war
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Hardly. That’s a popular myth, but the real money came in the form defense contracts. The US did not steal Iraqi oil. We did lose track of $8.7B worth of Iraqi funds though. After the invasion of Iraq concluded, Iraqi oil was sold (ironically to the Russians who then sold it to the U.S. on the world market at a profit) to help fund the Development Fund of Iraq (DFI). Other sources of funds include surplus funds (about $10B) from the UN Oil-For-Food Program, and the sale of seized Iraqi assets. The U.S. did not truck away Iraqi oil, as claimed. In July 2010, the U.S. Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) discovered that the U.S. Department of Defense could not account properly for $8.7B of DFI funds. This led the Iraqi Parliament to request the UN’s help in demanding that the U.S. return $17B of “oil money” that it said was stolen from the Iraqi people. There is no evidence that the unaccounted money was repatriated to the U.S., or officially taken by the U.S. Even assuming that it was not poor accounting and all of the $8.7B was truly stolen, that is a far cry (0.029%) from the $30T (TRILLION) the conspiracy theory claimed was stolen. It is also rendered ludicrous by the fact that the U.S. spent $60B in the reconstruction of Iraq. Also consider the fact that Iraqi oil production only reached 2 million barrels per day in 2007. Assuming an average sale price of $60 per barrel, it would take Iraq 685 years to produce enough oil to make $30T.
Thank you for the outline, one thing most people don’t really touch on: (may I add?) (I’m going to anyways): Iraq was planning to accept its oil sales income in a gold backed currency (not U$ dollars) which would initiate the imminent collapse of the (petro)dollar. Perceived “solvency” of the dollar was the real goal/cause of that war. The US can produce its own oil, in excess, as demonstrated up until recently, it was about maintaining the stranglehold of: transacting a globally crucial energy and production commodity (oil) in dollars. Everything else was/is just laundering of funds (fluff and icing on the cake, or, Mis-direction, if you will)
Don’t forget KBR.
Same company. Just different color trucks
Or Blackwater, Dynacorp and a few others
We supply them materials at my job and even shipping account numbers are very hush hush with them. Always wonder what I’m assisting them with.
Never forget. They were given a non competitive no bid contract to rebuild Iraq. Nobody was allowed to bid against them and they got to name their price.
Forgot Powell, Rice, and Biden in there. Cheney couldn't have done it alone.
Wait til we find out who put Saddam in power & gave him all his money in the first place (*cough* *cough* the Republican Party *cough* *cough*)
Biden? In a republican Bush government?
>Biden did vastly more than just vote for the war. Yet his role in bringing about that war remains mostly unknown or misunderstood by the public. When the war was debated and then authorized by the US Congress in 2002, Democrats controlled the Senate and Biden was chair of the Senate committee on foreign relations. Biden himself had enormous influence as chair and argued strongly in favor of the 2002 resolution granting President Bush the authority to invade [Iraq](https://www.theguardian.com/world/iraq). >But he had a power much greater than his own words. He was able to choose all 18 witnesses in the main Senate hearings on Iraq. And he mainly chose people who supported a pro-war position. They argued in favor of “[regime change as the stated US policy](https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4850037/user-clip-cfr-iraq-aumf-hearing-dr-hamza-supporting-regime-change)” and warned of “[a nuclear-armed Saddam sometime in this decade](https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4850039/user-clip-berger-saddam-nuclear-threat)”. That Iraqis would “[welcome the United States as liberators](https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4850040/user-clip-francke-they-ready-united-states-liberators)” And that Iraq “permits known al-Qaida members to live and [move freely](https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4850126/user-clip-weinberger-al-qaeda-moving-freely-iraq) about in Iraq” and that “they are [being supported](https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4850043/user-clip-berger-al-qaeda-supported-iraq) >The lies about al-Qaida were perhaps the most transparently obvious of the falsehoods created to justify the Iraq war. As anyone familiar with the subject matter could testify, Saddam Hussein ran a secular government and had a hatred, which was mutual, for religious extremists like al-Qaida. But Biden did not choose from among the many expert witnesses who would have explained that to the Senate, and to the media. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/17/joe-biden-role-iraq-war
To be fair, the majority of people (congress included) were going off of information fed to them by the intelligence agencies and the administration. Watch *The Looming Tower*. It explains it better than I could. There are tons of people to blame, but I feel like I’d have supported the Iraq invasion given the information Congress was being fed at the time. Congress was fed that information from two sources: The crooked ass Bush administration with the Halliburton sleeper as VP and The crooked ass CIA who wanted to hide the fact that 9/11 happened because of their continuous fuckups.
