A third Bush disaster in the White House will NOT be "a good deal".

[seafan]

Jeb: Toppling Saddam Was a ‘Good Deal’, August 13, 2015

Jeb Bush on Thursday said “taking out Saddam Hussein turned out to be a pretty good deal,” but then added he didn’t want to get into hypotheticals about what would’ve happened had the U.S. (under his brother) not invaded in 2003. “Then that’s back to the future and you could make a movie,” Bush said at a national-security forum hosted by Politico. The Republican presidential candidate said the 2007 “surge” left Iraq in a “fragile but secure” state, but that President Obama’s withdrawl of U.S. forces paved the way for the rise of ISIS.

Memo to Jeb Bush: It was W’s Surge that created ISIL, not Hillary, Juan Cole at Informed Comment, August 12, 2015

Jeb Bush very unwisely went after Hillary Clinton last night on the grounds that her Iraq policies gave us Daesh (ISIS, ISIL). Bush may think he is cleverly pulling a Karl Rove, attacking his opponent on her strong point (foreign policy), as Rove swiftboated John Kerry in 2004. But this isn’t 2004, and virtually no one is excited about having more Bushes in the White House (apparently a third of Republicans want Trump and like 12 percent want Bush, despite his advantage in name recognition). The fact is, every time Jeb Bush says “Iraq,” he loses more votes.

.....

One of the arguments Mr. Bush made was that while his brother, George W. Bush, didn’t get everything right, he did have a brilliant moment with the 2007 troop escalation or “surge,” which put the world right. Then that horrible Obama crew, including Mrs. Cinton, came along and screwed things up by withdrawing from Iraq in 2011.

First of all, saying that W. didn’t get everything right in Iraq is like saying that Custer didn’t get everything right at the Little Bighorn. Bush’s Iraq misadventure was the biggest foreign policy screw-up in American history. Didn’t get everything right, indeed.

Second, Jeb Bush’s narrative about the “surge” is mythical history unconnected to reality. See my Engaging the Muslim World for the real story.

In brief, here is what happened.

.....

AP via Politico

Jeb Bush offered inaccurate version of Iraq war history, McClatchy, August 12, 2015

WASHINGTON

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush, in his Tuesday speech that was billed as a major foreign policy address, provided a distorted version of the U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq and an incorrect account of the origins of the Islamic State.

Bush vowed that if elected he would expand U.S. military intervention in the Middle East significantly. His version of events, however, seemed intended to absolve his brother, President George W. Bush, of blame in destabilizing the region while trying to pin the region’s current bloodshed on President Barack Obama and his former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, the current Democratic presidential frontrunner.

The former Florida governor asserted that the Islamic State’s takeover of large swaths of Iraq in 2014 was a direct consequence of the “fatal error” of Obama’s decision to withdraw U.S. forces from the country in 2011 after the eight-year U.S. military occupation. He claimed the withdrawal squandered the “success, brilliant, heroic and costly,” of the 2007 U.S. troop surge. He said Clinton “stood by as the hard-won victory by American and allied forces was thrown away.”

Bush’s account of the withdrawal as a “case of blind haste” omitted the fact that it was his brother who’d set the withdrawal date of Dec. 31, 2011, in an agreement that he signed with the Iraqi government in 2008.

.....

He also neglected to note that the Iraqi government strongly opposed the continued presence of U.S. forces.

“The last American soldier will leave Iraq” as agreed, then-Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki said in a Dec. 2010 interview with the Wall Street Journal. “This agreement is not subject to extension, not subject to alternation. It is sealed.”

Critics fault Obama for not pressing Maliki harder to permit a U.S. contingent to remain to train Iraqi security forces. But the Obama administration was forced to fulfill the departure timetable when the Iraqi government refused to exempt American troops from Iraqi law.

Bush’s version of the success of the surge, launched to contain attacks on U.S. forces and minority Sunni Muslims by Iranian-backed Shiite militias, also was incomplete.

The Surge Fallacy, The Atlantic, September 2015 issue

ver the past decade, the foreign-policy debate in Washington has turned upside down. As George W. Bush’s administration drew to an end, the brand of ambitious, expensive, Manichaean, militaristic foreign policy commonly dubbed “neoconservative” seemed on the verge of collapse. In December 2006, the Iraq Study Group, which included such Republican eminences as James Baker, Lawrence Eagleburger, Ed Meese, and Alan Simpson, repudiated Bush’s core approach to the Middle East. The group not only called for the withdrawal from Iraq by early 2008 of all U.S. combat troops not necessary for force protection. It also proposed that the United States begin a “diplomatic dialogue, without preconditions,” with the government of Iran, which Bush had included in his “axis of evil,” and that it make the Arab-Israeli peace process, long scorned by hawks, a priority. Other prominent Republicans defected too. Senator Gordon Smith of Oregon called the president’s Iraq policy “absurd” if not “criminal.” George Will, the dean of conservative columnists, deemed neoconservatism a “spectacularly misnamed radicalism” that true conservatives should disdain.

That was then. Today, hawkishness is the hottest thing on the American right. With the exception of Rand Paul, the GOP presidential contenders are vying to take the most aggressive stance against Iran and the Islamic State, or ISIS. The most celebrated freshman Republican senator is Tom Cotton, who gained fame with a letter to Iran’s leaders warning that the United States might not abide by a nuclear deal. According to recent polls, GOP voters now see national security as more important than either cultural issues or the economy. More than three-quarters of Republicans want American ground troops to fight ISIS in Iraq, and a plurality says that stopping Iran’s nuclear program requires an immediate military strike.

