IT"S AMAZING HOW MANY NEGATIVE "FIRST PLACES" WILL BE IN G.W. BUSH's LEGACY
Gary Ater
August 28, 2008
> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to attack a sovereign nation that did not threaten or "did not attack or invade the United States".
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to tell multiple lies to the American citizens in order to take the country to war.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to fail at getting the leader of the organization that attacked and killed over 3,000 Americans on 9/11.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to start an unnecessary war and occupation that has taken the lives of over 4,000 US Troops and over 100,000 Iraqis.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to spend 36% of his time as president being on vacation. That equals 908 days or 2 1/2 years.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to, in his first term, make 132 visits, totaling 421 days to the presidential retreat named "Camp David".
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to be put into the office by the US Supreme Court, not by American voters.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to use presidential "Signing Statements" in order to ignore the law.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to totally ignore the signs of "Global Warning".
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to spend more of the taxpayers money and cause the largest US Deficit than all previous Republican Presidents "combined".
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to support taking away the right of Habeas Corpus from the American people.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to establish a separate set of rules for the military detainees at the military base atGuantanamo Bay, Cuba. A base referred to as a "modern day gulag".
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to send military detainees to other countries so that they could be tortured.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to not fully fund FEMA, to
reduce its internal resources and to staff it with "incompetent political cronies".
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to ignore the rules as established in the 1940's by the Geneva Convention.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to use the US Justice Department and his Attorney General as a tool for appointing Federal Judges that support Bush's political beliefs.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to give a major tax cut while the country was at war.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to wiretap US citizens while still staying in his office as president.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to have a staff member leak the name of a CIA undercover agent.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to cause most of the leaders of the free world to "dislike and mistrust the current leadership of the United States".
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to not follow the demands of the American citizens to close the borders and the ports which was demanded after the disaster of 9/11.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to spend billions of dollars on expensive mercenary private contractors while sending the
US Military to war without body armor or armored personnel carriers.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to spend US taxpayer's money on "Faith-Based" organizations that are allowed to hire only those workers that practice the organization's faith.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to ask the terrorists that attacked America to "bring it on" against US troops at war.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to declare "Mission Accomplished" years before the real mission is complete.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to put a "veterinarian in charge of women's health issues at the CDC".
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to award a "no-bid", multi-billion dollar contract to a US contractor which has repeatedly overcharged the government.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to initially oppose the creation of the September 11th Commission, which the President now says he expects it; "to contain important recommendations for preventing future attacks."
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to limit bidding on war re-construction projects only to US "coalition partners," unnecessarily alienating important allies (with lots of resources) such as France, Germany and Russia.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to divert $700 million into the "War Invasion Planning Group" without informing Congress.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to allow several members of the Bin Laden family to leave the US just days after 9/11, and some of them without being questioned by the FBI.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to deny documents to the 9/11 Commission, only relenting after the commissioners threatened a subpoena.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to fail to pay attention to an August 6, 2001 Presidents Daily Briefing (PDB) entitled "Bin laden Determined to Attack in U.S."
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to repeatedly ignore warnings of terrorists planning to use US commercial aircraft before 9/11.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to appoint the ultra-secretive Henry Kissinger to head the 9/11 Commission. Kissinger stepped down weeks later due to conflicts of interest.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to ask for testimony before the 9/11 Commission be limited to "one hour".
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to not allow National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to testify before the 9/11 Commission. Bush changed his mind as pressure mounted.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to cut an FBI request for counterterrorism funds by two-thirds after 9/11.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to falsely tell Americans there was a link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to fail to adequately secure the nation's Nuclear Weapons Labs.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to reduce resources and troop levels in Afghanistan before it was fully secured.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to not provide security in Afghanistan outside of the capital of Kabul, leaving nearly 80% of the Afghan population unprotected in areas controlled by Feudal warlords and local militias.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to not commit US ground troops to the capture of Osama Bin Laden, when he was cornered in the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan in November, 2001.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to allow opium production to resume on a massive scale after the ouster of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to oppose an independent inquiry into the intelligence failures surrounding WMD's in Iraq, later, signing off on just such a commission.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to falsely say about Iraq: "We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories".
