How would you grade President George W. Bush on his job as president?

I didn't like Clinton but heres a couple of facts that "bushies" seem to forget .
Also I voted For him his first term...Bush that is............


From CNN White House Correspondent Kelly Wallace

September 27, 2000
Web posted at: 4:51 p.m. EDT (2051 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Clinton announced Wednesday that the federal budget surplus for fiscal year 2000 amounted to at least $230 billion, making it the largest in U.S. history and topping last year's record surplus of $122.7 billion.

"Eight years ago, our future was at risk," Clinton said Wednesday morning. "Economic growth was low, unemployment was high, interest rates were high, the federal debt had quadrupled in the previous 12 years. When Vice President Gore and I took office, the budget deficit was $290 billion, and it was projected this year the budget deficit would be $455 billion."


President Clinton announces that the federal budget surplus for fiscal year 2000 is the largest in U.S. history

Instead, the president explained, the $5.7 trillion national debt has been reduced by $360 billion in the last three years -- $223 billion this year alone.

This represents, Clinton said, "the largest one-year debt reduction in the history of the United States."

"Like our Olympic athletes in Sydney, the American people are breaking all kinds of records these days. This is the first year we've balanced the budget without using the Medicare trust fund since Medicare was created in 1965. I think we should follow Al Gore's advice and lock those trust funds away for the future," he said.

In June, the administration predicted the surplus would be $211 billion, and would increase by as much as $1 trillion over the next 10 years.

"The key to fiscal discipline is maintaining these results year after year. We need to put our priorities in order," Clinton said.

The president's news comes as lawmakers on Capitol Hill continue to wrestle with the fiscal year 2001 budget numbers. The new budget year begins October 1, and work has been completed on only two of the 13 annual spending bills, as the Republican-led Congress and the White House remain at odds over spending allocations.

"I am concerned, frankly, about the size and last-minute nature of this year's congressional spending spree, where they seem to be loading up the spending bills with special projects for special interests, but can't seem to find the time to raise the minimum wage, or pass a patients' bill of rights, or drug benefits for our seniors through Medicare, or tax cuts for long-term care, child care, or college education," Clinton said.

"These are the things that need to be done and I certainly hope they will be and still make the right investments and the right amount of tax cuts," Clinton said.

Rep. J.C. Watts, R-Oklahoma, chairman of the House Republican Conference, said the GOP wants 90 percent of the surplus used for the debt. In a CNN interview, he said the other 10 percent should be used to "take care of a lot of priorities we have, like prescription drugs, making sure that our education needs are met, making sure some of our national security needs are met, and doing that while at the same time protecting the Social Security surplus and the Medicare surplus."

That approach would be in lieu of tax cuts, which "we can't do this year because the president vetoed it," Watts said.

Clinton unveiled the new numbers in a statement at the White House before departing for fund-raising events in Dallas and Houston.

"This is part of our fiscal discipline to reduce the debt with the federal surplus," said one White House official who asked not to be identified. Reducing the debt, the official said, has "real effects for real Americans." It means lower interest rates for mortgages, car loans and college loans, and leads to an increase in investment and more jobs."

It is the third year in a row the federal government has taken in more than it spent, and has paid down the debt. The last time the U.S. government had a third consecutive year of national debt reduction was 1949, said the official.

The federal budget surplus for fiscal year 1999 was $122.7 billion, and $69.2 billion for fiscal year 1998. Those back-to-back surpluses, the first since 1957, allowed the Treasury to pay down $138 billion in national debt.


(2)"Clinton Did Nothing to Stop Bin Laden" is a GOP Lie
by: krazypuppy
Thu Aug 30, 2007 at 13:10:04 PM CDT
One of the biggest myths Republicans have spread is the idea that Democrats are weak on terror. Specifically, they have claimed that Bin Laden and the Taliban were able to carry out the devastating 9/11 attacks because Bill Clinton did nothing to stop Bin Laden.
An email chain letter many of you may have seen goes so far as to blame Clinton for the deaths of over 7000 people. After listing several terror acttacks against Americans occurring in the 1990's which Clinton promised to avenge, they end the email with this:

Maybe if Mr Clinton had kept his promise, an estimated 7,000 more people would be alive today.
It was a classic and manipulative Republican tactic: state some facts, leave out key details, and then make an emotional and misleading insinuation that simply can't be argued against or for it.

Think about it. No matter what Clinton did, those terror attacks could still have occurred and 7000 people would still have died. Oh, and those key details which this Rovian letter failed to mention? Specific actions which the Clinton administration undertook to hunt down those terrorists responsible for each one of those attacks - including the conviction of several terrorist leaders.

What the GOP conveniently leaves out is the FACT that more terror suspects were convicted during Clinton's administration before 9/11 than were convicted in Bush's reign after 9/11.

But the real insinuation of the email, the real lie that Republicans want the public to believe is that Clinton (and by extension the Democrats) did nothing to stop Bin Laden and the Taliban. Then the GOP can not only claim the 'Tough on Terror' mantle all by their lonesome, but they are also off the hook for not capturing Bin Laden or even eliminating the Taliban SIX years after 9/11.

Well, the idea that Bill Clinton did nothing to stop Bin Laden and the Taliban is a lie and with the anniversary of 9/11 approaching, it's only right that we finally call the GOP on their lie.