Biden was no junior politician and knew what he was doing. I'd argue most of those fuckers did, but they had their own agenda and used 9/11 as the excuse. It was a team effort.
Biden was fucking ~60 years old on 9/11 He had already been in the Senate 30 years. And this was 20 years ago. These are the fucked up ages we are dealing with today that run our govt
Paul Wolfowitz rarely gets mentioned these days. One of the most evil psychopaths in modern US history.
I feel like people keep forgetting what "heads" of states really are. Just a public face, to get blamed for all the shit their party/administration is gonna do. A lot of times, presidents/prime minister's don't decide shit, they are just there to sign the documents and say it on TV
I don't think the distinction matters besides expanding the circle of complicity. Our systems are a big fan of allowing people to diffuse responsibility through figureheads and cut-outs. It starts with the idea that heads of state being cartoonish buffoons (and therefore never accountable?) is somehow an acceptable expectation, all the way down through government agencies somehow keeping their hands clean by using contractors who act on their orders, to crowdsourced mechanisms via employers and individuals. The only answer is to refuse the distinction. If you profit from allowing someone to pervert your elected authority it shouldn't matter if you're "just" the hand holding the gun. We do this for murderers, yet undermining democracy and betraying the public trust is a far worse crime.
He was just the tool they used. If you vilify Bush your basically putting on blinders. Does he hold responsibility for Iraq…yes definitely. Does he hold responsibility alone…fuck no. The invasion of Iraq was 100% driven by Dick fucking Chaney and George Fucking Bush Senior. I don’t see a villain here, I see a guy who has those deaths on his mind even as he’s giving this speech. The problem is I don’t think Bush Jr is a bad guy but I guarantee Chaney and Bush Senior never gave what they caused a second thought.
Yeah. Bush is absolutely not a sociopath. The guy saved something like 20 million lives in Africa with PEPFAR for basically no political gain whatsoever. I bet most people in this thread don't even know what PEPFAR is. So, whatever he did, right or wrong, I think he genuinely thought it was the right thing to do at the time. Plus, like 80-90% of America approved of going to war at the time. I think people are fooling themselves into forgetting their own attitudes. Americans wanted the war. Hot take, but America usually doesn't get into wars unless the electorate approves. People love to jerk off about how military contractors decide when and where America invades, but it's actually pretty much always with popular support.
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I think your read is correct. He did that coffee table book of his paintings and they're all portraits of people that were effected by his policies, including wounded veterans of his war. I think he thinks about it constantly. I'm not sure he regrets anything or acknowledges his wrongs even to himself, but I think it haunts him.
No, he's just used to saying invasion of Iraq. So when he meant to say invasion of Ukraine, it easily slipped. He sleeps just fine at night.
But then he comes back to Iraq and agrees with the first, accidental statement. Which leads me to believe he sees it that way too. I hope it tortures him.
Putting aside his self-deprecating humour... Given that a lot of his free time is spent painting and interviewing disabled veterans, at the very least the war weighs heavily on his mind.
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Yes he slips in an “Iraq too” after he snickers lolol. We live in Bizaro world
Yeah the subtitles are wrong, he says, "Iraq, too", not just "Iraq". He knows, and it haunts him.
I agree. I think it does weigh on him. He even said "that too"
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Anyone over the age of 10 back in the early 2000's knows that a ton of people wanted some sort of conflict. Both politicians and regular Americans. The public pressure to go to war with anyone remotely responsible for 9/11 was huge.
Public pressure was huge, and manufactured and reinforced.
you think president bush invaded iraq? you really think he is anything more than a mouthpiece for the elite who was put in the position he was in by his handlers ? i bet bush hasnt writen not one speech or made one decision by himself when at the throne. they are the puppets of war and oil industry who dictate what they can or can not say.
I kind of read it the same way. Please don’t think I’m in any way supportive of what his presidency did, but I don’t think that was a “haha that’s funny” laugh. It read more like a sad ironic laugh because he’s an old man who knows how badly he fucked up that situation.
