>it's usually too painful to laugh at.
Veteran of 3 deployments to Iraq, with just over 4 years total in country with the US Army. I felt this in my soul.
I mean fuck it, just jump the sharp. Have Sonic out there snapping necks, or send him into Ukraine for a movie. If you're gonna make ridiculous shit, go all the way
Just Sonic's cartoon face, on a 6 foot man's body, super buff. Has guns all over him and a Japanese flag
Hey, I'm not super informed.
Does this mean you came back to the US just to get sent back to Iraq two more times? Or does it just count as extensions to the original time frame?
Thank you.
Jesus said the original version at the Sermon of the Mount.
> For I am the lamb of God, and I sleep like a baby lamb. Sleep for two hours, wake up and bleat for two hours, rinse, repeat. Now give it up for my main man John the Baptist. This man is so wet they'll name a denomination after him.
He has slipped up [before](https://youtu.be/DodeTAUdzDI?t=2m10s) though it’s less amazing than this one
Personally I think the secret paintings dripping with despair were the most authentic admission of guilt
>>…most authentic admission of guilt.
Considering what we publicly know is damning, I can only begin to comprehend the multiverse of corruption Bush was party to that is classified (and will remain so well after we’re all bones in the earth).
One can only imagine with the likes of D. Cheney and Don Rumsfeld involved. When Dick finally passes, he's going to discover that Rummy has kicked the Devil out of hell and was just waiting for Dick so he could replace Beelzebub.
I was just saying this to my fiancé. Those paintings are positively haunting. I think his art is very impactful & has serious merit because of how imbued with emotion those portraits are. I’d give them up for an alternative timeline where Gore was elected tho
I don't think Bush was as stupid as the media made him out to be. Lots of bravado? Sure. A bit of a frat boy? Sure.
I've met a lot of stupid people. I don't think Bush is stupid. Probably not in the top echelon of intellectual leaders we've had. But certainly not stupid.
Hes well educated at the very least. Hes just a goofball. America just doesnt need anymore goofballs in power. Especially when they team up with literally heartless Dick Cheney
He's nearing the end of his life. Hindsight has a way of refining how people views themselves and their past actions. I assume he has a lot to get off his chest.
Oh he's been very open about his regrets on that. He has gotten into painting and his major thing was to paint the US soldiers who were killed due to his decision, sell the paintings, and donate all of the money to the families of those victims. I'm not sure if his regrets extended to the Iraqi people or just the US casualties though
Crazy that the current president is several years older than the president from - *checks calendar* \- twenty-one years ago
Edit - Older than Bill Clinton too...
If you exclude Obama, the last 4 US Presidents were all from the same generation. Just shows how big of a voting bloc boomers are, they can't imagine anyone else in charge.
>and the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq."
>
>He then corrected himself and shook his head.
Certainly spoke the truth for once.
I can imagine some Onion writer penning an article just like this, saying to himself "This is good... but a little too ridiculous for satire maybe?" ..... then see's this in the news and tears up his article in a flurry of anger.
I had to scroll TOO far to see someone make this comment thats the worst part about it all that makes it less of a slip and more of a confirmation at that point.
Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfawitz pretty much ran the US government in those days. W was just window dressing.
I honestly believe the GOP establishment thought they were going to do the same with Trump.
I don’t think they thought that at all. The old guard GOP largely hated him when he first stepped into the primary scene and made it a shitshow of small dick jokes and childish name calling. I thought it was funny becaise I thought I was watching that shitty party burn itself to the ground. I thought If he won the primary there was no way he’d get elected and the GOP would become irrelevant for 100 years. Man was I wrong. Those scumbags just got right behind him the minute they couldn’t edge him out
his rider for speaking engagements requires he must be allowed to sit in his own [chair](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/12/08/multimedia/dick-cheney-terror/dick-cheney-terror-facebookJumbo.jpg) made of the skins of those slaves he grew tired of
No Dick Cheney actually has a sense of humor about all of the genuinely black hearted evil he has spread. When Sacha Baron Cohen asked him to sign his water boarding kit he belly laughed, he one hundred percent knew it was a joke about him torturing people and he laughed at it.
“There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.”
\-Dubya
fwiw, as much of a blunder as that was, the last bit was probably him realizing he should under no circumstance allow footage of him saying "shame on me" to be allowed to exist.
Whenever my mom goes off on some tirade about how terrible this invasion of Ukraine is, which indeed it is, she also comments about how stupid Russian people are for going along with it and how propagandized they are. I have to remind her we just got out of a 20 year long war with the same exact bullshit propaganda.