What explains the change? Above all, it’s the legend of the surge. The legend goes something like this: By sending more troops to Iraq in 2007, George W. Bush finally won the Iraq War. Then Barack Obama, by withdrawing U.S. troops, lost it. Because of Obama’s troop withdrawal, and his general refusal to exercise American power, Iraq collapsed, ISIS rose, and the Middle East fell apart. “We had it won, thanks to the surge,” Senator John McCain declared last September. “The problems we face in Iraq today,” Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal argued in May, “I don’t think were because of President Bush’s strength, but rather have come about because of President Obama’s weakness.”

For today’s GOP leaders, this story line has squelched the doubts about the Iraq invasion that a decade ago threatened to transform conservative foreign policy. The legend of the surge has become this era’s equivalent of the legend that America was winning in Vietnam until, in the words of Richard Nixon’s former defense secretary Melvin Laird, “Congress snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by cutting off funding for our ally in 1975.” In the late 1970s, the legend of the congressional cutoff—and it was a legend; Congress reduced but never cut off South Vietnam’s aid—spurred the hawkish revival that helped elect Ronald Reagan. As we approach 2016, the legend of the surge is playing a similar role. Which is why it’s so important to understand that the legend is wrong.

Brian Cahn/ZUMA, via MotherJones



Jeb Bush Is Trying to Blame the Iraq Crisis on Hillary Clinton, David Corn at MotherJones, August 12, 2015

Jeb Bush is trying to pull off the mother of all chutzpah moves by blaming Hillary Clinton for today's troubles in Iraq and the rise of ISIS.

Yes, you heard that right: The brother of the fellow who invaded Iraq on false premises, and who did so without a coherent and comprehensive plan for what to do after the defeat of Saddam Hussein, is trying to jujitsu this issue and heave his hefty family baggage onto the shoulders of the leading Democratic 2016 contender.

Three months ago, Jeb Bush couldn't give a straight answer to a simple question about the Iraq War—a stumble that raised serious questions about his quest for the Republican presidential nomination. How could he be unprepared for such an obvious matter? And now—when he's not faring so well in the polls and trailing Donald Trump and others—he's attempting a new tack: pointing his finger at Clinton. Though this stunt wins Bush attention—the New York Times front-paged his attack with the headline, "Bush Asserts a Clinton Role in Iraq Decline"—it's absurd.

.....

First off, there remains a debate over whether the Iraq surge worked. Putting that aside, let's focus on the question (Jeb) Bush asked: Why was the surge followed by a withdrawal of US troops from Iraq? The answer is simple: President George W. Bush arranged for that withdrawal.

In December 2008, Bush signed a Status of Forces Agreement with then-Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. At a ceremony in Baghdad, Bush proclaimed:

.....

Jeb Bush the Iraq War Dead-Ender, The American Conservative, August 11, 2015


via American Conservative

The most remarkable thing about Bush’s position on Iraq in these speech excerpts is that he is boasting that he thinks that U.S. soldiers should have continued to fight and die in Iraq for the last three and a half years, and he is implying that a residual force should have been kept there indefinitely. Since the Iraqis wanted U.S. forces out of their country, there was no realistic chance of having such a residual force beyond 2011, but the telling thing is that Bush thinks there should have been one anyway. That force would have been a target for renewed insurgency, and many more Americans would have died and been wounded to carry out an unnecessary mission in a war that Bush’s brother started, and Bush wants people to identify him with this position. Because of his name and foreign policy views, Bush was never going to be able to separate himself fully from the Iraq war and its toxic legacy, but his choice to present himself to the country again and again as an Iraq war dead-ender is truly impressive political malpractice.

Word Cloud of Jeb Bush's 'major foreign policy speech', via Tampa Bay Times

Yeah, I didn't see 'George W. Bush' mentioned in that jebberish either.





Jeb Bush: Obama and Clinton’s Iraq withdrawal ‘premature’ and a ‘fatal error’, WP, August 11, 2015

Uh, no, Jeb.





The next time I tell you someone from Texas should not be president of the United States, please, pay attention.
----Molly Ivins

[BlueJazz]

1. Everything he says translates to: "More money for my Friends/War Profiteers"

Yeah..Jeb...we get it..we get it all too clearly..

[John Poet]

2. Instead, they could call it 'The Raw Deal'

[mythology]

3. To be fair

The catastrophe of Bush the elder was more a reflection of how Reagan left the country. Granted Bush the elder was the VP, but he wasn't a particularly powerful VP.

Of course Bush the lesser was enough of a catastrophe for several presidents, so it all equals out to a family unsuitable for public office or any other job with any ability to impact others.

[moondust]

4. Thanks for the compilation.

Jeb! should drop out now and save the whole world a lot of anguish. Trying to rewrite and defend the biggest foreign policy mistake in U.S. history constitutes fraud IMO.

Molly was right: Presidents from Texas got us into Vietnam and Iraq. No more! May have something to do with the strong Texas belief in guns and deadly force.

[Rex]

5. Agree, it would be the final nail in the coffin imo. nt

nt

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

6. Boy was Jessie Jackson right when he said "stay out of the bushes"

Unfortunately, no one followed his advice and we got my pet goat etc.

[struggle4progress]

7. I put a nice big "Stay out the Bushes" sign in my bushes back in 2000

but somebody crawled in anyway and took it down