In another thread, someone mentioned that Bush was not worst US but in the top 5 which got me thinking which US President has done more damage to the US during their term(s). Alas my, admittedly limited, knowledge of US presidents drew a blank as to a worse President, but would love hear others opinions on the matter.

As for Bush...

Economic - Saw the US go into deficit spending not seen since WWII (and please, the threat of terrorists is nothing compared to what we faced from the Nazi's and Japan). Removed checks and balances that ensured that the recession we are about to go into will be worst in the last 50 years.

Foreign Relations - Has somehow managed to piss virtually the entire world off. Effectively set back international law and relations throughout the world by about 50 years.

Domestic - Has divided the country in a way not seen since the 60s.

Military - While spending billions on stuff designed another superpower (the Chinese perhaps?), which is effectively 'not gonna happen' due to the risk of nuclear war, has effectively overstretched military personnel to a very serious level.

Can any other President top that?

---

"There are no masses of people, only ways of looking at people as masses."

Herbert Hoover. I'd pick Bush over that bitch any day...and thats saying a lot.

I'd also had Andrew Johnson.

Here's a newspaper website sharing their top 10 worst presidents. Note that most are the least known of the presidents from the mid 19th century where most of the power lay in the hands of congress and their was an array of weak presidents that did nothing to ease tensions between North and South.

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/worstpresidents/

The 10 Worst Presidents:
10. Zachary Taylor (1849-1850)
By Jay Tolson
Posted 2/16/07
Sliding in at No. 10, Zachary Taylor was more a forgettable president than a failed one. And the reason is simple: The 12th president was probably the least politically attuned man to occupy the White House in American history, ignorant, one might say, to the point of innocence. Born in Virginia and raised in Kentucky, he was a country boy and a fearless soldier who fought and commanded in major actions spanning the War of 1812 and the Mexican War. Jealous fellow generals mocked his lack of learning and polishhe seldom wore his uniform and was often mistaken for a farmerbut no less than Abraham Lincoln praised the steady judgment that enabled him to overcome unfavorable odds in numerous battles. The Whigs saw a good thing when they picked him as their candidate in 1848. A slaveholder who defended the "peculiar institution" in the South, he opposed its extension into new states as vigorously as he objected to the idea of secession. Some think his opposition to what became the Compromise of 1850which began to undo the Missouri Compromisemight have precipitated the outbreak of the Civil War. If it had, Taylor would not have hesitated to take on the would-be seceders. And his war record might have given them pause. But the test never came. He died after only a little more than a year in office.

The 10 Worst Presidents:
9. (tie) Herbert Hoover (1929-1933)
By Jay Tolson
Posted 2/16/07
Herbert Hoover, the 31st president, and Richard Nixon, the 37th, share the ninth spot for entirely different kinds of failings. And both had offsetting qualities and achievements that keep them off the 10-worst list of some major rankings. Hoover, elected on the eve of the Great Depression, came to the office with the skills of a consummate technocrat and manager. The Iowa native and Stanford-educated engineer ran massive relief operations in Europe both during and after World War I. He was commerce secretary under Harding and Calvin Coolidge. Once the Depression set in, he lowered taxes and started public works projects to create jobs, but he steadfastly resisted outright relief. Hoover's rigid adherence to conservative principles may not have been his greatest problem. A poor communicator, he came across as mean-spirited and uncaring. The homeless dubbed their make-shift shanty towns Hoovervilles. Perhaps his single greatest policy blunder was supporting and signing into law a a tariff act that fueled international trade wars and made the Depression even worse. But style points alone would have cost him the election against FDR. For all his good qualities, it is fair to say that Hoover failed to rise to the greatest challenge of his time.


