I stole a few links from Pseudomain to write this reply to Katie over at her LJ.
Let's clear things up here a little. Assume that Bush is doing great in Iraq, which is personally not my belief, but will let me address these other concerns of why Bush ain't that great.
His record on the environment is atrocious. Not only are his active policies an affront to nature, but the spin he tries to give to the media is an outright lie.
"The Bush administration has distorted scientific fact leading to policy decisions on the environment, health, biomedical research and nuclear weaponry." This statement was made by a group of 60 scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates. Bush tried to make up for it by proposing a trip to Mars, which might be a good idea, but the foreign press (typically not as biased to Bush butt-kissing as US media) doesn't see it happening.
Bush's No Child Left Behind act is paradoxically causing schools to fail to provide sufficient education for college admission. The plan is costing taxpayers so much money that the state of Utah is considering foregoing federal education funds so that it doesn't have to waste millions of dollars they don't have to implement these ineffective federally-mandated programs.
Even as a leader, if you've seen him on TV, he's not very effective. He avoids important questions posed in live news conferences about his thoughts on the war, he uses his office to hide the casualties suffered in the war from the media, his office tells senior officials not to comply with congressional investigations, and whether he agrees with gay marriage or not, his office has no business making statements in that regard.
Let's talk for a moment about gay marriage and Bush's plans against it. Have any of Bush's supporters noticed that constitutional amendments are designed to grant rights, not prohibit them? They prohibit the state (the US federal government) from making policy that infriges on citizens' rights, and defines only in a very limited way the extent of those rights. Indeed, marriage is a right allocated by the federal government to each state. What person acheives the position of President of the United States yet has overlooked these fundamental operations of government?
Ok, so maybe he's not perfect. Maybe his war-time policies need to be examined, too.
Sure those other events were longer than the war if you only count the first bombings. Last I checked, we had quite a few troops in Iraq, and recently there was a very bloody fight with many US casualties. In spite of the fact that our armies are not trained as a police force, but an assault weapon - in fact, our constitution forbids such a use of our armed forces - we're occupying and policing a foreign country. That's the line we get from the government that makes it seem like the war has been over for some time. In actuality, we're still fighting that war every day a soldier gets killed by some Iraqi that just doesn't want us there.
Concerning the length of time we've been looking for weapons of mass destruction versus the length of time Hillary's been looking for Rose Law Firm billing records, I can say only one thing: At least we know for sure that the billing records aren't some paranoid delusion of a God-weilding president who couldn't decide whether to let his NSA adviser testify at demand of Congress.
I don't see how my support of troops in Iraq can be misconstrued. If I didn't support our troops in Iraq, I wouldn't be mad that our president keeps sending our kids over there to die. Here's the distinction: I support *our troops*. I do not support *the action in Iraq*.
Nonetheless, I don't think that voting Bush out of office will make it any easier for us to remove ourselves from the quagmire in the middle east. He has made our bed and now we *all* have to lay in it. And that's what makes me so angry about Bush. Right or wrong, he put us into a position that gives us no choice, the necessity of which was dubious at best and only immediately supported by voters because our need for revenge for 9/11. We now have a national policy to attack nations that don't profess the same moral values as a Christian Bible, that have comparatively insignificant military might to fight back. We've become a global bully, and we're going to pay for it not just in dollars, but in lives of people, Iraqis and Americans both, that could do better than soil their reputations with this.