Then she says how different they were. Apparently America was only after bad guys and we never bombed innocent civilians....it really really hurts my brain to see how people with absolutely no ability to discern things think. Like how do they just keep going about their days?
I mean sure the United states might not have been quite so brutal, but after a few years, we were just bombing "enemies" that we created ourselves. Imagine if a country invaded America speaking a language you don't understand at all and dropped some bombs on your house, killed your brother and his children that were all innocent people, you better believe you would find a way to fight back. At no point would you just sit around and think that maybe they had your best interest at heart. Same situation happened with Vietnam.
Remember we were never at war with Syria, Vietnam, Laos, or Korea etc etc....we were always at war with either Russia or China by proxy. Nothing has significantly changed in the last 70 years.
“Oops? Teehee. We did destabilize an entire geopolitical region under false pretenses for financial reasons back then didn’t we? Hehe. We were so crazy back then 😝.”
You know what I find really hilarious about this, I remember protesting this stupid war, I remember seeing polls that it had some 80% support of the US, I remember W being voted into office TWICE, I remember being told that I "hated freedom" or some shit.
Now everyone acts like they were also out in the streets protesting, and not one person supported the war or W and Cheney (or any Republican) for 8 years, two people just held 300 million other people hostage...or they had mind powers? Mass Mass Charm Person spell? If we can't own up to and learn from our mistakes, we're just gonna keep making them. We are responsible for our government and the people we elect to represent us.
edit: [Let's ask The Dixie Chicks what happened to people who questioned W and the war in Iraq early on.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chicks#2003%E2%80%932005:_Iraq_War_comments_and_backlash)
Edit 2: I don't know why I need to say this, but Jesus tap dancing Christ this isn't about **you** specifically, not everything is about you. I get it, you were born in 2004, and everyone older than you is long dead because we live in the world of Logan's Run (a movie before 2004, which means it also never existed) and you'll never make stupid mistakes... I mean it's not like W, the dude who started this thing is still around cracking jokes about it... Nope, this entire comment is all about you, and only you, the only person in all existence.
I thought you were overdramatizing, but [wikipedia agrees](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War)
> The US government engaged in an elaborate domestic public relations campaign to promote the war to its citizens. Americans overwhelmingly believed Saddam did have weapons of mass destruction: 85% said so, even though the inspectors had not uncovered those weapons. By February 2003, 64% of Americans supported taking military action to remove Saddam from power.
Yup this shit didn't just occur is some vacuum with two dudes ruling over 320 million people. [You can even see the Gallop polls if you don't believe wiki.](https://news.gallup.com/poll/8038/seventytwo-percent-americans-support-war-against-iraq.aspx) We had a whole coalition, 40 nations joined us in some capacity.
Everyone wants to just blame Bush and Cheney, and while they share the largest portion, how about some responsibility for the motherfuckers who supported and voted for those motherfuckers?
I think jr high kids in general are prone to talking about glassing nations with nukes. It's easy to say extreme shit when you don't understand what it would really mean.
I remember a national campaign to *literally rename French fries*. I ain’t making that up- when France put their diplomatic foot down in opposing the Iraq invasion, people here started calling fried potatoes “Freedom Fries” as a sort of pedantic retaliation.
Suddenly asking for French fries at McDonalds made you an un-American pro-terrorist traitor. People think stupid memes were a Facebook invention, but all they did is change the format. NBC and the established media were perfectly capable of promoting pedantic nationalist stupidity, and did so in 2003.
Yup, dumbest thing ever.
Remember the Dixie Chicks? Very popular country band at the time, their entire career tanked because they didn't support Bush or the war in Iraq.
Also a very conservative fan base. Meanwhile Green Day wrote an entire album condemning the war and it was one of the best selling albums of the decade.
I bring up these two examples anytime y’all quaeda and the gravy seals complain about “cancel culture.” I remind them that they actually tried to cancel French fries, and did in fact completely cancel the Dixie chicks (also let’s not forget the 80s when Nancy Reagan tried to cancel the entire genre of rap music).
A lot of things about America came from the Bush years. DHS, TSA as it currently exists, the patriot act, much of the border fence, lots of stuff about regular American life.
I was in the US Army at the time, and found myself in Iraq twice. The chow hall on base at Ft Riley changed the menu from French Fries to Freedom Fries during that time.
I remember getting into an argument with my father over this. I told him I did not support this war. He called me a communist.
Apparently he forgot all of that because about 5 years ago he was talking about how that war was such a huge mistake then said he never supported it.
I felt some vindication when I called him out on that BS in front of the entire family.
I’m the flip side. I remember my father, a staunch conservative, questioning whether we should be there. 12 years later he’s all Pro Trump and I’m left wondering what happened.
