Bush’s 33% Success Rate

While the President was giving his farewell speech, I was catching up on Monday’s episode of 24.  Sorry but I believe the real reason why there hasn’t been another attack on American soil is because Al Qaeda really thinks Kiefer Sutherland IS Jack Bauer.  Anyway, I’ve seen clips and portions of the President’s last speech and as with any George W. Bush speech, nothing really to write home about.  There I something I want to address now because I feel that it will be given a lot of discussion over the next several years. I hinted at it before in the WTF Wednesday post this week but I believe it needs to be stated again.

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, the Bush Administration and all of its allies have been saying that Bush has kept us safe these last 8 years and that Iraq is slowly turning into a Foreign Policy success story. Well, since these fools treat history as some kind of suggestion and not facts and reality, I want to take us back to Bush’s 2002 State of the Union address.  Remember that?  It was the one about the “Axis of Evil.”  Seems that Bush has forgotten his own speech.  See, there were THREE nations in the Axis of Evil according to Bush.  Iraq, Iran and North Korea.  Let’s play nice and give Bush a gift and say that Iraq turns into a beacon of democracy in the Middle East.  What about the other two countries?  Well, North Korea claims to have successfully tested a nuclear weapon in 2006.  Not only did it catch the Administration off guard but we had to be told by the Chinese.  North Korea then played a game of Nuclear Chicken with us and we blinked, lifting sanctions with the “promise” that they would destroy their Nuclear reactors.  The destroyed one and then started back up again.  Iran also might have nuclear weapons (One thing of note should be how horrible our intel is for both these countries because we really have no clue).  Nuclear weapons aside, with the invasion of Iraq, Iran has become the defiant voice in the Middle East, sending weapons and fighters to not only Iraq but also Gaza, Syria, and other terrorist hot spots.  It can be argued that since 2002, both Iran and North Korea have INCREASED their power and influence in the world.

So, if we give Bush Iraq, that means he’s been successful in containing 1/3 of the Axis of Evil over the last 6 years.  He has a 33.33333% success rate.  If he was a lawyer with a 33% success rate, he’d be lucky to be working at Kinkos right now.  A doctor with a 33% success rate would probably be in jail for malpractice.  And this is all if you concede Iraq to Bush.  And that’s still very unlikely.  The history of Iraq, Iran and the rest of the Middle East is that you might get a few years of peace, make some questionable alliances and then get bitten 10 years from now when it all plunges back into dictatorships and terrorism (Remember Saddam and Bin Laden used to be our buddies).  But hey…I understand.  Saying you were 33% successful is better than saying 0%. And course this is just with Foreign Policy, specifically with the Axis of Evil.  Let’s not talk about him walking out the front door of the White House leaving behind one of the worse financial crisis this country has ever seen.  It’s okay G Dub.  The Emperor has no clothes and your closest friends and supporters won’t tell you otherwise.