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My favorite is Lincoln-for obvious reasons.
Second- Franklin Roosevelt.

Of all time?  Abraham Lincoln, with Theodore Roosevelt running a close second.
In my own lifetime - Ronald Reagan.  I loved that man and was proud to serve under him.

I figured out  you liked Teddy.  :wink:
As far as Reagan goes- back in the day- I hated him.

Now- I wish Reagan was President. And thats saying something. I would welcome Reagan with open arms. I would BEG him to replace Donald Trump. He had principals. Trump has none.

I wish I could give you karma for that, Ronnie!

Of all time, either teddy or FDR. Both controlled big business because they knew it needed to be controlled for america to survive and succeed.

In my life, Obama. Anyone the right hates that much must be good.

In my lifetime? Jimmy Carter. He's a nice man and honest man.
As far as Obama goes. I liked Obama. I just wish he wasn't stonewalled so he could have done more.

Worse President-well, ya know... the moron in office now.
Andrew Jackson.
Andrew Johnson.
Nixon.

I like Teddy R. too. He was a rock star.

No fans of Millard Fillmore out there?  :question:  :wink:

Fillmore was better than he gets credit for.
Andrew Jackson was not the villain he is often portrayed as; he was purely and simply a man of his time.
Nixon did a lot of good, but it was wiped out by his crimes.
James Buchanan, Franklin Pierce, and Andrew Johnson were bloody awful.
Trump may well wind up at the bottom of the heap, but in all honesty, it takes 25 years or more for history to cast its verdict on a Presidency.
That's why our opinions about recent Presidents are just that - opinions. 
The jury is still out.

Underrated all the way around, IMO:  Grover Cleveland.

Well, I admire LINCOLN and TEDDY ROOSEVELT and FDR would be my favorite.  In my lifetime?  JIMMY CARTER.  He's a good man. 

James Buchanan, Franklin Pierce, and Andrew Johnson... I'd take the worst one over the current clown act. 

Besides Watergate, he also backed up the McCarthy witch hunts of the 50's.
And prolonging the Vietnam War.

But he did get China to open up to the West- I'll credit him with that.
Though Kissinger likely had more to do with that then Tricky Dick.

The difference between Nixon and McCarthy is that Nixon actually caught a REAL communist spy, Alger Hiss, who was a very high-ranking official in the State Dept.  Stalin had managed to infiltrate every branch of the military and every single department in the executive branch by the end of World War II - that's a matter of record now.  McCarthy launched his fake witch-hunt for imaginary Communists because he was jealous of the acclaim Nixon had earned for catching a real one.

Nixon ended the Vietnam War; that was his plan from the start, but he didn't want to scramble out completely, all at once, and abandon our ally.  He did his best to make sure South Vietnam would be able to stand on its own, but then Congress violated the terms of our withdrawal and cut ALL aid to South Vietnam.  When the NVA made their last big push, SV was unable to stand, in the end.  They were a weak, corrupt ally, but they were our ally, and Nixon tried hard to do right by them.

All water under the bridge now, of course, a topic for historical debate rather than heated argument.  But it is worth remembering, amid all the bad he did, that Nixon was a remarkably intelligent and accomplished man whose greatest crime was cheating to win an election he was going to win anyway.  It was completely unnecessary, but his paranoia and anger at his political enemies got the best of him, and he destroyed himself.

I ain't gonna argue with a history teacher.  :smile:
There are many more reasons I think Nixon was despicable-but I won't go into that.
But those are my personal feelings about him.
Like you said- its a matter of opinion.

Question for you, Indy.
Didn't Reagan start out as a Democrat in his early years?

Yes he did!  He was a strong supporter of FDR in the 30's, but then after the war he saw the Democrat party trending further to the left than he was comfortable with, and he became more and more conservative.
He liked to say: "I didn't leave the Democratic Party, it left me!"
But to his credit, his politics rarely got personal.  He maintained warm friendships with people on both sides of the aisle, even when they fought epic battles over policy.  Even his political rivals generally conceded that Reagan was a genuinely nice guy who loved his country dearly.

