If he had intellectual honesty, he would've given that prize back as he sure as hell did nothing during his 8 years to actually earn it.

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“When I walked in this morning, and saw the flag was at half mast, I thought 'alright another bureaucrat ate it.'" - Ron Swanson

To be fair, the Nobel Peace Prize in itself is a complete joke. It's the only Nobel prize selected from Norway where all the others involving actual work are picked from the committee in Sweden.

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Fair enough, but he didn't start a new war in Iraq, so Im still putting Bush ahead of him on the Warhawk rankings.

And my statement started with "That's true" when Hank said he never met a drone strike he didn't like, so no pass being given here.

The worst part of that prize as far as I was concerned was they gave it to him for what he CAN or MIGHT do. Not what he had done to that point. Which was nothing.

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Elections have consequences.

Yeah. It is the most politicized award. Kind of like how Al Gore got it for...reasons?

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The DEMs always get a pass on war. MANY like to ignore the fact that Hillary, Kerry, Edwards, and all those phonies had the same intelligence as W. They had enough votes to stop it and JOINED in. Two years later when it was politically convenient to be contrarian, they claimed victim. That's right....the brilliant mastermind George W. Bush TRICKED them.

Total horseshit. they all got a pass. Barry gets a pass.

Obama is W but with an economically crippling healthcare bill on top.

In terms of W's failures. Let's not forget "No child Left Behind". Nothing says GOP like spending a shit-ton of Federal money on ramming education standards down to the states.

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Is that economically crippling plan one that MANY people are dying to save now?

And sorry you dont get to put the fucking IRAQ war on Dems. You can criticize their votes and call them hypocrites but that was W's war through and through.

Oh and there's this


Chicago Defender, Oct. 3, 2002: Nearly 3,000 people attended an anti-Iraq war rally Wednesday where the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr. and Illinois Senator Barack Obama (D-13th) warned the Bush administration that a war against Iraq undermines U.N. protocol.

The text of Obama’s remarks was posted to his 2008 campaign website. He called the war “dumb,” “rash” and “based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.” Among his remarks:
Obama, Oct. 2, 2002: Now let me be clear – I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity. He’s a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.

But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history. I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of Al Qaeda. I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.



This is getting ridiculous now. Obama is certainly not a Dove but to act like him continuing wars is the same or equal to the monstrous fuck up that was the latest Iraq war is crazy.

He had 8 fucking years to end the wars. He not only failed to end them, but he expanded them into several new countries. Stop giving him a pass. He's a warmongering piece of shit, just like his predecessors and the one we have in office now. He was only anti-war on the campaign trail or when it could get him press. Any time he was in a position to take direct action, he was sending drones to go bomb weddings and Doctors Without Borders hospitals. Fuck him.

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“When I walked in this morning, and saw the flag was at half mast, I thought 'alright another bureaucrat ate it.'" - Ron Swanson

He withdrew troops from Iraq in 2011.

You can hate him and curse his drone strikes all you want, to act like he is equal to W. in this sense is ridiculous.


You're giving W. a pass for his HISTORIC fuck up by acting like it was just normal to go into Iraq as a response for 9/11

He put us into war in Libya, and yes that is a fuck-up equal to Iraq. Do you want to know why it's an equal fuck-up despite a lower body count? Because we got Libya to peacefully give up their WMD program only to then depose them when they had no WMD's. Anyone want to take a wild guess why a peaceful disarmament of North Korea via negotiations is 100% off the table according to the regime there? Our idiotic Libya policy (masterminded by Hillary and approved by Obama) put us in the current NK crisis. That has the potential to create worse after-effects than Bush's disastrous Iraq adventure.

Fuck him. He's a warmonger and if you want to pretend otherwise you're only lying to yourself.

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“When I walked in this morning, and saw the flag was at half mast, I thought 'alright another bureaucrat ate it.'" - Ron Swanson

Oh, ok, potential deaths.

Well, when those after effects actually occur we'll revisit this.

Oh yes i do. I get to put it on W, the GOP, and the DEMS. They all did it together. They all own it.