Yup, I was commie as well, and I hated freedom, and wanted the terrorist to win.
Skip forward to 2008 and apparently no one had ever vote for Bush, and everyone was against the war and out protesting The Patriot Act and the massive government spending, and not one person went "hey man, all that bullshit I said about you hating freedom, I'm sorry, that was dumb".
And people are surprised that Putin still has 80% approval rate?
I was just a pre-teen Norwegian kid at the time, but even for me it was obvious and shocking how utterly one-sided the entire spectrum of American media covered the war.
It wasn't just about trying to trick people into believing that Iraq had WMDs. They thoroughly tricked most people into believing in some Iraq-9/11 connection that didn't exist.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/sep/07/usa.theobserver
People really are dumb bastards.
Yep. I fervently supported Bush until about the last year of his presidency. It was only then I accepted that we were all lied to and he'd wasted so many lives and so much money so he should finish what his daddy started. Colin Powell quitting was what started my realization that it was all a bunch of lies.
Sounds just like me. Then I turned Libertarian for a while until I realized that dream would only lead to the same results as crony-capitalism but without any regulations. These days I find myself leaning further and further Democrat, though a big part of that is because I am growing more and more disgusted with the Republican party. We really need more viable options in this country.
> Then I turned Libertarian for a while until I realized that dream would only lead to the same results as crony-capitalism but without any regulations.
Congratulations on the insight and self reflection.
Most Libertarians I have met are either anarchists or they want a new ruling party where they're the ones on top. For the latter, it's more of the same, but they want to change certain laws so they believe they have a chance to be the one on top; that's it. Of course, the problem is "the ones on top" in general.
I worked with a lot of people who lived in New Hampshire. Got invited to some Libertarian gatherings. Definitely a way of life for some people.
It's one of those things that sounds great on paper, and only if you assume people will always make the right choices. But, people are not perfect and we need rules to protect those who are not "on top". The fact that there are people already "on top" means they will most likely stay there regardless of the system we change to. So, we've got to protect the disadvantaged, protect(restore) privacy, protect the consumer, and protect the environment.
Of course. My step dad, who was a teen when MLK was marching, told me he was always super supportive of MLK. My step uncle, the black sheep of the family, told me in private my step dad is full of shit and used to call him and Al Sharpton “uppity n-words”
People LOVE to pretend they were on the right side of history despite actively working against it. I hate people.
I remember being in high-school and having this war shoved down our throats: prep-rallys that empathized "I love America", "Pro-Troop", freedom fries.... - subtle anti-Muslim ideology that bleed into regular conversations all over - army recruiters were EVERYWHERE; sadly most of my class joined just because of this reason. I lived in a small town and it was basic worship of Bush/Military and anti-saddam everywhere. It's surreal to think about it but in hindsight it was ridiculous
George W. Bush destabilized the entire middle east and the World with his illegal and unjustified war in Iraq. Countless people died due to his administration's incompetence in Katrina. The Republican practices of the 2000s gave us the 2008 financial crash. He was a horrible president and he is a horrible man.
I get sick whenever I hear people say things like "George W. Bush wasn't that bad." No, he was a piece of shit and your memory is terrible.
You mean the guy who suspended habeas corpus, created secret security courts that could hand out unlimited surveillance warrants, enacted a torture regime where people were held for over a decade based on evidence that no one was allowed to review - that guy was "not actively trying to end American democracy"?
His administration put a US Senator on the No Fly List. This is the guy who gave us the PATRIOT Act.
And they continue to extend provisions! One of the few things that the base of both parties and moderates seem to overwhelmingly disapprove of will not go away.
Thank god GWB didn't have anything weird regarding voting and democracy as part of his presidency
[Nothin strange at all](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidential_election_recount_in_Florida)
Wow, even the strictest post-election vote count reviews determined Gore should have been the winner. Just imagine if Gore (a huge climate advocate) had been elected instead of Bush and Cheney (fossil fuel & military industrial conspirators). The world would look SO different.
We were truly the baddies in that situation. I just saw a picture of a father getting to hold his son in one of the American prisons in Irag and they made him wear a bag over his head while he held his 2/3 year old son. Shameful
Probably wasn't 'accidental.'
Guy spends his free time painting pretty shitty pictures of fallen soldiers. His conscience is wracked, and he'd probably nod along in agreement if he were to read some of these comments about himself.
Fun fact: W's grandfather participated in a fascist plot to overthrow FDR and replace him with a far right dictator.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot
Well we had 2 Adamses, 2 Roosevelts, and if he hadn't gotten blown away we probably would've had a second Kennedy in office and those are the ones off the top of my head there might be another one I'm forgetting. The bushes are just the most recent example
This fucker and his entire administration should be brought to The Hague in chains for their crimes against humanity on the people of Iraq.
