so much for draining the swamp

[Dill]

(11-14-2016, 06:31 PM)JustWinBaby Wrote: Bush went before Congress, 3 times I think, about reigning in Fannie and Freddie.  He failed.  But recessions are an inevitable course of the economy.  But certainly policy DOES play a major role in the recovery and expansion.  Romney wanted to lower corporate taxes and unburden business with costly and ineffective regulation, among others.  Obama was not pro-business, big govt socialists usually aren't.

And Iraq was in violation of numerous UN sanctions.  I'm sure you're familiar with the Wolfowitz doctrine from the Clinton administration.  You can pretend Obama or Clinton would not have invaded Iraq, despite the opportunity for regime change presenting itself after failed policy after failed policy in the Middle East....but the fact is Bush pre-9/11 wouldn't have invaded Iraq, either.

Ha ha, SOCIALIST Obama.  Hard to “unburden” business right after an unburdened Wall Street almost tanked the economy.  Everyone Knows Romney wanted to cut taxes on the rich, and we know what he would not have done—bail out the auto industry.  I was more interested in which specific costly and ineffective regulations which you think Romney would have undone and why they would make a difference.

I am familiar with a Wolfowitz doctrine from the Bush 41 administration—a doctrine apparently rejected by that Bush and the foreign policy establishment on both sides of the aisle.  Bush had the best “opportunity” of all in ‘91, with the US military parked on the Iraqi border with engines revved and staring at an Iraqi Army degraded to 30% strength and an insurrection in Basra, yet he stood down for the very reasons his son ignored in 2003— the certainty of sectarian violence, ungovernabilty, quagmire.

That’s why I am astonished that you think failed policy after failed policy in the Middle East would incline either Clinton or Obama to think of invading Iraq as anything but an “opportunity” for another failed policy.  Those petty UN violations (Saddam’s refusal to hand over weapons he did not have) hardly warranted another invasion. Saddam was safely contained for 1 billion a year. Peanuts compared to an invasion costing hundreds of billions and thousands of US lives.

Pointless to say Bush 43 wouldn’t have invaded before 9/11. Neocon doctrine held that support for forcible regime change could only emerge after a catastrophic, country-uniting event on the scale of Pearl Harbor.  Even then, all the evidence indicates we only got that invasion because a coterie of neocons were cooking intel from inside the administration, and under cover of the president’s office clothing themselves in the authority of all the intelligence agencies. That coterie would have had no role in any Democratic administration. No fake yellowcake purchase, no imaginary moveable labs, no smoking gun aluminum tubes, no secret meeting with Al Qaeda in Prague=no invasion.

This is more than an historical footnote now, as the Bizarro world of Trump appointments has thrown up  John Bolton for consideration as Secretary of State.