President Bush Reflects On His Mistakes (Again)

"(Sic)" 'em Mikey! Looks like Clueless Leader shares your distaste for retrospection.

You know, its funny but I don't remember anybody criticizing him for going to New York after the terror attacks and pulling police off of details to protect citizens and search for the missing. Does anybody else? Thats a very very weird attempt at justifying his EPIC FAIL on Katrina.

Bush's explanation of what he thinks is his major Katrina failure- flying over NOLA, instead of landing- was a true testament to his arrogance.

He's been "flying over", ignoring the damage his administration has done to America and the rest of the world, his whole time in office.

MS -- No need to added to previous posters other to say this was news only the in the fact that is was a press event.
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I'm surprised they press didn't have their Bushisms bingo cards out.

He's still talking like Abu Ghraib was the work of "a few bad apples" and not a policy designed by Rummy and Cheney.
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But was the title of this post ironic? Because he doesn't admit any mistakes (again).

So the problem with Katrina is that he flew over the city. Not with the neglect he gave Louisiana in the years since the hurricane struck.
And the problem with social security is that that Congress wasn't behind him in privatizing it. Not in the fact that we can clearly see the disaster that would have occured had he succeeded.
As for Abu Ghraib, it wasn't a travesty or a crime. Merely a disappointment. I'm sure it was extreamly disappointing to have is administrations approval of torture brought to light.
Is it the 20th yet? Can he just leave already!

I was disappointed by Abu Ghraib, too. Big time. Though I'll admit in my case it was hard to distinguish between disappointment and outrage.

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Art Pepper: Because he doesn't admit any mistakes (again).
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Bush did admit that he blew various photo ops and didn't sell conservative policy as well as he should have, but that's about it.

Bush: "I've thought long and hard about Katrina..."

About whether or not to land a plane and take a look-see...not about appointing an inexperienced sycophant to head FEMA or cutting funding to the Army Corps of Engineers for its Hurricane Protection Project:

In fiscal year 2004, the Corps requested $11 million for the project. The President's budget allocated $3 million, and Congress furnished $5.5 million. Similarly, in fiscal 2005 the Corps requested $22.5 million, which the President cut to $3.9 million in his budget. Congress increased that to $5.5 million. “This was insufficient to fund new construction contracts,” according to a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' project fact sheet.

No, Bush says his mistake was that his photo op didn't show him in the best light.

Bush: "I believe that running the Social Security idea right after the '04 elections was a mistake."

Not that, especially in light of the recent crash in the stock market, that privatizing/eliminating a social safety net that millions of US citizens depend on is a bad idea to begin with.

Bush: "I think historians will look back and they'll be able to have a better look at mistakes, after some time has passed."

Nevermind the chaos and misery Bush has helped spawn in the present; his vindication will occur sometime in the future, and his reward will be in heaven.
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Unbelievable.

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Eesh. Comment was eated.
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Phew. Comment was thrown up.
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WTF is he talking about? Landed Air Force One in NO or Baton Rouge? Who on earth wanted that? If there was one thing people DIDN"T want him to do, it was to land in NO or Baton Rouge for precisely the reasons he mentions. He thought long and hard and came up with this?

I'm burned out. He's a tool. In another six days we'll never have to hear from him again. yay.

"You don't -- you don't get to have information after you've made the decision. That's not the way it works. And you're -- you stand by your decisions and you do your best to explain why you made the decisions you made."

This about sums up Bush's mentality, and the reason for most of his epic failures. WTF? You don't "get" to have information? Sounds like another lesson Cheney taught him. Everything, short of pushing a button to drop a bomb, can be stopped, reversed, or changed during a course of action if it's determined to be incorrect. Bush's single-track mind and childish, stubborn nature trashed this country.

what kills me is that there is no significant problem with social security that needs to be fixed right now (I mean, the Social Security trust continues to run a surplus for almost two more decades), but everyone talks about "fixing" it, while Medicare is a complete disaster in terms of how it will be funded in the very near future (the Medicare trust is already being depleted, and will be gone by, IIRC 2013), but nobody wants to talk about that.

And, as grape notes, had we gone with Bush's privatization scheme, most "private accounts" would have taken a massive hit in the last three months.

Bush's basic message is, in 500 years historians will say he was a genius.

[...] “Clearly, putting a “mission accomplished” on a aircraft carrier was a mistake. It sent the wrong message. We were trying to say something differently, but, nevertheless, it conveyed a different message.” - George W. Bush today in his final press conference. [...]

I concur with the above comments that Bush's reflections are frighteningly simplistic and pathetic. I do find Bush's comment that Ab Ghraib was "obviously" disappointing to be interesting. Far from being obvious, I would love to know why Bush was disappointed. My guess is that, were Cheney to be honest, he would say that the disappointing thing about Abu Ghraib was not the severity of the torture and abuse, but that it was so amateurishly executed and quickly revealed.
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At the end of the day, is Bush really oblivious that his administration (read: Cheney) essentially ordered the "disappointing" behavior? Or that it took great pains to come up with legal justifications for ordering it?

The funniest thing about the "Mission Accomplished" banner was that it WASN'T immediately perceived to have been a huge mistake. The media was positively gushing over Commander Codpiece and trying to rub the noses of the DFHs.
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"Everyone" -- including most Democrats in D.C. -- agreed that the photo op would end up in campaign ads.
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Few realized which political party would air those ads though.

Finally, something to celebrate! I am so very glad that we didn't have a Cuban Missile Crisis-type event during Bush 43's administration. Yay for not giving him an excuse to incinerate us all.

I say good riddance to Bush - but I wonder if the Bush enabling press will ever reflect on their mistakes? I won't hold my breath.

Bush may ultimately may be responsible for what went on in Abu Ghraib....but rhetorically he was against it. Right Michael?

You know, if you leave aside all the death, destruction and misery he's caused, he's a pretty pathetic man. I think all that booze and coke damaged his brain.

“I'd like to be . . . known as somebody who liberated 50m people and helped achieve peace,” Bush said in a recent interview.
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Yeah, so would I. And I'd like to have a pony.

Well, there's got to be a pony in there somewhere. (Punchline to Reagan's favorite joke):

Worried that their son was too optimistic, the parents of a little boy took him to a psychiatrist. Trying to dampen the boy's spirits, the psychiatrist showed him into a room piled high with nothing but horse manure. Yet instead of displaying distaste, the little boy clambered to the top of the pile, dropped to all fours, and began digging.

“What do you think you're doing?” the psychiatrist asked.

“With all this manure,” the little boy replied, beaming, “there must be a pony in here somewhere.”

Sorry for the terrible spacing. I forgot the dots. Blame Canada, since that's where I am. It's cold, there's no Rachel Maddow and there's a long "o" in "project". But they're really stoked about Obama's visit.