Listen, Bush meant exactly what he said. He meant that the actions, or reactions, of Carter, Reagan and Clinton lacked courage or character and it emboldened terrorists' commitment to strike at us.
I voted for Bush twice. I donated a few hundred of my hard-earned dollars to his reelection. I praised him to anyone within ear shot. But I will not abide his utter disrespect and defamation of this nation's greatest President.
You don't know me very well. You can be forgiven for saying this, because it gave me quite a chuckle.
I am amazed that so-called conservatives won't hesitate for a second to censure Ronald Reagan yet if one dares brush up against W with so much as the slightest critique on their sleeve then that person is subject to derision.
Did you consider my post to you at all derisive? All I did was disagree with you, and I did so in rather civil terms.
Listen, Bush meant exactly what he said.
And what he said was that the terrorists concluded that we had lacked the courage to stand up to them. He didn't say they were right. He said we gave them the wrong impression, and we did.
I don't think he was necessarily even exempting his own presidency from his historical assessment, because he was in office for eight months prior to 9/11 and during that time gave the terrorists no overt sign that there would be any comeuppance for the bombing of the WTC in '93 or the Cole in 2000, among other things that happened in between. It took 9/11 to put Washington onto a different path.