The 10 Worst Presidents:
9. (tie) Richard Nixon (1969-1974)
By Jay Tolson
Posted 2/16/07
Nixon's failings were the stuff of dark tragedy: uneven judgment and a deeply suspicious character verging on delusional, combined with great political gifts and considerable vision. He not only opened up U.S. relations with China but also reached an important arms-limitation agreement with the Soviet Union. He slowly, if not quite steadily, extricated America from the quagmire of Vietnam. He supported a number of progressive domestic policies, including the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Consumer Product Safety Commission. He stepped up the war against crime on multiple fronts. But the drama of Nixon Agonistes concludes with his resignation under a cloud of wrongdoing. For obstructing the investigation of a petty crime committed by some of his own campaign operativesan attempt to burglarize the Democratic National HeadquartersNixon's name and reputation will forever be linked with one word: Watergate.

The 10 Worst Presidents:
8. William Harrison (1841)
By Jay Tolson
Posted 2/16/07
Alas, poor Harrison. That the ninth president makes any list at all is an act of scholarly injustice. The Virginian's greatest claim to fame was defeating the Shawnees in 1811 at the Battle of Tippecanoe. Delivering the longest inaugural address in U.S. history, he came down with pneumonia that made his 30-day presidency the shortest in U.S. history. Death would seem sufficient punishment for long-windedness; historians are guilty of piling on.

The 10 Worst Presidents:
7. Ulysses S. Grant (1869-1877)
By Jay Tolson
Posted 2/16/07
At No. 7, Ulysses S. Grant has risen from No. 2 on the 1948 Schlesinger list probably because of the same revisionist take on Reconstruction that lowered Johnson in the eyes of historians. Although there is no way to overlook the widespread graft and corruption that occurred on his presidential watch it was at the time unprecedented in scope he was in no way a beneficiary of it. "My failures have been errors of judgment," the popular former Civil War general admitted, "not of intent." More important, the 18th president now receives plaudits for his aggressive prosecution of the radical reform agenda in the South. His attempts to quash the Ku Klux Klan (suspending habeas corpus in South Carolina and ordering mass arrests) and his support for the Civil Rights Act of 1875 were controversial and may have produced only short-lived gains for African-Americans, but Grant's intentions were laudable and brave. He also worked for the good of American Indians, instituting the reservation system as an imperfect, last-ditch effort to protect them from extinction. Grant's reputation may continue to rise as a result of sympathetic biographies and studiesand because of a renewed appreciation of his own excellent memoir, considered to be the best ever produced by a former president.

The 10 Worst Presidents:
6. John Tyler (1841-1845)
By Jay Tolson
Posted 2/16/07
At sixth worst, Virginian John Tyler was the first president to rise by succession from the vice presidencywhen William Harrison succumbed to pneumonia only 30 days after being sworn into office. Born into the planter aristocracy, Tyler began his political career as a Jefferson Republican, opposing Federalist schemes for high protective tariffs and federally funded "internal improvements." As a U.S. senator, he supported President Andrew Jackson's crusade against the national bank but soon fell out with Old Hickory when he quashed South Carolina's attempt to nullify a modest tariff. (Tyler, a steady champion of states' rights and slavery, defended South Carolina's prerogative to secede if it wished.) Joining the young Whig Party, he ran with popular war hero Harrison, and the ticket of "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too" trounced the Democratic candidates. But once he became president, Tyler opposed everything his adopted party stood for, including a national bank. One fellow Whig accused Tyler of reviving "the condemned and repudiated doctrines and practices of the worst days of Jackson's rule." The entire Harrison-appointed cabinet resigned, and Tyler had to fight an attempt to impeach him. His one triumph: establishing the principle that a vice president who succeeds to the top office has no less authority than an elected president. No small accomplishment when most of his own party despised him.