The Clinton/Gore administration went after Bin Laden right up to point of Bush entered the White House and had the Bush administration taken national security briefings from the Clinton anti-terror team seriously, the Twin Towers might still be standing.

Instead the Bush team, including National Security Advisor Condi Rice dismissed Sandy Berger, Richard Clarke, and the Clinton team's warning as paranoia and were literally on vacation when ominous intelligence noise should have terrified them awake. Clinton was accused of being "obsessed with Bin Laden" and, as Republican Congressmen like Tom Delay and Arlen Specter insinuated, of trying to distract people from the Lewinsky scandal.

Let's look at facts in detail and the 'Do nothing' claims of these Republicans.

Incident Description Clinton's Response/ Results
First World Trade Center
(February 26, 1993): A car dentonates with 1,200 pounds of explosives in the World Trade Center parking garage killing six and injuring almost thousand. Bin Laden intended to topple the towers,which he finally did on 11 September 2001. Plot mastermind Ramzi Ahmed Yousef captured in 1995, convicted in November 1997, and sentenced to 240 years in prison.
Four followers of the radical Egyptian cleric Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman captured, convicted in March 1994, and each are sentenced to 240 years in prison.

One suspect fled and is believed to be in Baghdad - which makes you wonder why Bush hasn't captured him.

American military camp Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
(November 13, 1995) A van is detonated killing seven including five Americans. Saudi Arabian police arrest and behead four Saudi nationals in May 1996. The Saudis deny US agents access to the suspects and claim the men confessed to the attack.
As you will discover, the Saudi government will repeatedly interfere or hinder American investigations and still do today. Considering Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah counts the Bush family as close friends, it's troubling that the Saudis are not more cooperative.

Khobar Towers - Saudi apartment housing American soldiers
June 25, 1996 A truck explodes with 5,000 pounds of explosives at the Khobar Towers apartments in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia and kill 19 Americans. The Saudis arrest 13 Saudis and a Lebanese chemist but again deny US agents attempts to question the suspects.
Those suspects are still today in Saudi custody, despite being convicted by a federal grand jury in 2001. Again, you hve to wonder why George Bush hasn't used his friendly relationship with the Saudi royalty to give US prosecuters access to the suspects who must have valuable information.

US Embassy in Africa
August 7, 1998 The US embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania are destroyed by car bombs which kill 224 people and wound 5,000. Four followers of Osama bin Laden caught, convicted in U.S. federal court, and sentenced to life in prison without parole.
In response, Clinton orders missile strikes in an effort to kill Osama bin Laden in August 1998. Republicans (and the media) accuse Clinton of trying manufacture a crisis to get people to stop talking about Monica S. Lewinsky.

Some accused him of being obsessed with bin Laden and even of hysteria.

Fourteen other suspects were indicted and like bin Laden remain at large. Three Londoners are fighting extradition.

USS Cole
October 12, 2000 Two suicide bombers detonate explosives on a skiff next to the USS Cole in Aden, Yemen, killing 17 American sailors and injured 37 more. This time Republicans can actually say Clinton did not convict anybody related to the attack. Why? Because the attack occurred just ONE month before the 2000 election!
If they really expect Clinton to convict anyone in a month, then they need to ask why George Bush hasn't caught bin Laden in SIX years!

A Saudi, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, supposedly confessed to plotting the attack but has testfied that he only confessed due to CIA torture tactics implemented during Bush's reign.

Besides the moral implications that stem from possibly jailing and torturing an innocent man (though al-Nashiri is no angel), the information al-Nashiri provides is suspect.

Further by torturing him, did the Bush administration make a martyr out of a criminal (he claims to have essentially conned bin Laden) and further alienate Muslims?


So those are the events cited by Republicans and that Rovian email as 'proof' that Clinton and the Democrats did nothing to stop Bin Laden. They never mentioned any of the convictions the Clinton administration pursued and obtained. Or the fact that they controlled Congress and when American national security was at risk, they were more interested in spending our resources and attention on oral sex.

And most definitely Republicans want to avoid all mention of the fact that SIX years after 3000+ Americans were murdered on their watch, the man and the group responsible for the attacks has not been caught and has actually gotten stronger!

As John F. Harris wrote in The Washington Post:


In August 1998, when [Clinton] ordered missile strikes in an effort to kill Osama bin Laden, there was widespread speculation - from such people as Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) - that he was acting precipitously to draw attention away from the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal, then at full boil. Some said he was mistaken for personalizing the terrorism struggle so much around bin Laden. And when he ordered the closing of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House after domestic terrorism in Oklahoma City, some Republicans accused him of hysteria.
. . . the federal budget on anti-terror activities tripled during Clinton's watch, to about $6.7 billion. After the effort to kill bin Laden with missiles in August 1998 failed - he had apparently left a training camp in Afghanistan a few hours earlier - recent news reports have detailed numerous other instances, as late as December 2000, when Clinton was on the verge of unleashing the military again. In each case, the White House chose not to act because of uncertainty that intelligence was good enough to find bin Laden, and concern that a failed attack would only enhance his stature in the Arab world.
The facts are that Clinton probably responded to Bin Laden as much as pre-9/11 politics would allow him to. But some people still want to blame Clinton for not stopping Bin Laden.

It's so that no one ever holds these hacks accountable for their incompetent and ineffective handling of the 'War on Terror.'