Just an FYI to those who are bringing it up, but both Iraq war's were complete successes. We arent fighting the iraq war anymore, we are doing cleanup. Saddam and his army were defeated, this is simply the aftermath, or a part of the war on terror. The Shock and Awe strategy was executed flawlessly, the iraqi's couldn't even get their planes off the ground. It will go into the history books as one of the greatly executed military operations of american history.
The first iraq war, was the same. Although i'd say it's more deserving of the title Gulf War, since the actions actually in iraq were minor, since that was the tail end of the war and we were pretty much just bombing the iraqi convoy's after they had turned tail and ran back home. Remember the Gulf War was ACTUALLY about oil. Saddam wanted to take control of Kuwait's oil fields in an attempt to price gouge the world (this is not propaganda, look it up or god forbid you have to ask a history professor). This of course was back when the middle-eastern oil industry was a pretty big source of oil. OPEC and all. However now the world get's it's oil from other area's, the middle east is not nearly as important as it use to be.
George H.W. Bush of course is what i'd call an average president. Didnt do too much. Though the gulf war was executed fairly well (However several generals wanted George Senior to go into Iraq then, but he refused). George W. Bush is another story altogether. Never use popularity as a way to scale how good a president is. That's a fairly ignorant thing to do. George Bush has done plenty of good and with his surge he has actually turned things around in iraq and the war on terror. As should be well known by now, the Surge has been a success. You know, according to all of the soldiers and general's IN Iraq. Otherwise we're obviously losing, according to democrats.
Tolwan
Well, I can agree with you on the surge to an extent. Although their are aspects to your argument (from watching videos, reading books, editorials, and etc.) that for me have given me a different point view on the success of Iraq, and the actions taken by this presidents administration. Though, this is not an outright attack on your argument but rather just my own 2 cents (rather 1 cent) on the subject, which is these last 7 years has seen a greater loss in the trust that people have in their government (whether it be democrat or republican), greater abuse of executive power (Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety), the disastrous handling of the Iraqi government (Chasing Ghost by Paul Reickoff) which has been the big cause of most of the strive, a greater divide amongst Americans, another stain in our reputation around the world. The fact that we have to borrow money more now then ever before in order to continue our budget (http://www.globalissues.org/Geopolitics/ArmsTrade/Spending.asp#USMilitarySpending), with all this constant borrowing and spending we have seen the dollar weaken (http://money.cnn.com/2004/11/10/news/economy/weakdollar/). In these past years, there really hasn't been a thing that's really made me appreciate the current administration, but rather made me question its action. While it may be true that many within military see the president as a fit leader, several who have left the administration have all expressed their doubts in his leadership.
But meh, I think I'll give my vote to Ron Paul since I really can't find anyone else suitable for the job.
(off to sleep, sorry if my writing has a lot of grammatical errors and if it seems incoherent im about to fall asleep, but I enjoy discussing such matters with anyone, even if its someone of a different view point.)
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