The 10 Worst Presidents:
5. Millard Fillmore (1850-1853)
By Jay Tolson
Posted 2/16/07
The 13th president came to office on the coattails of a popular war hero, Zachary Taylor, who died in office a little over a year after becoming president. Born in a log cabin in central New York, Fillmore made his way to politics and the Whig Party via school teaching and the law. A largely ignored vice president, he got Taylor's attention when he told him he would support the Compromise of 1850 if the Senate came to a deadlock. Consisting of five separate acts (including the Fugitive Slave Law, compelling the federal government to return fugitive slaves to their masters), the compromise stood for everything Taylor opposed. When the ailing president died, his successor became an even more vigorous champion of the compromise measures. Fillmore's actions may have averted a national crisis and postponed the outbreak of the Civil War, but it was peace bought at an unconscionable price. Two decades after the notorious deal, the New York Times opined that it was Fillmore's "misfortune to see in slavery a political and not a moral question." Misfortune might now seem too kind a word.

The 10 Worst Presidents:
4. Franklin Pierce (1853-1857)
By Jay Tolson
Posted 2/16/07
Extending the list of timid pre-Civil War compromisers, Pierce was a Jackson Democrat from New Hampshire whom Whig foes called "doughface"a northerner with southern principles. Elected as the 14th president, the handsome Mexican War veteran believed ardently in national expansion even at the cost of adding more slave states. To that end, he vigorously supported the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which, along with the earlier Compromise of 1850, effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Less successfully, he proposed annexing Cuba, by arms if necessary, but his opponents, suspecting the addition of a new slave state, outed the plan and ultimately forced him to renounce it. He did manage to secure U.S. recognition of a dubious regime in Nicaragua, presided over by an American proslavery adventurer, William Walker, who had instigated an insurrection and installed himself as president. Theodore Roosevelt later wrote of Pierce that he was "a servile tool of men worse than himself ... ever ready to do any work the slavery leaders set him." Not even a fawning campaign biography written by Pierce's college friend Nathaniel Hawthorne could offset such damning reviews.

The 10 Worst Presidents:
3. Andrew Johnson (1865-1869)
By Jay Tolson
Posted 2/16/07
Andrew Johnson has risen in scholarly dis-esteem since the publication of Schlesinger's 1948 poll probably because the post-Civil War Reconstruction has enjoyed athorough scholarly face-lift, and Johnson is now scorned for having resisted Radical Republican policies aimed at securing the rights and well-being of the newly emancipated African-Americans. (Before he was president, historian Woodrow Wilson did a lastingly thorough job of sullying Reconstruction, depicting it as a vindictive program that hurt even repentant southerners.) while benefitting northern opportunists, the so-called Carpetbaggers, and cynical white southerners, or Scalawags, who exploited alliances with blacks for political gain.

A native North Carolinian of humble origins, Johnson worked as a tailor and eventually settled in Tennessee, where he entered politics as a populist Jackson Democrat. He was elected to several high offices, including U.S. senator. Though no abolitionist, he was a staunch supporter of the Union and the only southerner to retain his seat in the Senate after secession. For his loyalty, Lincoln appointed him military governor of Tennessee, where he set about suppressing Confederates and championing black suffrage. (Tennessee became the first southern state to end slavery by state law.) Lincoln selected him as his running mate in 1864, and Johnson became the 17th president only a month after being sworn in as vice president. Unfortunately, his subsequent battles with Radical Republicans in Congress over a host of Reconstruction measures revealed political ineptitude and an astonishing indifference toward the plight of the newly freed African-Americans. In addition to Vetoing renewal of the Freedman's Bureau and the first civil rights bill, he encouraged opposition to the 14th Amendment. An increasingly nasty power strugglein which Congress wrongly attempted to strip him of certain constitutionally delegated powersresulted in the first presidential impeachment and a near conviction. Failing to be renominated, he returned to Tennessee and was again elected to the U.S. Senate. History's current verdict may prove to be overly harsh, but it is fair to say that Johnson did turn a blind eye to those southerners who tried to undo what the Civil War had accomplished.