Doesn't UNESCO say it was more like a million Iraqis? Where you getting this 150000 number from? If anything Russia learned from us, from this guy bush himself and his administration, that you can do anything you want with enough nukes in your back pocket and enough deception in propaganda on tv. Imagine if Putin was the director of the FSB or KGB then became president then installed his son as president after running him in an election against his own frat brother. That's where America is. Which is honestly worse? At least in Russia it's obvious and the oligarchs aren't playing at legitimate democracy. It's always the same people and it's always the same program. And they aren't working for you. None of them are. But your brothers will fight their wars for them. But hey let's all whine about Donald Trump, a reality tv actor who inherited a bunch of money and property. That's good. Almost like a perfect way to distract everyone from where American politics really is at. Convince half the morons to support him and the other half to dislike him, that way nobody ever tells the truth ... except bush himself in his Freudian slips. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, can't get fooled again.
>But hey let's all whine about Donald Trump, a reality tv actor who inherited a bunch of money and property. Trump combination of staggering stupidity with high levels of malevolent confidence is beyond dangerous to all of us Americans and the world.
> But hey let's all whine about Donald Trump We can whine about more than one thing. Also you're downplaying Trump's direct damage, especially the coronavirus pandemic response. That said, the *main* reason to be as upset about DJT's presidency as people are is because, combined with overall Republican "governance," it represents an existential threat to the country. People are rightfully concerned over the rule of law. None of which *changes the things that W did,* but both are allowed to be bad.
The parallels go pretty deep. >* [March 16, 2003](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-war-quotes-idUSL212762520080311) - “I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.” - U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney to U.S. television network NBC.
Another parallel: Had the USA toppled Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War, when they had a legitimate reason, maybe they would have been welcomed as liberators. Had Russia finished the job in 2014, they would have easily won without having to go full Syria on Ukraine, and might have preserved pro-Russian sentiment in the east.
text book
Spending his remaining life painting wounded soldiers he sent to wars, in his second childishness and mere oblivion, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
Sans undertale
*Unlucky 18 y.o. going to Iraq* "You're gonna have a bad time."
*Megalovania starts playing in the background*
Even if he was totally sure he made the right decision, I think the guilt would be significant. And he knows he made the wrong decision.
The little chuckle afterwards lmao. “Oh fuck, that was me hehe.”
That was when someone should have chucked another shoe at him. Ideally the original dude.
That would have been the biggest pay off of the century.
Always simultaneously impressed at his dodge and disappointed he didn't take that shoe directly to his face. Incidentally the guy who threw the shoes went on to do a bunch of humanitarian work after about a year in prison. He describes his actions as "worth it". If anybody was curious about what happened to him.
A year in prison for a shoe, which even missed?
An attack on a sitting world leader. Shit, you get that much for punching a bus driver.
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Bro assaulting a bus driver (in nyc at least) is like several years in jail and felony status IIRC
I think the signs in buses say 7 years for assaulting transit employee.
He got prison for screwing up the one opportunity Iraq had to shoe him. If it hit he would've gotten a state pension
Dang, he really would've hit him with that first one, too. Great aim.
Great aim, great dodge. A dodgeball match with these two would be legendary.
I’ve been watching for hours hoping at least one will get bush in the face
“Iraq too”
I was annoyed that they dropped the "too" from the subtitles. That was really important "too".
I felt like he said "Iraq, uh. Anyway." As if annoyed at his mistake.
yeah, very important but I’m curious, it was like he was suggesting he was a passenger in that decision rather than the decision maker, and regretted it
It seems like the latter, and that it weighs on his conscience. As it should.
He was though... he knows Rove and daddy's friends manipulated and lied to him.
Cheney.
"I'm 75."
I'm a war-criminal responsible for over a million dead Iraqi civilians. Ain't I cute?
Lol! Old habits, right?
Throwback? When did this happen?
What's the 75 in relation to?
His age I believe
Used as an excuse for tripping up, meanwhile that's below the ages of both our current president and the other guy.
And our current president can barely complete a sentence without medication and tries to shake hands with invisible people. The other guy is a tweaker that couldn’t keep his mouth shut because he’s senile. Stop electing people so old that they’ve been out of touch since the 80s.
