After George W. Bush’s extensive coaching on foreign affairs for the second debate, commentators and voters declared that Bush came out of the debate looking presidential.
To me he looked as presidential as a feeble-minded parrot. Bush said: “I hope our European friends become the peacekeepers in Bosnia and in the Balkans. It ought to be one of our priorities to convince them to put troops on the ground.” Fact: 27 European nations have 28,000 troops on the ground in Kosovo. U.S. troops make up less than one-fifth of the total force there.
Bush: “One of the problems we have in the military is we’re in a lot of places around the world. I’d very much like to get our troops out of (the Balkans). Haiti is another example.” Question: Bush thinks our military is overextended in Haiti? Since March 31 of this year, we have had 34 troops there.
Bush has promised that if elected president he would take out Saddam Hussein. But with Dick Cheney and Colin Powell as his top military advisers, I’m wondering what the chances of that are. Cheney and Powell took part in President Bush’s decision to leave Saddam in power during the Gulf War, when we had troops in Iraq. Their mission was to save oil wells for the Emir of Kuwait, and having done that they ignominiously pulled out. Cheney’s reward for his “public service” was the fortune he made as CEO of Halliburton, for whom he secured $2 billion in government contracts.
I want someone in the Oval Office who knows what’s going on and who is not there to enrich himself and his friends at the expense of the American people. George W. Bush fails to meet the first requirement, and Bush and Cheney both fail to meet the second.
Oak Harbor
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