JEB, GEORGE DID NOT KEEP US SAFE!

I was watching the September 16, 2015 Second Republican (CNN) debate while visiting my son, who lives frugally in a small Brooklyn, NY apartment. There was no air conditioning and the windows were wide open to encourage a faint breeze through the small windows opening onto the tiny central courtyard. Sometime during the long debate Donald Trump remarked that "JEB" Bush's brother, George ( # 43) was a "disaster as President", and was the underlying cause for the loss of the Republican majority and the election of Obama. "You know what?" Said Mr. Bush, "As relates to my brother, There is one thing I know for sure: he kept us safe". I rolled my eyes. I heard laughter and hoops and hollers drifting in on the breeze through the open window. Other families in the building were apparently listening to the debate too. Being physically close to ground zero, and only a few days after the 14th anniversary of the 9-11 tragedy, the folks in Brooklyn might have found this statement so far from reality they laughed, thinking it was a joke.

How could JEB make such a dumb response so close to the anniversary of the most tragic attack on US soil which took place on GW's watch? How could he forget the thousands who died so horribly in the flames of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in the plane crash in that Pennsylvania farm field? The Americans who lost their lives at the hands of terrorists during the Bush Administration's disastrous eight years died because JEB's brother, GW, failed in his obligation to keep the nation safe. George Bush--enjoying a widely criticized over-long vacation in August of that year---ignored or simply did not bother to read intelligence warnings in his daily briefing book dating back to May of that year which warned of Bin Laden and Al Qaida threats. On August 6, just about four weeks before the attack, his (unread) day book title page screamed out: "Bin Laden determined to attack in US". Bush did nothing in those four weeks. He was on vacation. Then after this tragic attack, -a blotch--on the Bush family reputation. George junior went right back and compounded his first mistake of not reading intelligence reports, by staking the nation to war in Iraq. It's hard to imagine watching those towers burn and crumble, with men and women falling and throwing themselves to their deaths that there could be an even worse outcome of a President's errant decision making---but there was. After the tragic attack and horrible loss of life on 9-11, George Bush failed again to "keep the people safe" when he deceitfully chose to go to war in Iraq, using trumped up "Weapons of Mass Destruction" charges. He foolishly risked death and injury to his troops fighting an unnecessary war and against a nation which had nothing to do with the 9-11 attack.

The war in Iraq did not keep us safe...it was a horribly failed exercise in regime change and nation building which rather than making our nation safe---threatened the lives and security of Americans and untold innocents all around the world. What was the real purpose of the Iraq war? President Bush, rather than changing course, to focusing seriously on keeping our nation safe, rather he chose another course. The tragic 9-11 attack on US soil, and the loss of innocent life was to be used duplicitously as a political bludgeon by the novice Republican President. He and his advisors secretly theorized that the tragic death of over two thousand Americans would be the perfect justification to arouse the ire of a nation reluctant to go to war. Bush and his neo-con allies plotted to turn the World Tirade Center terrorist attack into a"casus belli" to initiate a transformative war in Iraq which had a domestic political aspect, an economic element and a long range foreign policy goal which would all benefit the Republican Party. Domestically it would serve to help to keep Republicans in office and secure GW's second term. Economically it was would enrich elite Republican, leaders, donors and supporters (who like VP Dick Cheney were heavy investors in the military-energy-industrial triad. These folks were planning to make huge war profits and economic gains from the conflict.). Finally, the long range policy goals were to control the Middle East oil resources and transform that region into a US economic satellite, a haven for a 19th century style capitalist democracy. In effect, to recast the whole region into a political laboratory employing the cherished unfettered capitalism of far right Republicanism. Others saw an opportunity to help to pacify the Arab-Israeli conflict not by state to state diplomacy, compromise and realignment of boundaries, but by the "back door"....by regime change in the Arab states in the ME so they would more compliant to the demands, needs and policies of the Israeli state rather than the other way around. Iraq was only the first national "victim" of their plans. Iran, Egypt, Libya, and Syria were soon to follow. None of these policies were to make us safe.

Although the nation of Iraq was not involved in 9-11, it was targeted because it was a weakened State which could be toppled easily.

[Iraq had been defeated throughly in theGulf War (1990-1991) prosecuted by JEB's father GHW Bush. Much of the Iraqi military infrastructure had been destroyed in that war in which 30,000 troops we killed, 75,000 wounded and 300,000 captured. The cost of the war to the US taxpayer was estimated to be $60 billion dollars. But almost all of that amount was paid by other Gulf countries such as Saudi Arabia, and the other Gulf monarchies. After the six month long conflict ended in 1991, Iraq remained under heavy sanctions. A US A enforced no-fly zone continued, as well as a sporadic bombing campaign designed to slowly degrade the Iraqi military potential. And most importantly the nation had been throughly vilified by the press for its "sneak attack" on Kuwait. Regime change in Iraq was viewed inside the Bush Administration as a "walk in the park". The cost to further defeat this tattered nation was viewed as negligible based on the American experience in the previous Gulf War.]

