Worst President of the 20th century

[Don Breezio]

to whoever said we should put bush on there....i dont agree...i hate bush with a passion...can't stand the guy...but the fact is we've had worse...Nixon kicks bush's ass for the worst president easily...i dunno if nixon would take it for the worst of all time...but who knows.

[Don Jacob]

HOOVER

c'mon 3 words THE GREAT DEPRESSION!


also a big reason why the economy was so great during Clinton's term was the END of the cold war....most of the U.S's spending during the Cold War was on defense ...once the cold war ended there was a gajillion dollars out there  due to the factthat the US cut down on defense spending.

[Now_Im_Not_Banned]

I voted for Hoover...Ulysses Grant was the worst of all time, though.

[Jay ay Beee]

Excuse me...Gerald Ford!!!!

[GoodLuvn169]

Excuse me...Gerald Ford!!!!

wtf? Gerald Ford, how can you say Gerald Ford is the worst, and not Carter?

[infinite59]

Do you know what happened in Iran? Iraq? Nicaragua? Guatemala? Afghanistan?

id like to hear your interpretation of it.

GUATEMALA:
United Fruit Company (now known as Chiquita) has long exerted enormous influence throughout Central America and within the United States Government. It had grown to be the most important corporation in Guatemala. United Fruit controlled roughly 40% of the most fertile land, owned a railroad, held a monopoly on electricity production and ran the port facilities in Puerto Barrios, Atlantic Coast.
Though United Fruit owned huge tracts of land, it paid little in the way of property tax in Guatemala in part because they claimed their land was only worth a fraction of it's real value on tax receipts. When Arbenz expropriated 400,000 of their 500,000 acres, he offered them the $1.2 million they had claimed it was worth. United Fruit demanded $16 million.

When Arbenz refused, they turned to their friends in the United States Government to assist. Some, like Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs John Moors Cabot had family ties to the company. Others, such as U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Henry Cabot Lodge, were major stockholders. The Dulles Brothers had both worked as lawyers for United Fruit's legal firm. With connections such as these, it was not difficult for UFCo. to convince the U.S. Government of the need for action against Arbenz.


PANAMA: This is out of a documentary called "The Panama Deception", in which they have actualy footage of the attack.

Noriega was head of Panama’s military intelligence and had a long standing relationship with the United States.  He had been on the CIA payroll since the 60’s.  When George Bush became Director of the CIA in 1976, under President Ford, he inherited Noriega as a contact.  Despite evidence that Noriega was involved in drug trafficking, Bush kept Noriega on the payroll.  In fact, he increased Noriega’s salary to more than $100,000 a year and eliminated a requirement that intelligence reports on Panama include information on drug trafficking.

With support from the CIA, Noriega was able to outmaneuver his rivals and in August of 1983, he became Commander of the Panamanian Military.   As the Reagan administration expanded its covert war against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, Noriega became increasingly helpful.  Working with the CIA, and with Israeli arms dealers, Noriega helped coordinate an arms supply network to provide weapons to contra bases in northern Costa Rica.

In 1984, he angered the Reagan administration by hosting Latin American leaders at the Contadora Peace Talks.  The talks called for an end to U.S. intervention in Central American affairs.

Reagan said: "“We do want Noriega out of there and a return to a civilian democratic government.”

The U.S. now undertook a systematic effort to overthrow Noriega.  Economic sanctions were stepped up and additional troops were dispatched to Panama. The United States declared in effect that Panama’s General Manuel Noriega is a threat to this country’s national security.

George Bush, Sr.:  “Mr. Noriega, the drug indicted, drug-related, indicted dictator of Panama.  We want to bring him to justice.  We want to get him out and we want to restore democracy to Panama ....”