I hate all the presidents.  lincoln started a war that killed 600,000 americans almost all of whom had nothing to do with slavery. great problem solver there

roosevelt gets credit for ending prohibition, but honestly the best president was bush 1. you forgot he was there. we need more mediocre bueaurcrat presidents less "visionaries" leave that to the private sector

I don't believe he "started" the war. The war started itself.

Hmmm, let's see.....wasn't he the wimp that got us into iraq after it abosrbed the family ran oil corporation called kuwaite? How was that our business?

Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator and a mass murderer but he did keep the radical islamofascists out of iraq. After the shrub took him out it opened up the middle east to islamoifascist groups like ISIS.

I actually kinda liked Reagan. I didn't care for the Iran/Contra thing, or his "trickle down" economics policy, but he had a good heart, and he was a very sharp man, more than some folks on the left give him credit for.

I gotta agree on on Bush. Both Bush's actually. The wars in the Middle East were done simply for oil . That's kinda a given.Though the consequenses of deposing scumbag Saddam were bad, killing that murdering sad sack of s**t was a good thing.
And the ISIS thing- that would have happened no matter what.

You never fail to amaze me. No credit to Roosevelt for his policys that pulled us out of the Great Depression? Or defeating the the Nazis?

As far as 'medicore' presidents-  Yeah, lets leave WWII to the private sector. Let's leave the Cuban Missile Crisis to the private sector.
If we left that to the private sector, half this country would be in slavery the other half would be bombed out by Russia, and whats left of Europe would be run by Adolf Hitler Jr.
Seriously?  :question:

Here's something else good NIXON did :  he created the EPA. 

And the Clean Air and Water Act.
And the Endangered Species Act.

And OSHA

OK! OK! I get it !!

I still don't like him!   :tongueout:

Nixon deliberately tried to actively sabotage democracy. That outweighs any positive thing he did.

You know who doesn't get enough credit? Washington. Yeah, old George, one one who didn't get america into unnecessary or utterly false flag wars. He could have stayed in office indefinitely. He really could have, he was offered lifetime presidency. Lifetime power.

At Washington's time staying in power for life was a normal thing. And power is an addictive thing, terribly addictive.

Even king George of England  bet Washington would bit walk away from power voluntarily.

Well, he did. He believed in democracy, in limited power, in not being g a ruler for life. He set a precedent that much of the rest of the world followed in later centuries.

He deserves credit for that. A lot of credit.

Leaving "Tricky Dick"  aside for the moment . . .

Washington gets a lot of credit, and deserves it; for all the reasons you cite and more.
The man served as commander of the Continental Army for 8 years and accepted NO salary for it.
At the end of the war, with a pitifully weak and divided national government and a loyal army at his back, he could have seized power.
His men offered to make him King - and he refused.  He handed his sword over to Congress and returned to farming.
When the Confederation government proved too weak to govern, he lent his support to the Constitutional Convention.
He didn't want to be President, but he accepted the job when elected, even though he believed it would kill him (he came from a short-lived family and had already lived longer than his father, grandfather, or brother).
But after being President for 8 years, maintaining a smooth course between battling factions, he voluntarily stepped down.
And went BACK to farming.

Few more brave and decent people have ever lived.

Reagan is a mixed bag. I get two different point of views; some love him, and others hated him. Since I wasn't there to witness him, I can't say. I don't want to dive into an argument where people are shouting at me to love him/hate him.

I think where you fall on the political spectrum still determines, to some degree, how you feel about President Reagan.

I think I am centrist. I'm neither conservative nor liberal. I want to listen to both sides to get the full story, but with extreme conservatives and liberals yelling at each other it gets harder and harder to make me care for either. I like John Kennedy since he isn't like a regular conservative, and I like John Bell Edwards since he isn't like a regular Democrat. Can't say the same with other people for Louisiana, especially the one who said that he was running out the clock to get a bill passed.