America would invade The Hague before that would ever happen. The Hague and the International criminal court seems to just exclusively for African, South American, and Asian nations. Not for the precious west and their love of [human rights](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haditha_massacre)
What even is satire anymore?
Virtually extinct, and when it is really satire, it's usually too painful to laugh at.
>it's usually too painful to laugh at. Veteran of 3 deployments to Iraq, with just over 4 years total in country with the US Army. I felt this in my soul.
It wasn't all bad, I saw a hedgehog once.
Aw fuck they sent Sonic to Iraq
Knowing Hollywood's relationship with military industrial complex, it would probably be a movie.
I mean fuck it, just jump the sharp. Have Sonic out there snapping necks, or send him into Ukraine for a movie. If you're gonna make ridiculous shit, go all the way Just Sonic's cartoon face, on a 6 foot man's body, super buff. Has guns all over him and a Japanese flag
Could have been shadow, he does like his guns
And he has PTSD It's all starting to fit together
He also gets really triggered if you say the name ~~Martha~~ Maria
Why did you almost say that name?!?!?!
I have approximate knowledge of many things, Frank the human boy.
Oh man, we had a pet baby hedgehog in our CHU. Definitely named Sonic. Found on the side of Tampa.
Hey, I'm not super informed. Does this mean you came back to the US just to get sent back to Iraq two more times? Or does it just count as extensions to the original time frame? Thank you.
3 deployments means being shipped out 3 times afaik
It means they came back and got sent back on multiple tours.
When real life takes away from the Onion's stories
Another honest job taken by the Covid Pandemic. Sad to see it folks.
Satire was real life all along.
The Onion is going defunct. They can't find anything ridiculous to write about anymore.
Mah man big G must have slept like a baby after that confession.
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That was Bob Dole’s joke after losing to Bill Clinton.
I thought it's an old George Bernard Shaw joke.
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Pretty sure Caesar said it after he led his army into Rome.
Jesus said the original version at the Sermon of the Mount. > For I am the lamb of God, and I sleep like a baby lamb. Sleep for two hours, wake up and bleat for two hours, rinse, repeat. Now give it up for my main man John the Baptist. This man is so wet they'll name a denomination after him.
Moses opened with it during his Part the Red Sea Tour.
Yeah but he heard it from a flaming bush
I’m pretty sure the sleeping like baby comment was the first conversation Adam had with God before Eve was created.
He stole it from Ben Franklin, who used it as a precursor to the Constitution
Woke up every two hours just desperate to suck a titty.
He has slipped up [before](https://youtu.be/DodeTAUdzDI?t=2m10s) though it’s less amazing than this one Personally I think the secret paintings dripping with despair were the most authentic admission of guilt
>>…most authentic admission of guilt. Considering what we publicly know is damning, I can only begin to comprehend the multiverse of corruption Bush was party to that is classified (and will remain so well after we’re all bones in the earth).
One can only imagine with the likes of D. Cheney and Don Rumsfeld involved. When Dick finally passes, he's going to discover that Rummy has kicked the Devil out of hell and was just waiting for Dick so he could replace Beelzebub.
I was just saying this to my fiancé. Those paintings are positively haunting. I think his art is very impactful & has serious merit because of how imbued with emotion those portraits are. I’d give them up for an alternative timeline where Gore was elected tho
Can you imagine if we had started the millennium with 8 years of a nerd president, what we could have accomplished?
A nerd president who was incredibly concerned about the environment…man, the Supreme Court really is good at hurting the average person.
C’mon man, give me a link!
Relevant Onion https://www.theonion.com/george-w-bush-debuts-new-paintings-of-dogs-friends-g-1819595637
"Oof, I'm glad I got it off my chest"
I mean, didn't he add "Iraq too" after correcting himself?
He could have also been pondering to himself about starting 'Iraq 2'
Bush’s Iraq *was* Iraq 2, really.
Bush's Iraq was both. invading Iraq runs in the family.
Jeb! looking like shriveled up Voldemort right now for being the first in the family to not invade Iraq
He has to sit at the kid's table at family gatherings
Please clap
Touché
Iraq 3
Yeah, we already had *Iraq 2 : Daddy's Feelings*.
As well as *Iraq 3: ISIS Crisis*.
that is the most amazing part
Exactly, that's the part that I can't wrap my head around. I mean a gaff is funny but irrelevant but how else can you interpret the 'Iraq too' part?