On December 20th, U.S. troops invaded Panama.  The invasion was code-named Operation Just Cause.  Shortly after midnight, U.S. troops simultaneously attacked 27 targets, many of which were in densely populated areas.  One of the primary targets in Panama City was the headquarters of the Panamanian Defense Forces, located in the crowded neighborhood of El Chorillo.  U.S. troops shelled the area for four hours before moving in and calling for surrender.

AS FOR IRAN/NICARAGUA, READ UP ON THE IRAN-CONTRA AFFAIR. WHAT HAPPENED IS WIDELY KNOWN, AND MY INTERPRETATION WOULDN'T BE ANY DIFFERENT FROM WHAT YOU ALREADY KNOW, OR WILL KNOW.

IRAQ: ( I copied this from a thread I had made in the past, written by myself)

During the 1920s the US and Britain had oil fields in the Middle East after its discovery a few years before. After World War II, OPEC raised the price of oil from $3 to $22 per barrel. That's why Abdel Karim Qassim (Iraqi leader before Saddam) placed all oil fields under the government's control. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger even publicly stated that "Middle East oil is much too important a commodity to be left in the hands of the Arabs" (That line alone explains the whole Middle East conflict, and why we're there)The CIA attempted several times to assassinate him, but remained unsuccessful, until they found their man, Saddam Hussein. In a coup, Saddam took over the country, and was in full control by 1968. Under CIA direction, he killed Communists and radicals. We provided Saddam with weapons, including chemicals. Similar thing was going on in Iran, where we replaced the ruler who wanted to place all oil under government control, with the Shah. We assisted the Shah with $22 billion between 1972-1976 in weaponry alone. When Iraq went to war with Iran, 55 countries were providing them with resources, 29 of which were assisting both countries. That included the U.S., who claimed that it was assisting neither country. Again, we were playing the double standard to boost our arms industry. After the war with Iran, Iraq was $40 billion in debt. The country was pretty much devastated. At the time there was a limit placed on the amount of oil that each OPEC country could produce. And Kuwait was producing 20% more than it was allowed to, which brought oil prices around the world down, and made the Western world very happy. But, by Kuwait doing that, Iraq lost one-third of its income, at a time it needed it most. Now this is were things got messy. The US continously, publicly claimed that it had no defense of Kuwait. They let Saddam know that they were not backing Kuwait. Saddam fell for the trap and invaded Kuwait. Before Saddam invaded however, according to Gulf War veterans, the US military was already preparing for a fight against Iraq. They were already carrying out routines in the desert, and informed the soldiers that they were most likely gonna fight Iraq. In addition, the US claimed that Iraq sent almost its entire army to Kuwait, which was complete bullshit. The US then went to Saudi Arabia and convinced them with more bullshit that Iraq was planning to invade Saudi Arabia. The US wanted the Saudis to let them into their country, for reasons that Kissinger explained many years before: OIL IS TOO DAMN IMPORTANT TO BE IN THE HANDS OF ARABS. We convinced the Saudis that they were going to be under attack. We told them that Saddam had soldiers lined up at the border, but satellite pictures proved otherwise. Satellite photos showed that there were minimal troops (which were always there) along the Saudi/Iraqi border. In fact, most Iraqi troops were to the north, and the majority of the rest were in Baghdad alongside the Republican Guard. Then we bombed the shit out of Iraq. The US military claimed that it was pin-pointing on only military facilities and such. That claim was false. The US bombed reservoires, destroyed their access to clean water, bombed electrical companies, generators, phone companies, food processing plants, and basically anything that was necessary for the survival of people. Children were dying all across the country. Pinpoint? Yeah right. Now comes another catch. People start gathering together and plan a rebellious movement to overthrow Saddam and the Iraqi government. As soon as that happens George Bush calls for an immediate end to the war. General Schwarzkopf informs Bush that in another two days they can gain control of Baghdad and get rid of Saddam and his regime. Bush stays with his decision and wants an end to the war. He ordered US troops out, giving Saddam a chance to crush the rebellion. And that was that.