The 10 Worst Presidents:
2. Warren G. Harding (1921-1923)
By Jay Tolson
Posted 2/16/07
Warren G. Harding's claim to infamy rests on spectacular ineptitude captured in his own pathetic words: "I am not fit for this office and should never have been here." A former newspaperman and publisher who won a string of offices in his native Ohio, he was an unrestrained womanizer noted for his affability, good looks, and implacable desire to please. It was good, his father once told him, that he hadn't been born a girl, "because you'd be in the family way all the time. You can't say no."


Harding should have said no when Republican Party bosses in the proverbial smoke-filled room (a phrase that originated with this instance) made him their 11th-hour pick for the highest office. He was so reassuringly vague in his campaign declarations that he was understood to support both the foes and the backers of U.S. entry into the League of Nations, the hottest issue of the day. Once in the White House, the 29th president busied himself with golf, poker, and his mistress, while appointees and cronies plundered the U.S. government in a variety of creative ways. (His secretary of the interior allowed oilmen, for a modest under-the-table sum, to tap into government oil reserves, including one in Teapot Dome, Wyo.) "I have no trouble with my enemies," Harding once said, adding that it was his friends who "keep me walking the floor nights." Stress no doubt contributed to his death in office, probably from a stroke. Almost a decade later, his former attorney general called Harding "a modern Abraham Lincoln whose name and fame will grow with time." That time is still a long way off.

The 10 Worst Presidents:
1. James Buchanan (1857-1861)
By Jay Tolson
Posted 2/16/07
A Pennsylvania-born Democrat, deeply devout in his faith and the only bachelor elected to the presidency, Buchanan rejected slavery as an indefensible evil but, like the majority of his party, refused to challenge the constitutionally established order. Even before he became president, he supported the various compromises that made it possible for slavery to spread into the western territories acquired by the Lousiana Purchase and the Mexican War. (Particularly hurtful to the cause of restraining slavery's spread was the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, for example, allowed settlers to determine the status of slavery in their proposed state constitutions.) In his inaugural address, the 15th president tacitly encouraged the Supreme Court's forthcoming Dred Scott decision, which ruled that Congress had no power to keep slavery out of the territories. More damaging to his name, though, was his weak acquiescence before the secessionist tidean unwillingness to challenge those states that declared their intention to withdraw from the Union after Lincoln's election. Sitting on his hands as the situation spiraled out of control, Buchanan believed that the Constitution gave him no power to act against would-be seceders. To his dying day, he felt that history would treat him favorably for having performed his constitutional duty. He was wrong.

Good topic I thought of doing the same just to see what US citizens think, anyway we are talking about bad for USA right?

well IF i was a US citizen, I would say Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856 February 3, 1924)[1] was the twenty-eighth President of the United States.

just because of Revenue act and the Federal Reserve act.





http://www.republicbroadcasting.org/

"If we don't believe in freedom of expression for
people we despise, we don't believe in it at all."

-Noam Chomsky

History will judge Bush relatively harshly, I think. He's certainly not going to be the worst but may well fall into the bottom ten. His steadfast refusal to deal with illegal immigration and these recent actions in nationalizing businesses will not be viewed favorably. As to foreign policy, I honestly doubt that he'll be out of the top ten in that category. The problem here as with all current event analysis is that we do not have the benefit of seeing the consequences, intended and unintended, of current decisions.




Provost

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.

Calvin Coolidge, President of the United States 1924-1929

Ironically it was the Republicans great white knight Ronald Reagan where illegal immigration flourished. I only see Republicans kiss his ass.

@Choss I think Woodrow Wilson was a great president.

"As to foreign policy, I honestly doubt that he'll be out of the top ten in that category. The problem here as with all current event analysis is that we do not have the benefit of seeing the consequences, intended and unintended, of current decisions."

What scenario do you see that will make President Bush a Foreign Policy success?

Bush will be defined by the outcome of Iraq and the Middle East. On that front he has managed to destabilize most of the US Islamic allies in the region (Jordan, Saudi Arabia and of course Iraq). Most of people in Iraq who had the means to leave have left years ago and setup lives elsewhere on the planet, these people are the highly educated and wealthy that societies require to rebuild. The Iraqi parliament is only held in place by US military force at the moment...do you support staying there forever with 100,000+ troops?