Ogie is 100% correct. Barry continued the same bullshit wars as W.

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Best part of Libya was Hillary's lieutenant Neera Tanden putting it in writing that we should take all their oil for free as payment for bombing them, which was the same idea behind Iraq.

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Right. Continuing the war for 3 years before effectively ending it is the EXACT same thing as starting it in the first place.

So basically, W. was better than Obama because they had the same hawkish tendencies and W. didnt push through disastrous national healthcare?

Just making sure I have all this correct.

I wondered when Hank would finally have a take worse than "Michael irvin was overrated and not great." I think "Bush wasn't that bad" finally surpasses it.

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Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

It's unfortunate.

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While Bush entering Iraq is worse if you're looking at things right now, I think it can be argued that years from now, the ramifications of what Obama helped precipitate will be worse in the long run. Between pulling out of Iraq, which helped lead to the creation of ISIS as well as Libya, the Arab Spring and Muslim Brotherhood - those will have lasting impacts for many, many years. Plus the Iranian nuclear deal, which will just increase the Shia/Sunni, Saudi/Iranian conflict for years to come.

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It's hard to describe the way a reasonable person would appreciate the bizarre revisionism taking over this thread. I'm not the biggest Obama fan, but the assaults going on over his legacy are wildly misplaced

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There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.

I have it on pretty good authority that we were not in Iraq because of the oil.

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Libya is nowhere near equal to Iraq.

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When the policy in Libya has ensured that no future rogue nation will peacefully surrender a WMD program, yes it is.

Don't take my word for that. Take North Korea's word as they have cited that very example.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... fence.html

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“When I walked in this morning, and saw the flag was at half mast, I thought 'alright another bureaucrat ate it.'" - Ron Swanson

I will summarize my point here.

The afterbirth of our Iraq policy has been ISIS. A very bad outcome that has led to tens to hundreds of thousands of deaths. However, not an existential threat to us.

The afterbirth of our Libya policy has been a North Korea which is determined to build and unwilling to give up a nuclear ICBM program. This has the very real potential to result in hundreds of millions of deaths and is very much an existential threat to us.

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“When I walked in this morning, and saw the flag was at half mast, I thought 'alright another bureaucrat ate it.'" - Ron Swanson

Not revisionist history. The W Presidency has been shit-on by MANY for years. he sucked....it's not up for debate.

The point here is Obama was not the pacifist MANY claim him to be. Libya is one. Oh, then there's the fact that he dumped a shit-ton of troops back into Afghanistan.

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The POTUS can ask to go to war but congress has to give him/her the money to do it. The DEMs had every opportunity to say no. They didn't. Both parties supported and started the war. This isn't complicated.

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That could be propaganda. My point is that the circumstances were completely different. Libya was engaged in a civil war prior to U.S. intervention. Iraq wasn't. US created unrest in Iraq. They didn't create it in Libya.

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North Korea was determined to build nukes well before Libya came along.

They are after all an inherently evil communist nation and as such are hell bent on worldwide destruction.

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it's hardly propaganda when US intelligence experts have expressed the same opinion. We deposed Gaddafi and now we're seeing the aftereffects of that policy when other rouge actors will not peacefully surrender WMD's as he did. They see WMD's as the insurance policy against regime change actions.

Hillary, Trump, Bush, Obama, and Cheney can all be dropped off of a cliff with no parachute for all I care. The current state of affairs in the world is their making.

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“When I walked in this morning, and saw the flag was at half mast, I thought 'alright another bureaucrat ate it.'" - Ron Swanson

Prior to Libya they had also expressed a willingness to come to the negotiating table for the right price. Post-Libya, they have made it clear that this is no longer an option.

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“When I walked in this morning, and saw the flag was at half mast, I thought 'alright another bureaucrat ate it.'" - Ron Swanson

There are also intelligence experts that have expressed opinions to the contrary. I don't believe for one second that North Korea would give up their nukes program.

I'm not defending Obama but I don't think that Iraq and Libya are similar. They arent.

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