I used to consider myself pretty far to the right, but the GOP has lurched so far right in recent years it has left me barely right of center.
I'm an old-school Reagan Republican shaking my head at the sorry state of things today . . .

svengoolie - thats a good point. but before iraq he was good and at least he didn't occupy it. it terms of demeanor though I liked him. Our governor in MA Charlie Baker is like that. moderate republican who keeps himself out of the news.

RC - " No credit to Roosevelt for his policys that pulled us out of the Great Depression? Or defeating the the Nazis?"

the whole reason it was a "Great" depression was because his policies were so bad. and Russia gets most of the credit for defeating the nazis. and why exactly should we celebrate condemning eastern europe to the iron curtain ? the whole thing was a disaster and part and parcel of the bloody, horrible 20th century. millions dead


"Yeah, lets leave WWII to the private sector."  my point was we don't need a minister in chief. our country isn't about wars its about people and their families and their communities. the president helps facilitate services provided to them. He's the boss of our representatives not us. we're the boss


re nixon lets not forget his war on our money supply https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock all in the name of continuing the Vietnam war! the various agencies were all just part and parcel of his plan of centralization of power. How much did he care about the environment? who knows

The Mao meeting was good though.



Reagan was okay but I didn't like all the military spending. I never understood the cold war logic: lets goad Russia into building thousands of missiles pointed at our major cities as a way of defeating them! huh???

Not to defeat them; to make sure they can't defeat us; to make sure we're at least on equal terms.

Of course, both countries probably had enough missiles to render earth uninhabitable, so.... it was all kinda pointless after a point.

Don't know who my favorite president it; they all have good & bad points. I'm afraid if I were to try to choose my choice would be based on name recognition instead of any real positive factor.

Everyone's made good points on their favorite/least favorite tho.  :smile:

Well it wasn't happening in iraq while hussein was there. He forbade radical muslims from holding public rallies. When a large group defied him, he killed 1500 of them. No more radical muslim rallies under him.

Hussein was a b-st-rd but he was a secular b-st-rd and saw radical islam as a threat to his power, so he crushed it.

The whole ISIS wasn't actually a foregone conclusion. They had in one form or another been running around since the 70's, possibly earlier. That came down to Bush Mk II disbanding the Iraqi army and suddenly giving a lot of experienced and combat trained men no way of earning a living and ISIS offered them a way to support their families. That to my mind was the worst decision he made during his time in office. The sad truth is that in there own ways, both Bush's managed to do more damage to the US than the current administration as bad as people think it is, although I would have to quantify that by mentioning that how badly things would go wrong from things Bush Mk I did were unforeseeable and even unavoidable, but for the following on mistakes of others.

Bush Mk II was a whole different matter however. He made mistakes that made all the best efforts on the ground useless. If you are strongly pro republican and against this, well Obama could have stopped things by following his generals advice a little more closely and fixed Bush II's mistakes but didn't. Given the public's attitude to wars in the middle east at this point I don't think you can completely blame Obama for not wanting to embroil further troops in that morass.

Iraq's invasion of Kuwait was indeed to do with oil, but what if I told you that the whole operation to liberate it had nothing to do with that, nor the second gulf war where Saddam was finally overthrown, something that should have happened the first time around, UN be damned. The man slaughtered tens of thousands of his own people. The first Gulf War also led to the September the 11th attacks, as al-Qaeda had offered to defend Saudi Arabia from Saddam and was turned down in favour of the US. aQ took umbrage at this. I am not saying defending Saudi was wrong, merely that it is why AQ then looked for stronger ways to attack the US using the continued presence of US troops in their holy land as justification to continue this policy and encourage a Jihad attitude against the USA and the rest of the 'free world'.

His overthrow had absolutely zero to do with who he had killed though, how many he had killed, what countries he had invaded, the worlds oil supply or anything like that.

Simply put Gulf War II came down to a man with daddy issues. He (Bush Mk II) was finishing what he saw as his his fathers unfinished work. Feel free to feel uncomfortable with that, but in the end of the day it is the real reason behind that war. Everything else is just a convenient excuse. To my mind though, Saddam was an evil turd who should have been removed from power much earlier.