Animosity toward the US around the globe is at it highest level ever. His administrations policies have demonstrated a level of hypocrisy that can only be described as epic and lost any perceived moral high ground the US may have had. They have, at the same time, managed to irritate virtually every staunch ally the US has.

---

"There are no masses of people, only ways of looking at people as masses."

@ Paje

I read that article too (in fact it was prompted me to create this post).

@ Choss

Being lazy, what was wrong with those two actions?

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"There are no masses of people, only ways of looking at people as masses."

Oh, the answer is clear. The worst president in US history stands in a league of his own as far as sheer destructiveness is concenred. Lyndon B Johnson, that motherfuking ****.

F.uck an eye for an eye. You take my eye, and I will kill you, and all those you care about. That is our policy.

"Lyndon B Johnson, that motherfuking ****. "



LOL! I know, how dare that Texan bastard give negros the right to vote and sign the civil rights act. A self hating Southern White male. Had Johnson not fvcked up over Vietnam he'd be put in the same light as Roosevelt. Domestically speaking he was a very good president. In fact he's one of my favorite, I'm a big fan of Southern democrats.

don't know who is the worst, but Bush is defintely the most clownish of all....

-------------------------------------------------

"Being lazy, what was wrong with those two actions?"

The whole revenue act bringing back the income tax is unconstitional and basically illegal the way it is now, it is even officially still considered a voluntary tax yet everyone has to pay it or face the consequences. And the federal reserve is one of the reasons for the economic problems in the US, printing the US currency and staying in charge of most of their gold reserve with little to no oversight and many loopholes such as a right to break contracts... all the while the federal reserve is a private corporation and not an actual branch of the US gov.



http://www.republicbroadcasting.org/

"If we don't believe in freedom of expression for
people we despise, we don't believe in it at all."

-Noam Chomsky

"The whole revenue act bringing back the income tax is unconstitional and basically illegal the way it is now, it is even officially still considered a voluntary tax yet everyone has to pay it or face the consequences."

The crux of the matter is the government needs revenue to keep society functioning, what do propose to replace the revenue they receive from income tax?

"And the federal reserve is one of the reasons for the economic problems in the US, printing the US currency and staying in charge of most of their gold reserve with little to no oversight and many loopholes such as a right to break contracts..."

Are you proposing a return to the gold standard? If so how do you address the limitation of physically backed currencies when it comes to liquidity? What sort of contracts can they break?

"all the while the federal reserve is a private corporation and not an actual branch of the US gov."

The board members are appointed President and confirmed by the Senate (and can be removed by the Senate), how does it get more government than that?

---

"There are no masses of people, only ways of looking at people as masses."

"Oh, the answer is clear. The worst president in US history stands in a league of his own as far as sheer destructiveness is concenred. Lyndon B Johnson, that motherfuking ****. "

Why so?

---

"There are no masses of people, only ways of looking at people as masses."

Birth of affirmative action and ******Immigration Act of 1965****** need I say more.

F.uck an eye for an eye. You take my eye, and I will kill you, and all those you care about. That is our policy.

Lyndon Johnson was a man of empathy who understood the need to defeat racism and bigotry wherever it sprung up. He also understood the ills of poverty, he gave poor folks a "hand up" not "hand out".

Dedicated to Notan. lol My favorite section of Johnson's speech to the House in support of his Civil Rights bill.



My first job after college was as a teacher in Cotulla, Texas, in a small Mexican-American school. Few of them could speak English, and I couldn't speak much Spanish. My students were poor and they often came to class without breakfast, hungry. They knew even in their youth the pain of prejudice. They never seemed to know why people disliked them. But they knew it was so, because I saw it in their eyes. I often walked home late in the afternoon, after the classes were finished, wishing there was more that I could do. But all I knew was to teach them the little that I knew, hoping that it might help them against the hardships that lay ahead.

