Talk:George H. W. Bush
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[edit] "Honest and approachable"
"George H.W. Bush is an honest and approachable man that the American people can relate to, he has made mistakes in his life like all good natured people."
[edit] A World Transformed quote
Quote removed:
- "Trying to eliminate Saddam ... would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible ... We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq ... there was no viable 'exit strategy' we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land." (1998)
- Source: A World Transformed
See http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/gulfwar.asp for the reason why: much of the context was removed, destroying the intent. I don't like Bush (either one) and I certainly don't like the war, but that doesn't mean we need to get nasty and quote out of context, or we're no better than they are. I'd replace it with the full quote, putting back in the stuff in ellipses, but I worry that somebody would just hack it back up again to try and make a point. - Furrykef 10:04, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)
- The full quote as provided by the snopes link above:
- Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in "mission creep," and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under the circumstances, there was no viable "exit strategy" we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different— and perhaps barren— outcome.
- I would place the full quote back where it was, but coming from the book A World Transformed which was a collaboration between George H. W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft it is not at this point certain that it was a comment by Bush, though it seems to be, and I believe that I remember him making similar remarks in interviews. ~ Kalki 17:38, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)
[edit] POV!!!!
Would it really hurt to actually put in a few quotes that sound normal or even good? Practically everything here is an example of something stupid or distasteful that he happened to say. This makes it seem like the authors of this page are very biased against Bush sr.
quote removed
[edit] GWH Bush "Atheist" Remark
* Reporter (Roger I. Sherman): Surely you recognize the equal citizenship and patriotism of Americans who are atheists?
Bush: No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.
o Campaign press conference at O'Hare Airport, Chicago (August 27, 1987); as quoted in "Can George Bush, with impunity, state that atheists should not be considered either citizens or patriots? The History of the Issue" by Madalyn O'Hair
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Quote Removed
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This quote can not be sourced beyond a single reporter. The reporter himself (Robert Sherman) even admits on his website (http://www.robsherman.com/advocacy/060401a.htm) that there is no other record - audio, video, or from the memory of any other reporter at the press conference - that any such thing was every actually said.
The Madalyn O'Hair quote listed in the body of the article is a blind link to a defunct website that only seems to be there for the purpose of being a "source" for this quote.
The fact that this quote is also the only bolded quote in this section of the leads me to believe that this is a politically motivated addition to the quotes.
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Well, sort of. That Robert Sherman was at the conference is provable. And Sherman's website via your link does include a PDF from the Bush Presidential library containing quite a bit of mail correspondence about this. Some of the letters sent specifically include the quote, but in the responses from the White House that Bush said made such a hateful remark is never denied. If someone demands you apologize for your statement that 30 million Americans should be stripped of their citizenship and you never actually said such a thing, wouldn't your first priority be to correct the misunderstanding? Not to, as they did, use a whole lot of meaningless weasel answers to vaguely affirm that you'll consider treating atheists like actual American citizens? In fact, at some point during the exchange the staffers in the WH decided just to brush the whole thing under the rug (as the remarks would be "not too easy to defend") and ignore the issue from that point on. This is not the behavior of someone committed to freedom of religion and separation of church & state. Dyolf Knip 19:21, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
- I've restored the "atheists not citizens" quote, placing it into the "Attributed" section because it is infamous but elusive; i.e., well-known and sourceable, but not independently so. When we have a quote like this, it's important to cite it with the best available evidence, which should itself demonstrate why we don't consider it properly sourceable.
- In this case, I've given the PDF document (of a voluminous Bush Library fax) that Robert Sherman includes on his advocacy website as a provisional source. My quick review did not show any actual proof that Bush made the statement, contrary to the implications of Sherman's site and correspondence. It seems that Bush and his representatives, while reaffirming a stance unfavorable to atheism, avoided confirming or denying the actual publicized statement. With this "he said/he won't say" situation and no independent sourcing, I don't see that this quote will ever be more than "attributed". ~ Jeff Q (talk) 01:43, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
[edit] I will never apologize for the United States, ever. I don't care what the facts are
This is obviously a hoax that either originated here or was brought here. If this statement was made there is no doubt that some media outlet would have reported it. Supposedly, Newsweek ran with the story in 1988, so without visiting a library in person it's impossible to verify with the original source. However, a quote like this would certainly have been picked up by secondary sources very quickly - sources which have been archived via Google's news archive. Several of the sources given, "rotton.com" and "www.iranchamber.com" can hardly be considered as authoritative. The quote from a reporter on CNN, Bruce Morton, just mentioned the quote in passing and may very well have simply heard the quote from somewhere, very possibly Wikipedia, and repeated it without further research.