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to mistakenly trust the intelligence gathered by Vice President Cheney's and Secretary Rumsfeld's "Office of Special Plans."
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to spend $6.5 billion to develop new nuclear weapons, 50% more in real dollars than the average during the Cold War, while "shortchanging the troops on body and vehicle armor".
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to ignore the importance of the Middle East Peace Process, which has deteriorated with little oversight or strategy evident in the region.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to side with China in February, 2004 against a democratic referenda proposed by Taiwan, a notable shift from an earlier US pledge to stand with "oppressed peoples until the day of their freedom finally arrives."
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to undermine the "War on Terrorism" by preemptively invading Iraq.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to fail to develop a specific plan for dealing with North Korea.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to abandon the United States' traditional role as an evenhanded negotiator in the Middle East Peace Process.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to sign a report endorsing the outsourcing of jobs with thousands of American workers having their jobs shipped overseas.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to Institute steel tariffs deemed illegal by the World Trade Organization (WTO). Bush repealed them 20-months later when the European Union pledged to impose retaliatory sanctions on up to $2.2 billion in exports from the United States.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to promote economic policies that failed to help US small businesses.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to pledge that his "Jobs and Growth" package would create 1,836,000 new jobs by the end of 2003 and 5.5 million new jobs by 2004. So far it's now 2008 and the president has fallen 1,615,000 jobs short of the 2004 mark.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to run up a foreign deficit that according to the Financial Times: "it is of such record-breaking proportion that it threatens the financial stability of the global economy."
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to issue inaccurate budget forecasts accompanying his proposals to reduce the deficit His budget just "happened to omit" the continued costs of Iraq, Afghanistan and all of the elements of Homeland Security.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to claim his 2003 tax cut would give 23 million small business owners an average tax cut of $2,042. The results were that; "nearly four out of every five tax filers (79%) with small business income received much less than that amount".
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to pass tax cuts for the wealthy while "falsely claiming people in the 10% bracket" were benefiting most."
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to pass successive tax cuts largely responsible for turning an approximate surplus of $5 trillion into a projected deficit of $4.3 trillion.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to support a proposal to strip "millions of workers from receiving overtime pay".
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to "back down" from a plan to make CEOs more accountable when "the corporate crowd" protested.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to not lobby oil cartels to change their mind about cutting oil production.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to pass tax cuts weighted heavily to help the wealthy.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to move to allow "greater media consolidation of TV, radio stations and newspapers". (IE:fewer choices)
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to "ignore" the calls to extend unemployment benefits with long-term unemployment reaching a twenty-year high
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to threaten to "veto pension legislation" that would give companies much needed temporary relief.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to under-fund his own; "No Child Left Behind" program.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to break his campaign pledge to increase the size of Pell Grants.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to sign off on an FY 2005 budget proposing the smallest increase in education funding in nine years.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to under-fund the Title I Program, specifically targeted for disadvantaged kids, by $7.2 billion.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to freeze Teacher Quality State Grants, cutting off training opportunities for about 30,000 teachers, and leaving 92,000 less teachers trained than the president himself called for in his own No Child Left Behind bill.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to freeze funding for after school programs, potentially eliminating >50,000 children from after-school programs.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to "under-fund health care for US troops and veterans".
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to relax food labeling restrictions on health claims.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to falsely claim the restrictions on stem cell research would not hamper medical progress.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to gut clean air standards for aging power plants.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to weaken energy efficiency standards.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to lift protection for more than 200 million acres of public land.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to oppose legislation that would require greater fuel efficiency for passenger cars.
>>> The 43rd POTUS is the first US president to reduce inspections, penalties for violations, and prosecution of environmental crimes.
Author's Note:
There are more, but I just got too tired researching, sorry.
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