Somehow you never forget what poverty and hatred can do when you see its scars on the hopeful face of a young child.

I never thought then, in 1928, that I would be standing here in 1965. It never even occurred to me in my fondest dreams that I might have the chance to help the sons and daughters of those students and to help people like them all over this country.

But now I do have that chanceand I'll let you in on a secretI mean to use it. And I hope that you will use it with me.

This is the richest and most powerful country which ever occupied the globe. The might of past empires is little compared to ours. But I do not want to be the President who built empires, or sought grandeur, or extended dominion.

I want to be the President who educated young children to the wonders of their world. I want to be the President who helped to feed the hungry and to prepare them to be taxpayers instead of taxeaters.

I want to be the President who helped the poor to find their own way and who protected the right of every citizen to vote in every election.

I want to be the President who helped to end hatred among his fellow men and who promoted love among the people of all races and all regions and all parties.

I want to be the President who helped to end war among the brothers of this earth.

And so at the request of your beloved Speaker and the Senator from Montana; the majority leader, the Senator from Illinois; the minority leader, Mr. McCulloch, and other Members of both parties, I came here tonightnot as President Roosevelt came down one time in person to veto a bonus bill, not as President Truman came down one time to urge the passage of a railroad billbut I came down here to ask you to share this task with me and to share it with the people that we both work for. I want this to be the Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, which did all these things for all these people.

Beyond this great chamber, out yonder in 50 States, are the people that we serve. Who can tell what deep and unspoken hopes are in their hearts tonight as they sit there and listen. We all can guess, from our own lives, how difficult they often find their own pursuit of happiness, how many problems each little family has. They look most of all to themselves for their futures. But I think that they also look to each of us.

Above the pyramid on the great seal of the United States it saysin Latin"God has favored our undertaking."

God will not favor everything that we do. It is rather our duty to divine His will. But I cannot help believing that He truly understands and that He really favors the undertaking that we begin here tonight.

Coalde, the answer is really simple. The things you mention are of such transitory unimportance, that they'll have no affect of the view of history. The sole thing upon which he'll be judged by history is Iraq and Afghanistan. If stable even quasi-democratic states emerge, history will be generous. If not, well then he'll be treated otherwise.




Provost

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.

Calvin Coolidge, President of the United States 1924-1929

"Coalde, the answer is really simple. The things you mention are of such transitory unimportance, that they'll have no affect of the view of history. The sole thing upon which he'll be judged by history is Iraq and Afghanistan. If stable even quasi-democratic states emerge, history will be generous. If not, well then he'll be treated otherwise."

Well that's my point, things are not looking good for a stable Iraq to come out of this (since his administration effectively ignored Afghanistan after Iraq started). Why? You have large numbers of unemployed young men, an older generation that remembers tyranny (Saddam) fondly, politics based or religion and ethnicity and a deeply unpopular and weak central government. That to me has all prerequisites for a failed state, civil war and subsequent despotic mini-regimes that history has proved occur in the past in similar situations.

I fear that we have traded one terrorist safe haven for two (three if you count Kurdistan's impact on Turkey). But I suppose we will have to wait a few years to have this discussion, I shall put it in my calendar.

---

"There are no masses of people, only ways of looking at people as masses."

"Birth of affirmative action and ******Immigration Act of 1965****** need I say more. "

I can agree that affirmative action is at best a double edged sword, however from my understanding the Immigration Act of 1965, primarily, eliminated individual national limits on immigration. You are against this? Why? To me this is a hugely inefficient bureaucratic hurdle to getting the best and the brightest from the rest of the world.

---

"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it."
George Bernard Shaw

I would also say Andrew Johnson, 1865-1868.


