Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Greg700
Ok, I will try to distill what I am attempting to say.
First: I believe Bush scored above 1330 on his SAT's, and he maintained a good GPA throughout highschool and college. Is he smart enough to be the president? Couldn't tell you. Is he smart enough for graduate school? Most definately. Also, in order to successfully campaign and win high office he demonstrated a tremendous amount of discipline, which implies that he would have had the willpower to be successful in gradutate school as well. He may not be a master orater, but he is not an idiot either.
And to the cheif point I am trying to communicate and I believe has become lost in this discussion:
I think that regardless of past misadventures or conquests, the US has placed itself firmly in a position where to pull out of Iraq now would cause far more harm to come to the Iraqi people and would be decidedly against our national best interests because the whole region would be likely to decay as a result of the internal strife in Iraq.
We have made commitments to our allies and to the people of Iraq. We cannot now abandon them even if keeping our word takes it's toll upon us.
It's basically a 'sucks to be us' situation, but to turn around and run away is the wrong decision at this point in time.
|
Bush has been quoted saying he got a 1206, though I'm really not sure how dependable his word is and there is no official confirmation. That's a really low score for Yale, but his family was connected, so it makes sense. His scores in High School were good, but his grades at Yale are about what you'd expect for someone with a 1206, he had just under a C average. He was also a bit of an alcoholic in college (which is hardly something out of place).
Quick moment of pride: I got a 1556.
We only said that Iraqi Freedom was about freing Iraqi's after it was clear that there was not going to be a smoking gun so far as links to 9/11 or WMDs.
Our best bet right now is to do absolutely everything reasonably possible to have Iraqi defence forces protecting law abiding Iraqis from the 'bad guys', be they insurgents or forigners. The US needs to make sure that Iraq doesn't become dependant on our assistance, otherwise we won't ever be able to leave. The trick to that is to move from a position of defensive forces to a position of mostly training and being with the Iraqi defence forces on the ground. No more Coalition-only convoys. We have US soldiers and Iraqis serving shoulder to shoulder and we do more to teach them to defend their home. We also need a time table of withdrawl, so that the American people and the Iraqi defence forces know what they're working with. I'm of the personal opinion, based on previous situations, that 8 months is not unreasonable, but I'd be happy with anything under 14 months. After that, the US forces are only there to train local police or to be in a US embassy.