On the other hand, he was merely a proxy for other powers in the whole Iran/Iraq war who was disposed of when he was no longer convenient. If you look at things from an Iraqi point of view the invasion of Kuwait can be totally justified. Middle Eastern (and assorted western powers) encouraged and in some cases even bankrolled Iraq to go to war with Iran fearful that the Islamic Revolution in Iraq might spread. When the war finished Iran expected its grateful creditors (including Kuwait) to cancel the war loans. When they didn't Iraq then invaded Kuwait as a way of rebuilding itself. There are a whole load of economic arguments behind this that I am not going to go in to just now.

I am not saying I agree or disagree with any nations position here. Merely that this is the reasons behind what happened. There is more behind the scenes that I can't talk about here.

Anyway, to get back on the subject of American Presidents I'd have to say looking at it from an outsiders point of view, I like what I read about TR and FDR.

alex-

totally disagree. he protected the Christians and held the country together, which was a lot more than they managed without him. If he had been driven out during the arab spring then so be it. it woulnd't be our responsiblity. We arent the worlds police. Kuwait and Israel aren't part of the US they have their own militaries.

 look at Libya: they wanted to get rid of a dictator in the name of democracy and liberty and now its a jihadist hell hole. how would you feel if you were Libyan? I used to know an Iraqi woman. When Iraq fell she was kidnapped and assaulted by the bandits that roamed free there after saddam fell. Her family had to pay a massive ransom to get her back.

all this "world as chess board" stuff is like communist central planning in the soviet union: it doesn't work and the people implementing it have no skin in the game.

He gassed tens of thousands of his own people. His 'elite republican guard' were nothing more than trained rapists.

Just one of his chemical weapon attacks killed between 3,200 to 5000 people and left another 7000 to 10,000 injured. Let me emphasis that. Just one of his attacks. If committing genocide if your idea of holding a country together, well there I completely disagree.

He might have protected Christians but he persecuted others. I don't think protecting one tiny part of the population really justifies his reign.

Let me put this another way. Would you say that Hitler should have been kept in power? After all he protected blonde haired and blue eyed people, not to mention leading the rebuilding of Germany. He led a country that had been devistated by war back to being a world power. Before him all sorts of left and right wing groups made violence a fact of daily life throughout that country. He kept Germany from fracturing into civil war. Removing him led to eastern europe living under the heel of communist dictators.

Personally somehow I don't think leaving him in control would have made the world a better place though.

The whole kidnapping people and ransoming them back, well that happened before only it was legitimized under his secret police (I think they were officially called The Department of General Intelligence, but it all adds up to the same thing).

I also know an Iraqi woman. She along with her family were arrested when her husband had attended a pro-democracy rally. She has never seen him again, but has good reason to believe he was executed and the body dumped. She was beaten and raped while her children were tortured (mostly high voltage shocks applied via their feet). That kind of thing happened a lot under Saddam. Difference is that you just didn't get to hear about it. It is going to take hard work to get there, but her country now at least has a chance to rebuild and be a bit freer. Imagine if you lived in a country where just having this kind of conversation on a forum could lead to you just disappearing off the face of the planet. She has since moved back to Iraq. Things are tough, and will continue to be for a long time, but she has hope. Something she never had before under Saddam.

If being made to live in terror is the only thing holding a country together than perhaps it is time to let it fall apart and rebuild. Yes, these things are going to be painful and there is going to be chaos along the way but that is part of the price of freedom. If I was a Libyan I'd be doing my damnedest to rebuild my country, (although much of the problems with the middle east is that these countries were created by diplomats from other countries drawing lines on maps which cut through tribal lines rather than them evolving naturally). They were always going to fall apart at some point. If Saddam had been overthrown during the first Gulf war there was at least an armed resistance that could have stepped in, but he wasn't and Saddam got to use his favourite chemical weapons again and wiped out entire towns. It could be that once ISIS is defeated another war will break out between the Kurds and the rest of the country, or perhaps the Kurds will finally get a country to call their own.