His handling of the U.S. "Reconstruction Era" was absolutely the most destructive and backwards course that could have been taken. Whereas Lincoln believed the post-war period needed to be one of reconciliation and rebuilding with the souther United States, Johnson viewed that period as one to further punish the South. Lincoln saw southerners as Americans of equal status, Johnson saw them as secondary to population of the North. Lincoln wanted Southerners to reconstitute the South after the war, mould their own new states and governments, while Johnson wanted to dominate and micromanage the South with Northerners. Johnson's "reconstruction" included appointing Governors to the old Confederacy from the North and occupying the old South with Federal troops who were given many powers of martial law over the local population. Johnson's conducting of the Reconstruction set this country back 50 years and is still evident today.


Jimmy Carter is on this list as well. The man was a profoundly weak and flawed individual when it came to performing the job of POTUS. His term was memorable for runaway inflation, the "misery index", and Russian resurgence in places like Afghanistan and Southeast Asia.


LBJ was a piece of work. The man was originally elected to the U.S. House on very questionable ballots in south Texas. He weasled his way into getting time on aircraft in the South Pacific in WW2 through his political connections in order to make news for himself. He was a egotistical power-whore in Congress. JFK picked him as VP due to the power and "dirt" Johnson amassed in Congress in large part. Johnson spent immense time and energy in digging skeletons out of closets in order to wield legislative power. When Kennedy got popped, LBJ was only mildly moved as assayed the Executive landscape before him and the legacy he could create for himself.

In terms of defense, space, and fighting the Commies in at least a pseudo-fashion in Vietnam, I'm with him. On welfare, political wrangling, and the way he conducted the Vietnam War, I'm against him.

People are too hard on Nixon......




"Korea has not been the only battle ground since the end of the Second World War. Men have fought and died in Malaya, in Greece, in the Philippines, in Algeria and Cuba, and Cyprus and almost continuously on the Indo-Chinese Peninsula. No nuclear weapons have been fired. No massive nuclear retaliation has been considered appropriate. This is another type of war, new in its intensity, ancient in its origin--war by guerrillas, subversives, insurgents, assassins, war by ambush instead of by combat; by infiltration, instead of aggression, seeking victory by eroding and exhausting the enemy instead of engaging him. It is a form of warfare uniquely adapted to what has been strangely called 'wars of liberation,' to undermine the efforts of new and poor countries to maintain the freedom that they have finally achieved. It preys on economic unrest and ethnic conflicts. It requires in those situations where we must counter it, and these are the kinds of challenges that will be before us in the next decade if freedom is to be saved, a whole new kind of strategy, a wholly different kind of force, and therefore a new and wholly different kind of military training."-President Kennedy's Address at Graduation Exercises of the U.S. Military Academy, 1962
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"The reason I'll be released is the same reason you think I'll be convicted. I do rub shoulders with some of the most vile, sadistic men calling themselves leaders today. But some of these men are the enemies of your enemies. And while the biggest arms dealer in the world is your boss - the President of the United States, who ships more merchandise in a day than I do in a year - sometimes it's embarrassing to have his fingerprints on the guns. Sometimes he needs a freelancer like me to supply forces he can't be seen supplying. So. You call me evil, but unfortunately for you, I'm a necessary evil."-Yuri Orlov, Lord of War
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"Of all the weapons in the vast soviet arsenal, nothing was more profitable than Avtomat Kalashnikova model of 1947. More commonly known as the AK-47, or Kalashnikov. It's the world's most popular assault rifle. A weapon all fighters love. An elegantly simple 9 pound amalgamation of forged steel and plywood. It doesn't break, jam, or overheat. It'll shoot whether it's covered in mud or filled with sand. It's so easy, even a child can use it; and they do. The Soviets put the gun on a coin. Mozambique put it on their flag. Since the end of the Cold War, the Kalashnikov has become the Russian people's greatest export. After that comes vodka, caviar, and suicidal novelists. One thing is for sure, no one was lining up to buy their cars."-Yuri Orlov, Lord of War
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