BTW... guess who had exclusive rights to offshore oil in the Gulf at that time? George W Bush... so daddy was making his crackbaby a lil money.

*About 250,000 Iraqis were killed; 100,000 of which were civilians, half of those being children
*We didn't rebuild what we destroyed, and due to our sanctions placed on them, we didn't give them  the chance to do so either
*In the 8 years since the end of the war, 1,500,000 Iraqis have died as a direct result of US/UN sanctions; half of those are kids under the age of 5
*100-200 kept dying daily
*We used 500 tons of depleted uranium bombs and artillery shells. The radioactive dust caused birth defects and cancer to soar

What right did we have? Why did we do all this? Kissinger seemed to have the answer: OIL IS TOO DAMN IMPORTANT TO BE IN THE HANDS OF THE ARABS

Sad, sad shit, and now we're there again... I guess all the oil is worth fucking the country up to a greater extent and rebuilding it after....



AFGHANISTAN:

Basically, the U.S. assisted the Mujahideen during the war against Russia (Cold War). Russia invaded in 1979, and the United States sponsored Afghanistan, giving them money, weapons, and training them. Guess who one of the guys there was? Osama bin Laden. He was a close ally to the U.S. and because of his money he was willing to help Afghanistan with, the U.S. loved him. Anyways, those guys were trained by the CIA, and eventually defeated Russia. Good. Here's where everything went wrong. The U.S. just left without helping Afghanistan rebuild, or reorganize themselves. The U.S. left, leaving all the weapons behind. So now you have a third world country, with no government, and full of weapons. Civil war was raging until the Taliban arrived. The Taliban once again were trained by the CIA in Pakistan, and were helped to power. Why did we want the Taliban in power? Well it just so happens that UNOCAL wanted to build a pipeline down Afghanistan, but a legitamite government had to be in place to give the okay. For years, the Taliban had ruled with their strict Islamic laws, killing people,etc. The U.S. didn't give a fuck. In addition to all that, Afghanistan became a breeding ground for other extremists/terrorists. The U.S. didn't care until the Taliban said "No, we won't let you build your pipeline across our country". Then the U.S. started portraying them as evil wrongdoers and all that bullshit you're fed. If that's what they are, and have been, why did we help them to power and support them until they declined us permission for that pipeline. 9/11 happened, and the U.S. found its excuse to attack. No Afghan was involved in 9/11, but due to the breeding ground and bin Laden hiding there, the U.S. attacked. Cool. No Biggie. But now what? There is no stability there, and the Afghan leaders in place are former human rights abusers. They also pocket a huge amount of money provided for reconstruction. There's a lot more to all this, but I think you see the point.





IF THAT DOESN'T SATISFY YOU, HERE'S A SPEECH FROM JOHN STOCKWELL, FORMER CIA STATION CHIEF:

“My expertise, as you know, is CIA, Marine Corp, three CIA Secret Wars.  I had a position in the National Security Council in 1975 as the Chief of the Angola Task Force running the Secret War in Angola.  It was the third CIA Secret War I was part of.”

 

“The National Security law creating the National Security Council and the CIA, as you know, was passed in 1947.  The CIA was given its charter to perform such other duties and functions as might be necessary to national security interests and given a vague authority to protect its sources and methods.  I think it was in the mid ‘80s that I coined this phrase the ‘Third World War’ because in my research I realized that we were not attacking the Soviet Union in the CIA’s activities, we were attacking people in the Third World.  And I am going to just quickly, in the interest of time, just give you a little sense of what that means, this Third World War.”

 

“Basically, it’s the third, I believe in terms of loss of life and human destruction, the third bloodiest war in all of history.  They undertake to run operations in every corner of the globe.  They also undertook the license of operating just totally above and beyond U.S. laws.  They had a license, if you will, to kill, but also they took that to a license to smuggle drugs, a license to do all kinds of things to other people and other societies in violation of international law, our law, and every principle of nations working together for a healthier and more peaceful world.”