Even having seen the chaos that follows a war first hand, if I was living under a murderous tyrant I certainly believe I'd be willing to stand up against him and fight for my freedom rather than live on my knees.

the alleged reason we attacked iraq was because of their complicity in 9/11. When the american military took Baghdad they put the flag from the pentagon that had flown on 9/11 over the face of a big Saddam statue. Obviously we all now realize that made no sense.

America isn't the worlds police. We didn't invade iraq because of saddams crimes, heinous as they may have been.

more to the point: terrorism is an industry that depends on our interventions in that part of the world and certainily al queda and ISIS gained imeasurably for that, which is absolutely a detriment to ours and the western worlds safety.

That is incorrect.  I watched the runup to the Iraq War very carefully; no one said (after the initial confusion of the first few days) that Iraq was responsible for 9/11.  The real reason was the anthrax attacks that followed after 9/11.  While Iraq was not directly linked to those attacks, they were never ruled out either.  Anthrax is easy to make and there was some pretty convincing testimony that Saddam had been weaponizing it during the 1990's.  A single five gallon bucket of weaponized antrhrax, dumped into the ventilation system of a major travel hub or sports venue, could easily kill 50,000 to 100,000 people in the first week.  Saddam's willful refusal to abide by the treaty he signed, the strong evidence that he still had not destroyed all of his gas stockpiles (which he had not, our troops did find many of them, as the NEW YORK TIMES finally revealed after Bush left office), and the fear that he might supply terror groups like Al Qaeda and others with those weapons out of sheer spite for the USA, drove the Bush administration to conclude he must go.
   They may have buggered up the occupation, but I still believe toppling Saddam was the way to go.  Not to punish him for an attack he had no part in, but to prevent him from carrying out or enabling one that could have been even worse.

yes they certainly were  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks#Al-Qaeda_and_Iraq_blamed_for_attacks (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks#Al-Qaeda_and_Iraq_blamed_for_attacks)

and they absolutely claimed iraq was involved in 9/11

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2002/09/did_mohamed_atta_meet_an_iraqi_spy_in_prague.html (http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2002/09/did_mohamed_atta_meet_an_iraqi_spy_in_prague.html)


and the effort to connect 9/11 and iraq was such that again, our military thought it made sense to place the flag from the pentagon that flew on 9/11 over the head of saddams statue

https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=125241&page=1 (https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=125241&page=1)

""And the flag — it was on the Pentagon when it got hit on 9/11. That was the same flag, and me being from New York, it kind of all goes together a little bit. It was a team effort, which made it even better, you know," he said. "


more to the point: after 9/11 they went to war 2 years later with iraq. they didn't say hey these things have nothing to do with each other, they definitely implied it as all part of the same general security effort.

 instead, way more americans were killed in iraq than on 9/11, all of saddams weapons that were under UN seal were looted , and ISIS, who are even worse than al queda, formed.  every aspect not only failed but made the previous problem worse



they told us it was going to be a cakewalk. another lie



a search just reveled nothing. do you have a link? or is this like your "marco rubio woud have beat hillary poll "claim?

edit: they found old stuff from like before 1991 they were in various states of decay.

"Then, during the long occupation, American troops began encountering old chemical munitions in hidden caches and roadside bombs. Typically 155-millimeter artillery shells or 122-millimeter rockets, they were remnants of an arms program Iraq had rushed into production in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war.

All had been manufactured before 1991, participants said. Filthy, rusty or corroded, a large fraction of them could not be readily identified as chemical weapons at all. "

 do you really think americans would have allowed a war to go on if they knew thats all there was? more like al capones vaults than a smoking gun

Those gas shells were effective enough that insurgents were able to use them against our troops on several occasions.
And I would say ISIS was caused more by our precipitate withdrawal than by our presence.  We left a government not yet ready for the job and they rushed into the power vacuum.  20,000 troops left on garrison duty and they would have been strangled in their cradle.