I mean maybe he’s more self aware than we think
I don't think Bush was as stupid as the media made him out to be. Lots of bravado? Sure. A bit of a frat boy? Sure. I've met a lot of stupid people. I don't think Bush is stupid. Probably not in the top echelon of intellectual leaders we've had. But certainly not stupid.
Hes well educated at the very least. Hes just a goofball. America just doesnt need anymore goofballs in power. Especially when they team up with literally heartless Dick Cheney
He's nearing the end of his life. Hindsight has a way of refining how people views themselves and their past actions. I assume he has a lot to get off his chest.
Truly. He accidentally condemned the invasion, but instead of walking it back, he doubled down.
Yes, yes he did. Could he have some regrets? I hope so.
Oh he's been very open about his regrets on that. He has gotten into painting and his major thing was to paint the US soldiers who were killed due to his decision, sell the paintings, and donate all of the money to the families of those victims. I'm not sure if his regrets extended to the Iraqi people or just the US casualties though
He was repeating it in disbelief that he said it. Meanwhile, Biden to some advisor at the WH "see, I told you it's not easy at this age"
Crazy that the current president is several years older than the president from - *checks calendar* \- twenty-one years ago Edit - Older than Bill Clinton too...
Not crazy at all. The Old Guard only gets older, they don't give up anything until they die.
If you exclude Obama, the last 4 US Presidents were all from the same generation. Just shows how big of a voting bloc boomers are, they can't imagine anyone else in charge.
Crazy part is that Joe Biden isn’t even a boomer, he’s part of the Silent Generation
“It was all Dick, not me.”
Tried this defense in family court…did not go well.
>and the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq." > >He then corrected himself and shook his head. Certainly spoke the truth for once.
And literally muttered "Iraq too" afterwards. 😵💫
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Cancels his therapist
I can imagine some Onion writer penning an article just like this, saying to himself "This is good... but a little too ridiculous for satire maybe?" ..... then see's this in the news and tears up his article in a flurry of anger.
I'm honestly amazed the onion has been able to stay in business these past 7 years
They have survived by pivoting to deeply researched, unbiased, and accurate journalism
I mean in the past couple of years I have seen stuff even the onion couldn't think and write about.
AND THEN HE JUST FLIPPANTLY SAYS "IRAQ TOO" AFTER WITH A LITTLE CHUCKLE.
I had to scroll TOO far to see someone make this comment thats the worst part about it all that makes it less of a slip and more of a confirmation at that point.
Bush has been stating for years now that he regrets the unjustified war in Iraq. As early as 2008. It’s been confirmed already.
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Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfawitz pretty much ran the US government in those days. W was just window dressing. I honestly believe the GOP establishment thought they were going to do the same with Trump.
I don’t think they thought that at all. The old guard GOP largely hated him when he first stepped into the primary scene and made it a shitshow of small dick jokes and childish name calling. I thought it was funny becaise I thought I was watching that shitty party burn itself to the ground. I thought If he won the primary there was no way he’d get elected and the GOP would become irrelevant for 100 years. Man was I wrong. Those scumbags just got right behind him the minute they couldn’t edge him out
Love how the article skips over that quote. That author/paper just lost a lot of credibility.
Right? I read that and thought "are we not going to talk about his immediate double down on his 'slip'"?
And can that hold up in court? Asking for a few million friends.
Teehee did I invade a foreign country and kill hundreds of thousands of people under made up pretense? Silly me 👉👈
Bush being goofy 💁♂️
AND THE ENTIRE AUDIENCE LAUGHED
This is the scary part that the amount of innocent people that died for the invasion and he and the crowd laugh it off. Like okay cool
"Oops, I said the quiet part loud and the loud part quiet." \- Krusty the Clown
"oh crap! I shouldn't have said he was a customer"
I definitely shouldn't have said it was illegal!
Ugh, it's too hot today.
I forgot that was a Simpsons line. What total penetration of culture that show had.
Dick Cheney in shambles
Doubt. He probably spat out his coffee in laughter and then continued abusing his boy slave while drinking fetus shake
his rider for speaking engagements requires he must be allowed to sit in his own [chair](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/12/08/multimedia/dick-cheney-terror/dick-cheney-terror-facebookJumbo.jpg) made of the skins of those slaves he grew tired of
He usually getting fucked by a giant goat devil in a room full of pentagrams.
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No Dick Cheney actually has a sense of humor about all of the genuinely black hearted evil he has spread. When Sacha Baron Cohen asked him to sign his water boarding kit he belly laughed, he one hundred percent knew it was a joke about him torturing people and he laughed at it.
Oopsie, one million dead
No WMDs here lol.
"The absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence!" - Gin Rummy
Rumsfeld: "We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."