 

“Meanwhile, again, they battled to convert the U.S. legal system in such a way that it would give them control of our society.  Now we have massive documentation of what they call the secret wars of the CIA.  We don’t have to guess or speculate. We had the Church committee investigate them in 1975 which gave us our first really in-depth powerful look inside this structure.”

 

“Senator Church said in the 14 years before he did his investigation that he found that they had run 900 major operations and 3000 minor operations.  And if you extrapolate that over the whole period of the 40 odd years that we’ve had a CIA, you come up with 3000 major operations and over 10,000 minor operations.  Every one of them illegal. Every one of them disruptive of the lives and societies of other peoples and many of them bloody and gory beyond comprehension, almost.”

 

“Extensively, we manipulated and organized the overthrow of functioning constitutional democracies in other countries.  We organized secret armies and directed them to fight in just about every continent in the world.  We encouraged ethnic minorities to rise up and fight.  People like the Mosquito Indians in Nicaragua, the Kurds in the Middle East, the Hmongs in Southeast Asia.”

 

“And of course, we have organized, and still do, fund death squads in countries around the world.  Like the Treasury Police in El Salvador which are responsible for most of the killing of the 50,000 people just in the ‘80s and there was 70,000 before that.  An orchestration of CIA secret teams and propaganda led us directly into the Korean War.  We were attacking China from the islands of Quemoy and Matsu, Thailand, Tibet, (a lot of drug trafficking involved in this by the way) until eventually we convinced ourselves to fight the Chinese in Korea and we had the Korean War and a million people were killed.  Same thing for the Vietnam War and we have extensive documentation of how the CIA was involved at every level of the national security complex because it’s a very cooperative thing into manipulating the nation into the Vietnam War.  And we wound up creating the Golden Triangle in which the CIA Air America airplanes were flying in arms to our allies and flying back out with the heroin.”

 

“We launched the largest; this is something that Jimmy Carter did, Admiral Turner brags about it, the operation in Afghanistan. The biggest single operation I am told in the history of CIA secret wars and sure enough very quickly we produced the Golden Crescent which is still the largest source of heroin perhaps in the world today.”

 

“Trying to summarize this Third World War that the CIA, the U.S. National Security Complex with the military all interwoven in it in many different ways, has been waging, let me just put it this way, the best heads that I coordinate with studying this thing, we count at least minimum figure six million people who’ve been killed in this long 40-year war that we have waged against the people of the Third World.”

 

“These are not Soviets, we have not been parachuting teams into the Soviet Union to kill and hurt and maim people, especially not since 1954 when they developed actually the capability of dropping atomic weapons on the United States.  They aren’t British, French, Swedes, Swiss, Belgians, we don’t do bloody gory operations in the countries of Europe.  These are all people of the Third World.  They are people of countries like the Congo, Vietnam, Kampuchea, Indonesia, Nicaragua, where conspicuously, they nor their governments, do not have the capability of doing any physical hurt to the United States.  They don’t have ICBM’s, they don’t have armies or navies.  They could not hurt us if they wanted to.  There has rarely been any evidence that they really wanted to.  And that, in fact is perhaps the whole point. If they had had ICBMs we probably wouldn’t have done the things to them for fear of retaliation.”  

 
“Cheap shots, if you will, killing people of other countries of the world who cannot defend themselves under the guise of secrecy and under the rubric of national security.”    

Thank you brother.   (Jazakallahukiarun) for supplying me with this information.

[M Dogg™]

Excuse me...Gerald Ford!!!!

wtf? Gerald Ford, how can you say Gerald Ford is the worst, and not Carter?

I still can't believe Carter, JFK and Clinton are on your list. Carter was a great man, ask anyone, just not the best president. His great at building houses in 3rd world nations, and doing handling foreign affars in the name of peace. His a great man, but president, his not in the top of my list at all, but his not at the bottom.