To support his proposed war Bush asserted falsely that Saddam Hussein government had "weapons of mass destruction". This as well as the oft-repeated phony claim of a US desire to "bring democracy to the Iraqi people" were the ostensible rationals for going to war. These weak and transparent reasons were seen as false and were subsequently subjected to heavy criticism both nationally and internationally. At the conclusion of the conflict, no weapons of this nature (WMD) were discovered and the "democracy" Bush brought was a cruel joke denied to the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed as a result of the war, and unavailable to the millions of refugees he created. Bush did not keep these innocent civilian Iraqis safe.

Please not another Mr.Bush!

On the 20th of March 2003, an inexperienced, untutored, novice-President George Bush took to the air waves to claim that he was sending American troops into battle to "defend the world from a grave danger". Bush took the nation to war in Iraq, simplemindedly believing his VP and neo-con advisors. He may have envisioned it would last six months, as did his father's first Gulf War and cost next to nothing. But this was a much different war--lasting almost nine years (2003-2011), and ultimately costing our nation two to three trillion dollars.. In Iraq, George Bush, DID NOT KEEP US SAFE, under direction and tutelage of his powerful VP, Dick Cheney, he squandered the lives of more than 4,500 American young men and women. In the aftermath, there were 25,000 dead with 117,000 wounded of coalition forces Bush inveigled into his war. The invasion led to the fall of the Iraqi Bathist government and the unwise disbanding of the Iraqi Army. The Bush Administration grossly mismanaged the resulting US occupation, which led to a violent sectarian war and a long, bloody and violent insurgency which engulfed the American occupiers and cost thousands of American lives. This is keeping us safe?

The nation's longest war cost trillions of dollars and ended in abject failure. Rather than "defending the world and his nation from a grave danger", George Bush's actions in invading Iraq CAUSED "grave danger" to the world, extending from the carnage in Iraq, and the creation of a more militarily safe, politically assured, technically adept and powerful Iran, to the tragic present day chaos in neighboring Syria where another civil war rages The world refugee problem of today has its direct roots in the destabilizing effects of the Bush Iraq War. George Bush once stated that "history would decide" if his decisions were wrong on Iraq. Just look at the chaos in the region today....history has decided.

Today, we see a Middle East in chaos, war ravaged, it's infrastructure, businesses, agriculture and society devastated. Millions of people are displaced in refugee camps in neighboring countries, while hundreds of thousands of refugees escaping from overcrowded camps in Jordan, Turkey and elsewhere, join those fleeing violence in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq to clog roadways in Eastern Europe, and to strand the pitiful broken bodies of their dead children on the shores of Italy and Greece. Millions of Syrian, Iraqi, Afghanistani displaced, surge onward toward western Europe where they are corralled astride state borders with coils of barbed wire and cyclone fencing. In some places they escape the brutal police cordons as in Bosnia and Hungary, hoping to press on to find succor in the safe and affluent west. Bush, Cheney and his neocon fantasists are the underlying cause of this massive world tragedy.

So this is how George Bush "kept us safe". JEB may have been simply stating what he believed to be true or may have simply acted as the loyal, ill-informed younger brother of a failed President. But his repeated attempts to recast history for his brother, as well as his published list of advisors and supporters--a list which encompasses most of the personnel of the Bush failed foreign policy team are evidence of a return to past errors and mistake, and indicate a penchant and direction that is dangerous for our nation. We would be foolish indeed to go over that same trail. Bush's inability to divorce himself from the past, and his brother's culpability in the economic, blood-soaked disaster of the Iraq War and the blowback from those foreign policy errors which the world finds itself suffering from now, may be understandable inside the privileged Bush family circle, but is inexcusable in a candidate for public office and should exclude him as a potential leader of this nation.

One must also keep in mind JEB's personal culpability in this matter as well. Recall that were it not for his manipulation of the 2000 Florida election tally, under pressure from his bother's attorneys and campaign....there may not have been a President George Bush, or an Iraq War, or a refugee crisis in Europe. If JEB can not come to terms with the reality of his brother's geostrqtegic, military and governing failures he is part of the problem and not the solution.

JEB, YOUR BROTHER DID NOT KEEP US SAFE! Far from it !