Until we can get verification of this quote from some media outlet around the time of the alleged statement, I think we should be very cautious with accepting this quote as accurate. Lottering 10:51, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
- This is hardly a hoax. There were many reports upon it on television at the time it was made that I personally clearly remember. Googles News "archives" of articles are hardly maintained for a week on many articles, let alone for articles published before the World Wide Web even existed, and Newsweeks archives of its issues only go back to 1993. The article cited is from 1988. ~ Kalki 10:51, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
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- If there were many reports then why is there no mention of it on NexisLexus or Google News Archives?. Surely if I could find a news story of my father's arrest for DUI in 1986 in a small town newspaper via both Nexis Lexus AND Google News then such an explosive newsworthy quote would also be reported? Also, the Google News archives are not simply archives of what was reported on the WWW, it goes several hundred years back from actual scans of actual news print. Lottering 11:06, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
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- One other question: If I actually go to the library and look up the Newsweek article in question and find there is no quote to support this claim, will you allow the quote to be removed from here or would you simply keep it and remove mention of Newsweek being a source? Lottering 11:16, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
My interest in retaining the quote is motivated by a clear rememberance of it at the time, and I have no doubt of it being genuine. It could be slightly misquoted, as there are a few very minor variants to its phrasing that exist. Further confirmation and accuracy is welcome, and I have added citations of two more published sources other than "Perspectives" in Newsweek (15 August 1988) p. 15:
- "Rally Round the Flag, Boys" by Michael Kingsley in TIME magazine. As an indication of errors and omissions that can occur in any electronic (or printed) archives, this article is clearly misdated, and is plainly a contemporary account of the 1988 Presidential campaign, though it is currently dated as having been published in 2001. Hopefully this will soon be corrected, as I have just sent a memo to the TIME archives site about the current error. ~ Kalki 12:20, 16 April 2007 (UTC
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- Okay, you seem to be right. While the quote given is not 100 percent I have found matches what come to the same meaning doing google news searches in 1988-1989. Even the different news agencies at the time gave slightly different quotes. I now believe there is no reason to doubt the 1988 Newsweek article so I'll back off! Lottering 13:07, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
Your most recent post got me wondering how you confirmed this, as I previously had thought your mention of the Google News "archive" was of the articles linked to in their long established "News" option; and I only just now realized it was actually a newer option that you were referring to: the News Archive search. This should be a helpful resource for further searches, and a very good thing to be aware of for improving our accuracy: I see that there are citations for the remark in The New York Times and other newspapers as well, and indications that he said the core remark on more than one occasion, which also confirms my own memory of things. Thanks for alerting me to this new function at Google. ~ Kalki 13:57, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
[edit] New World Order Quote
"We have before us the opportunity to forge for ourselves and for future generations a 'new world order'. A world where the rule of law, not the law of the jungle, governs the conduct of nations. When we are successful, and we will be, we have a real chance at this 'new world order', an order in which a credible United Nations can use it's peacekeeping role to fulfill the promise and vision of the U.N.s' founders."
http:www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CWBTL33MpA I don't know when he said that and I don't know what speech but I know he said it.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Coyote sprit (talk • contribs) 19:24, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
- I love how the NWO conspiracy video makers edit the original video adding dramatic music and zoom in on Bush's head for an extreme close up. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7a9Syi12RJo is another example of this type of video editing. Audio is so unsynced in the youtube video that it could be dubbed, but I added a NYT ref for the quote in question. That video also incorrectly captions the joint session speech with the "fifth objective" line as September 11, 1991. NYT printed a transcript September 12, 1990 of the Joint session of Congress speech, 9/11/1990. I guess it sells more videos to change it to 1991. --Dual Freq 16:05, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
