The other big hit? That Abu Ghraib will be remembered in a positive light because Bush made sure that the guilty were punished. Fucking hell - and it took me a few readings of the relevant passage to convince me that he wasn't talking about the detainees being held there, but the guards and others who were implicated in the abuse.
Seriously, it's like he's dug halfway to China just to set the bar low enough that his points can scrape over. I am amazed that this jerk even got a column published in The Australian, after all he is a racist, apartheid supporting half-wit.
The Australian wrote: History fairer to Bush
Andrew Roberts | January 20, 2009
Article from: The Australian
THE American lady who called to see if I would appear on her radio program was specific. "We're setting up a debate," she said sweetly, "and we want to know from your perspective as a historian whether George W. Bush was the worst president of the past century, or might he be the worst president in American history?"
"I think he's a good president," I told her, which seemed to dumbfound her and wreck my chances of appearing on her show.
In the avalanche of abuse and ridicule that we are witnessing in the media assessments of Bush's legacy, there are factors that need to be borne in mind if we are to come to a judgment that is not warped by the kind of partisan hysteria that has characterised this issue on both sides of the Atlantic.
The first is that history, by looking at the key facts rather than being distracted by the loud ambient noise of the 24-hour news cycle, will probably hand down a far more positive judgment on Bush's presidency than the immediate, knee-jerk loathing of the American and European elites.
At the time of September 11, which will forever rightly be regarded as the defining moment of the presidency, history will look in vain for anyone predicting that the Americans murdered that day would be the last ones to die at the hands of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists in the US from that day tothis.
The decisions taken by Bush in the immediate aftermath of that ghastly moment will be pored over by historians for the rest of our lifetimes. One thing they will doubtless conclude is that the measures he took to lock down America's borders, scrutinise travellers to and from the US, eavesdrop on terrorist suspects, work closely with international intelligence agencies and take the war to the enemy has foiled dozens, perhaps scores, of would-be murderous attacks on America. There are Americans alive today who would not be but for the passage of the Patriot Act. There are 3000 people who would have died in the August 2005 airliner conspiracy if it had not been for the superb inter-agency co-operation demanded by Bush after September 11.
The next factor that will be seen in its proper historical context in years to come will be the true reasons for invading Afghanistan in October 2001 and Iraq in April 2003.
The conspiracy theories believed by many (generally, but not always) stupid people - that it was "all about oil", or the securing of contracts for the US-based Halliburton corporation, and so on - will slip into the obscurity from which they should never have emerged had it not been for comedian filmmakers such as Michael Moore.
Instead, the obvious fact that there was a good case for invading Iraq based on 14 spurned UN resolutions, massive human rights abuses and unfinished business following the interrupted invasion of 1991 will be recalled.
Similarly, the cold light of history will absolve Bush of the worst conspiracy theory accusation: that he knew there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. History will show that, in common with the rest of his administration, the British government, Saddam Hussein's own generals, the French, Chinese, Israeli and Russian intelligence agencies, and of course the Secret Intelligence Service and the CIA, everyone assumed that a murderous dictator does not voluntarily destroy the WMD arsenal he has used against his own people. And if he does, he does not then expel the UN weapons inspectorate looking for proof of it, as he did in 1998 and again in 2001.
Bush assumed that the coalition forces would find mass graves, torture chambers, evidence for the gross abuse of the UN's food-for-oil program, but also WMDs. He was right about each but the last, and history will place him in the mainstream of Western, Eastern and Arab thinking on the matter.
History will probably, assuming it is researched and written objectively, congratulate Bush on the fact that whereas in 2000 Libya was an active and vicious member of what he was accurately to describe as an "axis of evil" of rogue states willing to employ terrorism to gain its ends, four years later Muammar Gaddafi's WMD program was sitting behind glass in a museum in Oakridge, Tennessee. With his characteristic openness and at times almost self-defeating honesty, Bush has been the first to acknowledge his mistakes - for example, tardiness over Hurricane Katrina - but there are some he made not because he was a ranting right-winger, but because he was too keen to win bipartisan support.
The invasion of Iraq should probably have taken place months earlier, but was held up by the attempt to find support from UN Security Council members, such as Jacques Chirac's France, that had ties to Iraq and hostility towards the Anglo-Americans.
History will also take Bush's verbal fumbling into account, reminding us that Ronald Reagan also misspoke regularly, but was still a fine president. The first MBA president, who had a higher grade-point average at Yale than John Kerry, Bush's supposed lack of intellect will be seen to be a myth once the papers in his presidential library in the Southern Methodist University in Dallas are available.
Films such as Oliver Stone's W, which portray him as a spitting, oafish frat boy who eats with his mouth open and is rude to servants, will be revealed by the diaries and correspondence of those around him to be absurd travesties of this charming, interesting, beautifully mannered history buff who, were he not the most powerful man in the world, would be a fine person to have as a pal.
Instead of Al Franken, history will listen to Bob Geldof praising Bush's efforts over AIDS and malaria in Africa; or to Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister of India, who told him last week: "The people of India deeply love you." And certainly to the women of Afghanistan thanking him for saving them from Taliban abuse, degradation and tyranny.
When Abu Ghraib is mentioned, history will remind us that it was the Bush administration that imprisoned those responsible for the horrors. When water-boarding is brought up, we will see that it was used on only three suspects, one of whom was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, al-Qa'ida's chief of operational planning, who divulged vast amounts of information that saved hundreds of innocent lives. When extraordinary renditions are queried, historians will ask how else the world's most dangerous terrorists should have been transported. On scheduled flights?
The credit crunch, brought on by the Democrats in Congress insisting on home ownership for non-creditworthy people, will initially be blamed on Bush, but the perspective of time will show that the problems at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac started with the deregulation of the Clinton era. Instead, Bush's very un-ideological but vast rescue package of $US700 billion ($1 trillion) might well be seen as lessening the impact of the squeeze and putting America in position to be the first country out of recession, helped along by his huge tax-cut packages since 2000.
Sneered at for being simplistic in his reaction to September 11, Bush's visceral responses to the attacks of a fascistic, totalitarian death cult will be seen as having been substantially the right ones.
Mistakes are made in every war, but when virtually the entire military, diplomatic and political establishment in the West opposed it, Bush insisted on the surge in Iraq that has been seen to have brought the war around, and set Iraq on the right path. Today its gross domestic product is 30 per cent higher than under Saddam, and it is free of a brutal dictator and his rapist sons.
The number of US troops killed during the eight years of the war against terror has been fewer than those slain capturing two islands in World War II, and Britain has lost fewer soldiers than on a normal weekend on the Western Front. As for civilians, there have been fewer Iraqis killed since the invasion than in 20 conflicts since World War II.
Iraq has been a victory for the US-led coalition, a fact that the Bush-haters will have to deal with when perspective finally, perhaps years from now, lends objectivity to this fine man's record.
Andrew Roberts's Masters and Commanders: How Roosevelt, Churchill, Marshall and Alanbrooke Won the War in the West is published by Penguin.
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Come to think of it, why am I stating the obvious? 
Be more careful to aim the point next time guys, that went way over the target's head.
