Former President Clinton had a few things to say about George W. Bush's job performance.
>Clinton warned about the impact on the budget deficit-"We have never done this before. Never in the history of our republic have we ever financed a conflict, military conflict, by borrowing money from somewhere else."
>On Iraq, Clinton made the following observations--the Bush administration had decided to invade Iraq "virtually alone and before UN inspections were completed, with no real urgency, no evidence that there were weapons of mass destruction."
The Iraq war diverted US attention from the war on terrorism "and undermined the support that we might have had," Bush said in an interview with an ABC's "This Week" programme.
Clinton said there had been a "heroic but so far unsuccessful" effort to put together an constitution that would be universally supported in Iraq.
The US strategy of trying to develop the Iraqi military and police so that they can cope without US support "I think is the best strategy. The problem is we may not have, in the short run, enough troops to do that," said Clinton.
>Concerning FEMA and Bush's response to Hurrican Katrina, Clinton said, "When James Lee Witt ran FEMA, because he had been both a local official and a federal official, he was always there early, and we always thought about that," Clinton said, referring to FEMA's head during his 1993-2001 presidency.
"But both of us came out of environments with a disproportionate number of poor people."
And......
Calling talk among Republican senators of proceeding with a plan to repeal the estate tax "mind-boggling," Sen. Barak Obama, D-Ill., said the country could not fight a war in Iraq, rebuild the Gulf region and deal with other domestic needs while cutting taxes for the wealthy.
"We need some adult supervision of the budget process. And we need to take responsibility for this process. That's something that we need from the president as well as our congressional leaders," Obama told "Face the Nation" on CBS. http://www.grandforks.com/mld/grandforks/12680054.htm
