'I was wrong to have voted for George W. Bush.'

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By Doug McIntyre Host, McIntyre in the Morning Talk Radio 790 KABC
I was wrong to have voted for George W. Bush.

In historic terms, I believe George W. Bush is the worst two-term
President in the history of the country.

Worse than Grant.

I also believe a case can be made that he's the worst President,
period.

In 2000, I was a McCain guy.

I wasn't sure about the Texas Governor.

He had name recognition and a lot of money behind him, but other than
that?

What?

Still, I was sick of all the Clinton shenanigans and the thought of
President Gore was... unthinkable.

So, GWB became my guy.

For the first few months he was just flubbing along like most new
Presidents, no great shakes, but no disasters either.

He cut taxes and I like tax cuts.

Then September 11th happened.

September 11th changed everything for me, like it did for so many of
you.

After September 11th, all the intramural idiocy of American politics
stopped being funny.

We had been attacked by a vicious and determined enemy and it was time
for all of us to row in the same direction.

And we did for the blink of an eye.

I believed the President when he said we were going to hunt down Bin
Laden and all those responsible for the 9-11 murders.

I believed President Bush when he said we would go after the
terrorists and the nations that harbored them.

I supported the President when he sent our troops into Afghanistan,
after all, that's where the Taliban was, that's where al-Qaida trained
the killers, that's where Bin Laden was.

And I cheered when we quickly toppled the Taliban government, but
winced when we let Bin Laden escape from Tora-Bora.

Then, the talk turned to Iraq and I winced again.

I thought the connection to 9-11 was sketchy at best.

But Colin Powell impressed me at the UN, and Tony Blair was in, and
after all, he was a Clinton guy, not a Bush guy, so I thought the case
had to be strong.

I was worried though, because I had read the Wolfowitz paper, "The
Project for the New American Century."

It's been around since '92, and it raised alarm bells because it was
based on a theory, "Democratizing the Middle East" and I prefer
pragmatism over theory.

I was worried because Iraq was being justified on a radical new basis,
"pre-emptive war."

Any time we do something without historical precedent I get nervous.

But the President shifted the argument to WMDs and the urgent threat
of Iraq getting atomic weapons.

The debate turned to Saddam passing nukes on to terror groups.

After 9-11, the risk was too great.

As the President said, "The next smoking gun might be a mushroom
cloud."

At least that's what I thought at the time.

I grew up in New York and watched them build the World Trade Center.

I worked with a guy, Frank O'Brien, who put the elevators in both
towers.

I lost a very close friend on September 11th. 103 floor, tower one,
Cantor Fitzgerald.

Tim Coughlin was his name.

If we had to take out Iraq to make sure something like that, or worse,
never happened again, so be it.

I knew the consequences.

We have a soldier in our house.

None of this was theoretical in my house.

But in the months and years since shock and awe I have been shocked
repeatedly by a consistent litany of excuses, alibis, double-talk,
inaccuracies, bogus predictions, and flat out lies.

I have watched as the President and his administration changed the
goals, redefined the reasons for going into Iraq, and fumbled the good
will of the world and the focus necessary to catch the real killers of
September 11th.

I have watched the President say the commanders on the ground will
make the battlefield decisions, and the war won't be run from
Washington.

Yet, politics has consistently determined what the troops can and
can't do on the ground and any commander who did not go along with the
administration was sacked, and in some cases, maligned.

I watched and tried to justify the looting in Iraq after the fall of
Saddam.

I watched and tried to justify the dismantling of the entire Iraqi
army.

I tired to explain the complexities of building a functional new Iraqi
army.

I urged patience when no WMDs were found.

Then the Vice President told us we were in the "waning days of the
insurgency."

And I started wincing again.

The President says we have to stay the course but what if it's the
wrong course?

It was the wrong course.

All of it was wrong.

We are not on the road to victory.

We're about to slink home with our tail between our legs, leaving
civil war in Iraq and a nuclear armed Iran in our wake.

Bali was bombed.

Madrid was bombed.

London was bombed.

And Bin Laden is still making tapes.

It's unspeakable.

The liberal media didn't create this reality, bad policy did.

Most historians believe it takes 30-50 years before we get a
reasonably accurate take on a President's place in history.

So, maybe 50 years from now Iraq will be a peaceful member of the
brotherhood of nations and George W. Bush will be celebrated as a
visionary genius.

But we don't live fifty years in the future.

We live now.

We have to make public policy decisions now.

We have to live with the consequences of the votes we cast and the
leaders we chose now.

After five years of carefully watching George W. Bush I've reached the
conclusion he's either grossly incompetent, or a hand puppet for a
gaggle of detached theorists with their own private view of how the
world works.

Or both.

Presidential failures.

James Buchanan, Franklin Pierce, Jimmy Carter, Warren Harding-- the
competition is fierce for the worst of the worst.

Still, the damage this President has done is enormous.

It will take decades to undo, and that's assuming we do everything
right from now on.

His mistakes have global implications, while the other failed
Presidents mostly authored domestic embarrassments.

And speaking of domestic embarrassments, let's talk for a minute about
President Bush's domestic record.

Yes, he cut taxes.

But tax cuts combined with reckless spending and borrowing is
criminal mismanagement of the public's money.

We're drunk at the mall with our great grandchildren's credit cards.

Whatever happened to the party of fiscal responsibility?

Bush created a giant new entitlement, the prescription drug plan.

He lied to his own party to get it passed.

He lied to the country about its true cost.

It was written by and for the pharmaceutical industry.

It helps nobody except the multinationals that lobbied for it.

So much for smaller government.

In fact, virtually every tentacle of government has grown
exponentially under Bush.

Unless, of course, it was an agency to look after the public interest,
or environmental protection, and/or worker's rights.

I've talked so often about the border issue, I won't bore you with a
rehash.

It's enough to say this President has been a catastrophe for the wages
of working people; he's debased the work ethic itself.

"Jobs Americans won't do!"

He doesn't believe in the sovereign borders of the country he's sworn
to protect and defend.

And his devotion to cheap labor for his corporate benefactors, along
with his worship of multinational trade deals, makes an utter mockery
of homeland security in a post 9-11 world.

The President's January 7th, 2004 speech on immigration, his first
trial balloon on his guest worker scheme, was a deal breaker for me.

I couldn't and didn't vote for him in 2004.

And I'm glad I didn't.

Katrina,

Harriet Myers,

The Dubai Port Deal,

skyrocketing gas prices,

shrinking wages for working people,

staggering debt,

astronomical foreign debt,

outsourcing,

open borders,

contempt for the opinion of the American people,

the war on science,

media manipulation,

faith based initiaves,

a cavalier attitude toward fundamental freedoms--

this President has run the most arrogant and out-of-touch
administration in my lifetime, perhaps, in any American's lifetime.

Another Republican apologizes for being duped.

Harry

I was wrong to have voted for George W. Bush.

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