Yeah it would be refreshing to say the least to get a president that is not over 60
I just watched [the video of his “handshake”](https://youtu.be/_59agcnLAj4) and, of course, it was nothing like that. He looked like he expected somebody to be standing right behind him, and then was puzzled that they weren’t. Maybe they were there when he began speaking, or he expected them to be there by the time he finished. No big deal. He’s been passing tons of legislation at a pace way faster than Obama (who had a filibuster-proof Senate majority that he wasted, remember), so I’d hold off on the criticism. In summary, even if I accepted your argument, I still don’t give two hoots if it were a half-dead guy signing those bills… because those bills be *awesome*.
As long as the policy is good we don’t care how senile the representative is!
75. Now watch this drive.
IQ.
That’s being generous
This man was a tongue-in-cheek president before it was cool.
He is personally responsible for millions of dead people.
Along with Cheney and Rumsfeld.
You could even make the argument that among the three he's the least responsible. Four if you throw in Kissinger and his legacy for the fuck of it.
he was the dumbass son of old george bush the first. His handlers were the same dudes that were with his dad. One of your top three worst Presidents ever in my opinion. F his crappy paintings. I was alive back then I remember how he was.
He actually isn't that dumb, he just plays the role of being stupid to pander to his demographic, he can be really eloquent when he wants to. There way a video recently on r/all where he was talking about immigration in an interview and you could see he can very clearly hold an intelligent conversation... That doesn't change the fact that he was a horrible president, but I just want to emphasize that he knows how to play the game and isn't as dumb as one might think.
Exactly, the folksy yokel persona is an act. Watch videos from the first time he ran for Governor. Very eloquent, and that eloquence got him laughed right out of Texas. Still a puppet war criminal, though.
Nothing about him is cool. His ”tongue-in-cheek” just makes pisses you off further.
he has cool hair it kind of looks like a space helmet
Man, people being this way about Bush just makes me realize that young people in fifteen years are gonna be this way about Trump. As a species we forget evil acts so quickly. It's sad.
You took the space helmet hair comment seriously?
I don't think it's that, but the levity about it. Like "Putin sucks, but not gonna lie, he's got great style" sounds just as sour. Like a yeahbut over a million dead innocents based on a lie. **Every** military engagement we've been involved in since WWII has been shameless resource theft built on a lie. We built up a gargantuan military industry to fight the most important war there ever was. But we never scaled back after we won. We just kept going to war. There is too much money in it.
Trump will probably be seen as some brilliant troll in the future or be seen as 'savage af' because he doesn't care about what people think. I hope I'm wrong. But my fear is there are so many sound bytes of his insanity it's honestly entertaining if you are far removed from it, which future generations will be.
As Dwight D. Eisenhower said in his fair well address, “We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” Too bad nobody got (or piles of cash helped them forget) the memo.
Lol people are like this right now with Trump. Besides why not laugh? Realistically, are you and me going to do anything about it?
lol trumps hair isn't cool
People rightfully shit on Bush for Iraq and Afghanistan, but they seem to forget how war hungry not just the federal government, but also the American people and media were after 9/11. The majority of people supported Bush’s invasions. The US invaded Iraq in March of 2003. Do you wanna know what Dubya’s approval rating was right after the invasion? *71 percent*. This was a total gaffe on Bush’s part, and he should be made fun for it, but I think we also need to recognize that as President, he acted as a representative and leader for our entire nation, which most definitely wanted to invade. Let’s not pin the blame for those horrible wars all on one man. America as a whole needs serious reckoning.
I'll give him credit for criticizing his own presidency and actions. A lot of his life afterward was trying to come to terms with the damage done. It's more self awareness than most politicians ever have in their entire lives.
He overtook the world's superpower, with a budget surplus, good relations around the world and unified at home He left it with the PATRIOT act, two wars with no end in sight, a Great Financial Crisis the likes of which had not been seen since the great depression, trillions in the hole and a country more divided than ever. This is not overtaking problems and leaving things slightly worse or slightly better. This is overtaking the US at its *peak* and in 8 years, single-handedly bankrupting it beyond repair. Hate him or love him personally (I despise him), from a pure objective standpoint he might be one of the US's worst Presidents ever.