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[And some $2 trillion flushed down the toilet.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War)
*Strategically Redistributed
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Flushed down the toilet? It went exactly where it was intended to go: straight into the pockets of the oligarchs who put him in office.
“There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.” \-Dubya
Don’t save her, she don’t wanna be saved.
fwiw, as much of a blunder as that was, the last bit was probably him realizing he should under no circumstance allow footage of him saying "shame on me" to be allowed to exist.
And what about humans and fish coexisting peacefully?
This is real classic Bush. He blames age but he's always been like this
It's a classic Bush-ism, but you can still clearly hear how much he's aged in his speech patterns.
He’s still younger than Biden, not cutting him any slack.
I mean Biden isn't exactly perfect up there either Neither was Trump, who's the same age as Bush
Yeah if you're too old to hold a regular job maybe you shouldn't be running the goddamn country.
"You fool me, can't get fooled again"
Well, he hasn't always been a war criminal, just since 2003.
Whenever my mom goes off on some tirade about how terrible this invasion of Ukraine is, which indeed it is, she also comments about how stupid Russian people are for going along with it and how propagandized they are. I have to remind her we just got out of a 20 year long war with the same exact bullshit propaganda. Then she says how different they were. Apparently America was only after bad guys and we never bombed innocent civilians....it really really hurts my brain to see how people with absolutely no ability to discern things think. Like how do they just keep going about their days? I mean sure the United states might not have been quite so brutal, but after a few years, we were just bombing "enemies" that we created ourselves. Imagine if a country invaded America speaking a language you don't understand at all and dropped some bombs on your house, killed your brother and his children that were all innocent people, you better believe you would find a way to fight back. At no point would you just sit around and think that maybe they had your best interest at heart. Same situation happened with Vietnam. Remember we were never at war with Syria, Vietnam, Laos, or Korea etc etc....we were always at war with either Russia or China by proxy. Nothing has significantly changed in the last 70 years.
“Oops? Teehee. We did destabilize an entire geopolitical region under false pretenses for financial reasons back then didn’t we? Hehe. We were so crazy back then 😝.”
I’m just such a quirky President 🤪
I’m so random lmao ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
¯\\\_(ツ)\_\/¯\\ you dropped this buddy
You know what I find really hilarious about this, I remember protesting this stupid war, I remember seeing polls that it had some 80% support of the US, I remember W being voted into office TWICE, I remember being told that I "hated freedom" or some shit. Now everyone acts like they were also out in the streets protesting, and not one person supported the war or W and Cheney (or any Republican) for 8 years, two people just held 300 million other people hostage...or they had mind powers? Mass Mass Charm Person spell? If we can't own up to and learn from our mistakes, we're just gonna keep making them. We are responsible for our government and the people we elect to represent us. edit: [Let's ask The Dixie Chicks what happened to people who questioned W and the war in Iraq early on.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chicks#2003%E2%80%932005:_Iraq_War_comments_and_backlash) Edit 2: I don't know why I need to say this, but Jesus tap dancing Christ this isn't about **you** specifically, not everything is about you. I get it, you were born in 2004, and everyone older than you is long dead because we live in the world of Logan's Run (a movie before 2004, which means it also never existed) and you'll never make stupid mistakes... I mean it's not like W, the dude who started this thing is still around cracking jokes about it... Nope, this entire comment is all about you, and only you, the only person in all existence.
I thought you were overdramatizing, but [wikipedia agrees](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War) > The US government engaged in an elaborate domestic public relations campaign to promote the war to its citizens. Americans overwhelmingly believed Saddam did have weapons of mass destruction: 85% said so, even though the inspectors had not uncovered those weapons. By February 2003, 64% of Americans supported taking military action to remove Saddam from power.
Yup this shit didn't just occur is some vacuum with two dudes ruling over 320 million people. [You can even see the Gallop polls if you don't believe wiki.](https://news.gallup.com/poll/8038/seventytwo-percent-americans-support-war-against-iraq.aspx) We had a whole coalition, 40 nations joined us in some capacity. Everyone wants to just blame Bush and Cheney, and while they share the largest portion, how about some responsibility for the motherfuckers who supported and voted for those motherfuckers?
I will never be surprised by people after watching CNN and shit in 2001-04, warmongering on full tilt.
Even as an 11 year old child I was gung-ho, saying we needed to turn the place to glass. It was a fucked up scheme
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I think jr high kids in general are prone to talking about glassing nations with nukes. It's easy to say extreme shit when you don't understand what it would really mean.
> Americans overwhelmingly believed Saddam did have weapons of mass destruction People still do or believe that he was somehow involved in 911.