Provide documentation and evidence from one non right wing source for o e attack like that.

My fave: President James Marshall.

(https://i.gifer.com/2hv.gif)

 :cheers:

indiana- the point is saddams "chemical weapons program" was portrayed as not only ongoing but fearsome, modern and deadly. again, no one would have agreed to go to war with saddam after 9/11 to strip him of degraded old weapons of not much destruction.


 ISIS was founded by Zarqawi who we killed, to much fanfare, when we were still there

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_Levant

whether our leaving was an advantage for them or not, they weren't birthed by it.

The Middle East is a whole world of f**ked up s**t, I don't think it can ever be "fixed", but I do know one thing, Trump can't find his ass with both hands, and he should just stay away.
 If he thinks Korea for one second is gonna take him serious, he's stupider than he looks.
He's up Russia's ass because he owes them money.

As far as Nixon and Vietnam goes, Nixon did a covert deal with South Vietnamese to keep them out of the Paris Peace talks, because if the Democrats (who prolonged and started that f**king war) ended the war, Nixon would loose. Hanoi was ready and at the table. Johnson knew about it too, because it's on tape of them having that conversation. He didn't say s**t, because Johnson had covert operations in Vietnam going in his term too.Nixon ran on the promise of ending the war, yet prolonged it when he was in office, with covert bombing and infiltration into Cambodia. That war went on 5 more f**king years, and we didn't accomplish a f**king thing. So Nixon got re-elected- and the kids got killed just because Tricky Dick didn't wanna be the President Who Lost a War.

(I just watched Ken Burns 10 episode documentary-pretty amazing! Recommended!  :thumbup:)

The New York Times good enough?

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/26/world/middleeast/army-apologizes-for-handling-of-chemical-weapon-exposure-cases.html (https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/26/world/middleeast/army-apologizes-for-handling-of-chemical-weapon-exposure-cases.html)

To pick just 1 of 45 Presidents, as your favorite is a tough task.

I liked a lot of what people from both sides did over time.

George Washington (no party) set a dignified standard for what the President should be, the 1st President was a great example for others to follow.

JFK (D) supported the Civil Rights movement and established the Peace Corps.

Teddy Roosevelt (R) was great as a trust buster.

Bill Clinton (D) presided over the longest period of peacetime economic expansion in American history and signed into law the North American Free Trade Agreement.  He signed the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, which required large employers to allow employees to take unpaid leave for pregnancy or a serious medical condition. He also balanced the budget and signed the Brady Bill into law.

Lincoln (R) is a hero for freeing slaves.

In my lifetime I think Obama is the best President. His main reforms were the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (often referred to as "Obamacare", shortened as the "Affordable Care Act"), the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, and the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010 served as economic stimulus amidst the Great Recession. He issued wide-ranging executive actions concerning climate change and immigration. In foreign policy, he ordered military intervention in Iraq in response to gains made by ISIL after the 2011 withdrawal from Iraq, continued the process of ending U.S. combat operations in Afghanistan, promoted discussions that led to the 2015 Paris Agreement on global climate change, initiated sanctions against Russia following the invasion in Ukraine and again after Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, brokered a nuclear deal with Iran, and normalized U.S. relations with Cuba. He could've done so much more if he hadn't been stonewalled by Republicans for the bulk of his presidency.

Thomas Jefferson (Democratic-Republican) doubled the size of the country with the Louisiana Purchase.

FDR (D) is probably my favorite – he established the Securities and Exchange Commission, the National Labor Relations Act, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and Social Security. He ended the Great Depression. Additionally, he ended prohibition.

Chrlorine gas is so easy to make it hardly can be called a chemical weapon, it could have been made my the rebels fighting the american invasion and  occupation.

I like Benjamin Harrison because we share the same birthday.  :cheers:

Except they recovered the shells and identified them with Saddam's munitions.