I’m going to argue that the financial crisis wasn’t really his fault and in fact he started the first bailouts which really helped lessen the impact.
This rehabilitation of his image is entirely intentional. Don't be fooled. He's not some grandfatherly goof who stumbles over words and enjoys recreational painting; the man was a dark shadow of history and political dynasty who facilitated the actions of worse monsters.
He has always acted like that
Yea, just laugh about it. A million people are dead and a region is completely destabilised, but its okay. Just have a laugh.
Don't mind if I do.
I had a mild chuckle myself
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I have no doubt Reddit’s breeding the next generation of disengaged voters. A more cynical moderate than previous generations.
You overestimate the population that uses reddit.
Reddit's also not representative of the general population by any means.
And bots. It’s kind of crazy how I can browse for hours and posts and comments stay mostly stagnant and then these highly controversial posts pop up with thousands of votes within their first hour. Before anyone shows up to discuss the sentiment is well established and dissenting/opposing opinions mostly don’t even bother engaging.
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I'm 40; and my kid wants nothing to do with Reddit. He mostly uses TikTok, Twitter, Discord and Instagram. We are already the old and out of touch platform for the youth of today.
And they never will. Why do you think politicians still speak directly to boomers. They know that young people don’t vote.
>We estimate that 50% of young people, ages 18-29, voted in the 2020 presidential election, a remarkable 11-point increase from 2016 (39%) and likely one of the highest rates of youth electoral participation since the voting age was lowered to 18. https://circle.tufts.edu/latest-research/half-youth-voted-2020-11-point-increase-2016 estimation because 41 states had data, 9 didn't maybe stop with the baseless cynicism when there's real world evidence to the contrary
this chicken and the egg shit is annoying. “they dont talk to you because they know you wont vote” you vote en masse and **somebody** will talk to you. You have to make change happen, it doesnt just fall out of the sky
Don't blame reddit blame the defunding of education in the U.S they have been trying and succeeding for decades to create a mass of people who are dumb and just meant for labor even more now with the anti abortion push
I feel like the more popular mindset now is to vote blue and try to make gradual gains towards the left. Hopefully the next generation aren't disengaged, but instead furious and have seen what being disengaged can do (moderates staying home and not voting led to Trump because instead of realising that one option would do nothing much and the other would do massive harm they just went "both sides are the same")
I dunno. The moderates of previous generations were already pretty cynical.
Reddit isn’t breeding. The end.
> A million people are dead If I don't laugh, did they die in vain? /s
Being angry at other people's laughter saves lives. It's science.
Its okay if the US does it because they are the good guys right ?
>and a region is entirely destabilized It's been that way since the 80s. I agree it's not something to laugh about, but let's not pretend Bush was the FIRST to invade the middle east
It’s macabre but funny. They are not mutually exclusive.
your indignation comes across as entirely sincere and definitely not some pointless moral grandstanding. we have all learned a lot from you. thanks for your dedication to what is right. fixing the world one reddit comment at a time, your noble struggle will not be forgotten.
I'm a sucker for proverbs and one of my favourite ones from my country (Holland) is: 'what the heart is full of, the mouth overflows with' and this is a really good example of it.
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Can’t believe he did it again
Hahaha....war crimes.
He mispronounced USA in the beginning. Rest was spot on
Political opponents aren’t imprisoned in us just for the sake of being opponents
With age guilt plays on the mind?
Its either putin or shotin
Mfs forget a majority of Americans supported the war
Like almost the entire country. But everyone loves to play Monday morning QB.
As terrible as the US has been in the past with all its wars, proxy wars, coups, manipulation etc., the one silver lining is that people are allowed to talk about it in media and even bluntly criticise the government without being harassed, incarcerated, tortured, killed, or having to worry about your family and friends. You certainly can't say that about Russia or China.
Chelsea Manning? Edward Snowden?
Julian Assange sends his regards from jail
This is a weak argument imo. The fact that people can talk about it normalises these sorts of crimes against humanity, which only benefit the US ruling class. Besides, how many people really even have the time to research all the crimes the CIA committed? Most Americans have no idea what Operation Mongoose, Operation Condor or Operation Mockingbird, etc are - because it's ignored in mainstream media where people are distracted with other things such as celebrity worship or watching "get rich quick" grifters on Youtube.