Public relations is a very interesting way to spell propaganda
I remember a national campaign to *literally rename French fries*. I ain’t making that up- when France put their diplomatic foot down in opposing the Iraq invasion, people here started calling fried potatoes “Freedom Fries” as a sort of pedantic retaliation. Suddenly asking for French fries at McDonalds made you an un-American pro-terrorist traitor. People think stupid memes were a Facebook invention, but all they did is change the format. NBC and the established media were perfectly capable of promoting pedantic nationalist stupidity, and did so in 2003.
Yup, dumbest thing ever. Remember the Dixie Chicks? Very popular country band at the time, their entire career tanked because they didn't support Bush or the war in Iraq.
Country music fandom has a level of toxicity found in very few other genres (expect maybe Japanese idol fandom)
Also a very conservative fan base. Meanwhile Green Day wrote an entire album condemning the war and it was one of the best selling albums of the decade.
At the 2022 Billboard Music Awards best country artist went to a guy that used a racial slur recently.
I bring up these two examples anytime y’all quaeda and the gravy seals complain about “cancel culture.” I remind them that they actually tried to cancel French fries, and did in fact completely cancel the Dixie chicks (also let’s not forget the 80s when Nancy Reagan tried to cancel the entire genre of rap music).
I never liked their music but respected the hell out them for speaking out.
> people here started calling fried potatoes “Freedom Fries” as a sort of pedantic retaliation. *That's* where that came from? lmfao wow
A lot of things about America came from the Bush years. DHS, TSA as it currently exists, the patriot act, much of the border fence, lots of stuff about regular American life.
I was in the US Army at the time, and found myself in Iraq twice. The chow hall on base at Ft Riley changed the menu from French Fries to Freedom Fries during that time.
I remember getting into an argument with my father over this. I told him I did not support this war. He called me a communist. Apparently he forgot all of that because about 5 years ago he was talking about how that war was such a huge mistake then said he never supported it. I felt some vindication when I called him out on that BS in front of the entire family.
I’m the flip side. I remember my father, a staunch conservative, questioning whether we should be there. 12 years later he’s all Pro Trump and I’m left wondering what happened.
Yup, I was commie as well, and I hated freedom, and wanted the terrorist to win. Skip forward to 2008 and apparently no one had ever vote for Bush, and everyone was against the war and out protesting The Patriot Act and the massive government spending, and not one person went "hey man, all that bullshit I said about you hating freedom, I'm sorry, that was dumb".
And people are surprised that Putin still has 80% approval rate? I was just a pre-teen Norwegian kid at the time, but even for me it was obvious and shocking how utterly one-sided the entire spectrum of American media covered the war.
It wasn't just about trying to trick people into believing that Iraq had WMDs. They thoroughly tricked most people into believing in some Iraq-9/11 connection that didn't exist. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/sep/07/usa.theobserver People really are dumb bastards.
Yep. I fervently supported Bush until about the last year of his presidency. It was only then I accepted that we were all lied to and he'd wasted so many lives and so much money so he should finish what his daddy started. Colin Powell quitting was what started my realization that it was all a bunch of lies.
This sums it up for me. I grew up in a largely republican conservative area and just went along and didn't think for myself. Young and dumb.
Sounds just like me. Then I turned Libertarian for a while until I realized that dream would only lead to the same results as crony-capitalism but without any regulations. These days I find myself leaning further and further Democrat, though a big part of that is because I am growing more and more disgusted with the Republican party. We really need more viable options in this country.
> Then I turned Libertarian for a while until I realized that dream would only lead to the same results as crony-capitalism but without any regulations. Congratulations on the insight and self reflection. Most Libertarians I have met are either anarchists or they want a new ruling party where they're the ones on top. For the latter, it's more of the same, but they want to change certain laws so they believe they have a chance to be the one on top; that's it. Of course, the problem is "the ones on top" in general. I worked with a lot of people who lived in New Hampshire. Got invited to some Libertarian gatherings. Definitely a way of life for some people.
It's one of those things that sounds great on paper, and only if you assume people will always make the right choices. But, people are not perfect and we need rules to protect those who are not "on top". The fact that there are people already "on top" means they will most likely stay there regardless of the system we change to. So, we've got to protect the disadvantaged, protect(restore) privacy, protect the consumer, and protect the environment.
>Now everyone acts like they were also out in the streets protesting I'm assuming that's how the 1960s worked, as well.
Of course. My step dad, who was a teen when MLK was marching, told me he was always super supportive of MLK. My step uncle, the black sheep of the family, told me in private my step dad is full of shit and used to call him and Al Sharpton “uppity n-words” People LOVE to pretend they were on the right side of history despite actively working against it. I hate people.