I'm glad they bombed Iraq. Saddam was a scumbag who needed to die.
 But I do think that the main reason for us going in there was protecting our oil interests.
I mean- there are crazy bastards in Rwanda- but we ain't sending in the jet bombers.

I'm not following you; are you saying that a chemical weapon isn't considered a chemical weapon solely based on how easy it is to make?

Several people die or are seriously injured by accidentally creating chlorine gas by mixing two readily available household cleaners. So what I mean is that chlorine is so easy to make it doesn't have to be a bug complex operation to make them. Any modern nation fan make chrloine gas, it's not like nerve gas.

Also so what if Saddam had chlorine gas?  So what? It's not a threat to america until we invaded his country to steal its oil. America has nuclear stockpiles, napalm and you just know some CIA or NSA labs have bioweapons squirreled away. Saddam had some chemical weapons anyone in the western world can make. Hell, in my area a guy cleared out a meth house by sneaking up to a window with a fan in it a few years ago, setting a table under it and creating a batch of chlorine gas that got sucked into the house resulting in a lot of meth heads in an ER. The news kept it low key as it was so easy to do they didn't want other people clearing out their own local meth houses.

C'mon- Saddam makes Trump look like Jesus F. Christ. The guy was a scumbag.
Of course we're the ones who put Saddam there....but that's another can of worms.... :wink:

That is not only wrong- it's WRONG.
The Great Depression started in 1929 with the Stock Market crash. Hoover was President- the things that led up to that crash goes waaay back. So how did Roosevelt cause this?   :question:

As far as Russia winning WW2-did Russia drop an Atom Bomb on Japan? Did Russia fight at Normandy? Or  carpet bomb Germany?
Did Russia fight on Iwo Jima? Or liberate France?
Russia protected Russia and took what the Nazi took for there own. That's all f**king Russia did.
 Russia was on Hitler's f**king side before Hitler back-stabbed they're ass!

America murdered more Iraqis than saddam hussein did. When asked how many people had died due to his invasion of iraq GWB blinked like a possum in a car;sa headlight, made a completely inaccurate estimate in an offhanded tone and shrugged, as if suprised that anyone would ask him that or even that he'd care enough to know. He admitted to being responsible for about 30,000 deaths in iraq and shrugged about it, even tho that guess of his was low it still shows how he could just blink and shrug at the thought of being responsible for 30.000 Innocent people dying.

GWB made america a war criminal nation, a nation that committed mass murder and robbery of another nation and helped create the islamofascist movement spreading thru the middle east.

I'm not arguing that Bush Jr. was a f**king imbecile- because I think he was.
I'm just saying I'm glad Hussan is dead. He was a piece of s**t.

Search Bad Movies Off topic political s**tfests to see my opinion on Bush. From when he was President. We got into some heated discussions, to say the least. This has been the 2nd election since I joined this board.
This board always makes me think.
I find many of your arguments valid. I also find many of Indy's arguments valid. And-believe it or not-Lester's arguments valid.
(wait a minute-no I don't. Lester's crazy Still love you, Lester  :wink:).
But I don't blindly steer the left or right. I just drive.

The vast majority of civilian casualties in Iraq were inflicted either A.  By other Iraqis , B. By foreign fighters who crossed the border to STOP Iraq from building a pro-Western government.

As for stealing their oil, the whole point is we DIDN'T take their oil. 
One of the things that Trump b****ed about during the election cycle.

 the new Iraq isn't going to oppose Iran or support Israel, so if setting up a "pro western" government was the, goal that failed as well

RC-I guess it depends on your view of Hiroshima as to whether that was a good move or not. I didn't say we didn't participate in the european front I think most people would agree we finished the job there, but certainly weren't there for a lot of it. If we hadn't intervened with Operation barbarossa or whatever it was it i'd  guess the russians and germans would have eventually fought themselves out? who knows thuogh

most stock market crashes don't take 15 year to clear themselves up. putting price controls on tailors and slaughtering pigs didn't end it the policies were arbitrary at best.




likewise

The people killed in iraq were killed because hussein was removed and authority was eliminated, which lead to anarchy, the US was still guilty of creating that anarchy. THE American invasion of iraq was a war crime and it will forever be a stain on america.

