SE Fla Editorial: Americans are Stupid - Bush isn't so bad

Survey Says

South Florida Sun-Sentinel Editorial Board
Posted January 2 2007


ISSUE: Bush voted biggest villain.


If one of the last in a spate of year-end polls is even close to being accurate, Americans need to take a very deep breath. And chill. And understand who our enemies really are.

According to an AP-AOL poll looking for the good guy and bad guy of the year, George Bush was overwhelmingly picked as the biggest villain in 2006. Yes, he far outdistanced Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Kim Jong II of North Korea. In the eyes of the Americans involved in that poll, none of those folks came close to being as big a villain as the president of the United States.

It is one thing to disagree, even vehemently, with Bush. The country showed decisively in the last election their disagreement with many of his policies and his conduct of the war. There have been few presidents as unpopular.

But does America really think he is a bigger villain than bin Laden? Or Hussein? Or any of the others?

<snippage>

Whether people will ever look back at George Bush fondly is very questionable. But making him out as a worse guy than bin Laden or Hussein or Kim Jong II is way over the top.

BOTTOM LINE: Americans need to understand who is really bad.

List of known wrongs is already long

Ruth Karter
Coconut Creek
Posted January 5 2007


I think you miss the point of those who voted for President Bush as the biggest villain in 2006. True, Osama bin Laden, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong II have the potential to cause great harm and great hardship to our country, but the operative word there is potential. President Bush, by his actions since the beginning of his presidency, has already caused great harm and great hardship to our country.

His most "villain-est" act was to manipulate our country into an unnecessary and unwinnable war without a clue as to how he was to achieve his unjustifiable aims. However, his ignoring the protections of the Bill of Rights; his indifference to the plight of the poor and the helpless, as exemplified by his behavior after Hurricane Katrina; his fiscal irresponsibility by allowing our country to amass such excessive debt in order to allow tax cuts for the wealthy; the extreme partisanship he helped to create; his rollback of environmental protections, and his behavior causing the United States to be disrespected all over the world, are things that could never be superseded by anything that triumvirate of dictators could ever do to us.

Even the death and destruction caused by 9-11, horrible as it was, pales by comparison to what we have wrought in death and destruction to our own troops as well as the Iraqi people.

And sadly, this list of the wrongs he has heaped on our country is far from complete. When his secret archives are finally viewed, the information uncovered will likely make the above listing be like the first page in a thick book.

Bush deserves `villain' label and more

Jack Miller
Pompano Beach
Posted January 5 2007

Twenty-five percent of the population of the country think that George Bush is a bigger villain than bin Laden or Saddam Hussein. Your editorial says that this is way over the top. I strongly disagree.

George Bush intentionally lied to us about a link between 9-11 and al-Qaida, lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and launched an unprecedented attack on a country that did not pose a danger to our country.

What was the outcome? The death of over 3,000 American service men and women and the injuring of an additional tens of thousands, sectarian violence between Shiites and Sunnis that may explode into the rest of the Muslim countries, and the death of many innocent Iraqi civilians. The Middle East has become even more destabilized.

Not only is Bush a villain, but I believe that he should be impeached and tried for war crimes.

I have seen many presidents in my lifetime. I never thought that I would see one worse than Nixon.

I hope that we wake up in 2008 and elect a president who will lead our nation to the greatness that we once knew.

Iraqis should try Bush

Wayne Creveling
Hollywood
Posted January 4 2007

Now that we have gotten rid of one despot, hopefully, when the Iraqis have a government free of U.S. dominance, they will bring George Bush to trial for the murders of thousands of innocent Iraqis and for destroying the infrastructure of their country via an illegal invasion.