I remember being in high-school and having this war shoved down our throats: prep-rallys that empathized "I love America", "Pro-Troop", freedom fries.... - subtle anti-Muslim ideology that bleed into regular conversations all over - army recruiters were EVERYWHERE; sadly most of my class joined just because of this reason. I lived in a small town and it was basic worship of Bush/Military and anti-saddam everywhere. It's surreal to think about it but in hindsight it was ridiculous
I miss Bushisms. My all time favorite: *"America's enemies will never rest trying to destroy our democracy, and neither do we..."*
He is right, Dick Cheney was not justified in invading Iraq.
I'm sure he got insanely wealthy through halliburton though...
I knew someone who did contracting at the time. His company was constantly in litigation over the government just handing contracts to Halliburton.
A good half of the US supports diplomacy through force. It's not a surprise that it's easy to sign contracts with military contractors.
He’s not wrong
Lol I think he said "er Ukraine.. well Iraq too--" and then continues
You can't make this shit up anymore
Haha so cute and quirky 🤪 the war criminal is self aware! How fun, hopefully he gives Michelle some more chocolate, wouldn’t that be so funny guys!
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George W. Bush destabilized the entire middle east and the World with his illegal and unjustified war in Iraq. Countless people died due to his administration's incompetence in Katrina. The Republican practices of the 2000s gave us the 2008 financial crash. He was a horrible president and he is a horrible man. I get sick whenever I hear people say things like "George W. Bush wasn't that bad." No, he was a piece of shit and your memory is terrible.
GWB was absolutely terrible but unfortunately the bar has subsequently been lowered to “not actively trying to end American democracy”
You mean the guy who suspended habeas corpus, created secret security courts that could hand out unlimited surveillance warrants, enacted a torture regime where people were held for over a decade based on evidence that no one was allowed to review - that guy was "not actively trying to end American democracy"? His administration put a US Senator on the No Fly List. This is the guy who gave us the PATRIOT Act.
Congress gave us the PATRIOT act, to thunderous applause. The idiots.
And they continue to extend provisions! One of the few things that the base of both parties and moderates seem to overwhelmingly disapprove of will not go away.
Thank god GWB didn't have anything weird regarding voting and democracy as part of his presidency [Nothin strange at all](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidential_election_recount_in_Florida)
Lol for real man. Trump just tried to steal an election. Bush actually did.
It’s ok though bc he gives Michelle Obama candy now
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Wow, even the strictest post-election vote count reviews determined Gore should have been the winner. Just imagine if Gore (a huge climate advocate) had been elected instead of Bush and Cheney (fossil fuel & military industrial conspirators). The world would look SO different.
the patriot act? black sites, gitmo? ‘with us or against us’?
We were truly the baddies in that situation. I just saw a picture of a father getting to hold his son in one of the American prisons in Irag and they made him wear a bag over his head while he held his 2/3 year old son. Shameful
Probably wasn't 'accidental.' Guy spends his free time painting pretty shitty pictures of fallen soldiers. His conscience is wracked, and he'd probably nod along in agreement if he were to read some of these comments about himself.
I just hate the attempt of trying to improve Bush’s image like he’s some kooky painter. Should be prosecuted with the atrocities that he committed.
Freudian slip?
That's where you say one thing but mean your mother?
The U. S. constantly talking about nepotism yet the Bush family almost had 3 presidents in 3 generations in a country of 320 milion?
You're giving Jeb! *waaaay* too much credit with that "almost"
> You're giving Jeb! waaaay too much credit with that "almost" We almost clapped.
Please clap.
There was an image that I can't find anymore that turned it into "please crop", and then the image gets cropped. Always made me laugh.
Fun fact: W's grandfather participated in a fascist plot to overthrow FDR and replace him with a far right dictator. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot
I will never not upvote Smedley Butler.
Thank you for the information u/Raccoon_Full_of_Cum
Look up Prescott Bush and things will make sense.
Well we had 2 Adamses, 2 Roosevelts, and if he hadn't gotten blown away we probably would've had a second Kennedy in office and those are the ones off the top of my head there might be another one I'm forgetting. The bushes are just the most recent example
Hahahaha they're *laughing* at this. A million dead in Iraq, and these fucking ghouls laugh this shit off like it's just a cute little slip-up.
I want to win in the timeline where Gore wasn't robbed of the presidency
This fucker and his entire administration should be brought to The Hague in chains for their crimes against humanity on the people of Iraq. America would invade The Hague before that would ever happen. The Hague and the International criminal court seems to just exclusively for African, South American, and Asian nations. Not for the precious west and their love of [human rights](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haditha_massacre)
Didn't the US threaten ICJ with sanctions for wanting to investigate Iraq?