Thankfully the iraq people vehemently resisted america's attempt to rob their nation and caused the effort by bush, cheney and their corporate masters to fail.

This is true.
We were protecting our oil interests in Kuwait.
We didn't want to run Iraq- we just didn't want them trying to steal our oil.
Trump thinks we should have taken there oil.
Trump is f**king crazy.

And the Bush's are from Texas.
Steal a Texan's oil?  :lookingup:
That's suicide.

My al time favorite description of the iraq war came from former RNC director Michael Steele, then speaking anonymously "It didn't work"

Don't get me wrong- none of this is ethical.
The Bush's ain't getting no Brownie points from me.
I could give a f**k less about they're $$$ making machine in the Mid-East.
I just understand how it happened, and why.
It doesn't make me angry anymore, like when it first happened. Now I look at it as history- just like I will look at what's happening now as very interesting  future history.

f**k, man. I remember being angry at Nixon- and I was just a kid!

I was never angry at Jimmy Carter.
I was never angry at Gerald Ford either. Poor Gerald (he's from Michigan, ya know). I felt sorry for him. He had to be President after Nixon. No wonder the guy was falling all over the place. He was having a nervous breakdown! Plus- a Manson girl tried to kill him! And some other crazy b***h!
The guy was a nervous wreck.
But I do think Ford was right in pardoning Nixon, in retrospect, because he knew the country had to move on- and loooong Nixon trials would destroy the country. So he was wise there.
It wasn't a popular move- he knew that. He wasn't  President because he wanted to be President.
But dragging out the Watergate s**t-with so many other things going on in the world at the time,-ya know He was right.
In fact- I think Gerald Ford was very under-rated as a President.

So you are THANKFUL the "Iraqi people"  (BS there, btw, over half the forces we fought in Iraq were from other Middle Eastern countries who were trying to STOP us from installing a more democratic government there) killed several thousand American soldiers?
Geez, you are every bit as hateful as those Westboro Baptist goons.  You should have joined the insurgency yourself.
Maybe living under Islamofascists for a year or two would give you an idea of what we were trying to STOP.

I reckon my opinion of Nixon was influnced very much by MAD magazine (the best comic book ever made).
This is NOT from Mad- this is a poster from 1960!

(https://i.imgur.com/7ZbaEdC.jpg) (https://lunapic.com)

I have vague memories of reading or hearing somewhere that Ford pardoned Nixon because of the practicalities of the situaiton. He could never be put in a regular prison, and house arrest would have been the only alternative would have cost a fortune in security. Not sure if that is the truth or not but it sounded feasable.

That may have been a consideration; I think a big part of it was that a trial for Nixon would have ripped the country apart even further at a time when we were ready to start healing.

BTW, the movie FROST/NIXON is a brilliant look at this era of American politics.
I am old enough to remember Nixon, and Frank Langella captured him perfectly!

I'm sure that would have been considered in his pardon as well. That's sounds right.
I'm sure Ford knew, whatever he did, was not gonna sit good with everybody.
But he did what he had to do- because he wanted to make that s**t history- and take care of other s**t that needed done at the time. The Mid-East was all f**ked up.
There was a gas shortage because s**t was so f**ked up.
I remember our local gas station (we had 1) never had gas.
That's why they guard our oil in the mid-east.  By hook or crook. Or war.

In no way do I think Nixon was a good man. He was a sneaky, lying S.O.B.
But I ain't mad at him no more. It's history and he's dead.

(https://i.imgur.com/DIqlBNh.jpg) (https://lunapic.com)

Belly crawlin' faithless rat... 

...grumble grumble...

(making grouchy old man sounds)

Hard not to be boring and vote for Abraham Lincoln.

However, IMO the most important man in American history is James Madison, but  not for what he did as President (although he was a good President).

Madison was the "Father of the Constitution," no matter how hard he tried to deny it.