Clinton was a good president that was able for flow more money in the government by raising taxes, and cutting military spending, 2 things conservatives hate and liberals love. At the time he was president it was the right thing to do, since we were in a recession, and the Cold War ended. How we were in a recession in 1992 is still beyojnd me, but Bush Sr. was continuing Reagon's economical plan, a plan that he originally did not agree with. Remember, Bush Sr. hated Reagon, but agreed to be his running mate for the betterment of the party. Reagonomics I wouldn't say is a bad idea, but after the Cold War, it was not the best plan economically. I wouldn't list Bush Sr. either as a bad president, since he falls in the middle of my list. Same with Gerald Ford, who was just there as a middle man to hold the office.

And JFK, ok, you are on crack. He raised military spending and cut taxes in his very short term in office. You know what that's called today, a Republican. Look up what he did, he is responsible for the largest tax cut in U.S. history, and guess what, it caused the biggest economical increase in U.S. history. The economy never boomed like it did in the 60's until the 90's. He saw that the outdated New Deal tax rate was in need of cutting, something Eisenhower didn't, and decided to redo it all. He was killed shorty after taking office, something that should not work against him, nor work in his favor like it seems to do.

My list for worst presidents.

Henry Taft -

Lyndon Johnson - As much as this pains me to say, LBJ was the 3rd worst president of this century. He continued to cut taxes like JFK did, but the increase involvement in Vietnam was too costly. He wanted to cut taxes, but the budget could not hold it, and at the same time, he wanted to increase social spending with his Great Society, or the War on Poverty. A fan of FDR, he wanted a New Deal of his own. The former teacher targeted education, and put in many of the programs you see today, such as College Grants, and TRIO programs as Upward Bound to help poorer students (yes, even white ones as contrary to conservative belief) attend college, and also included increase in Social Securty and the first ever medical aid to elderly. The problem, at the time there was no money to pay for tax cuts, the most costly "military action" in history outside of World War II, and all the new social programs. Johnson though is also seen as the president that passed Civil Rights, championed for the poor as he grew up poor himself, and was showed great compassion, as he was a teacher, but for poor Mexican kids before his political career. It pains me to list him, because I like him as a person, for his work with Latinos, his work with Civil Rights, and his programs to get poor people in college (also the trick to get it passed, he included the middle class to be able to gain college aid since they pay the bulk of the taxes.) But in all honestly, he compromised himself too much, and was not a truly great leader, as he never became the leader he wanted to be. The end result of his presidency was the roits of 1968, in which in Chicago outside of the Convention, many liberal Democrats protested the war, and inside, many of the liberal Democrats also protested the war. In a time when much of the nation was liberal Democrat, many where turned off by the parties split, and voted for the Republican alternative... which leads me to the second worst president.

Richard Nixon - One of the most popular presidents, who was easily going to win his 1972 re-election bid, grew very fearful when he didn't need to be. Without a doubt, one of the smartest people to even hold the office, Nixon won in 1968 by promising to pull out of Vietnam. He didn't do it until it was just in time for elections in 1972, and of course that was just enough to get the vote of the people. But economical woes worried him, as the United States started to feel pressure for other countries like Japan in terms of producing quality produces at cheap prices, and the United States was running low on oil and other goods. Nixon felt that would be enough to ruin his re-election bid, dispite being very popular with the people over any Democrat chosen since the roits outside and inside of the Democrat Convention in 1968 changed the Democrat party into the party you see today. Nixon then ordered the Watergate break in, and the rest was history. People soon forgot the Vietnam ending president, and Nixon gets blamed now for much of the energy shortages back then.

Herbert Hoover - when the Crash of 1929 hit, shortly after, the stock market bounced back to all time highs for that time. The economy never truly crashed, but Hoover was shaken. People that worked in the white house at the time basically said it was as if he had preformed the rest of his presidency from under his office desk, shaking in fear. His lack of leadership was felt, and the country feel with him. Also a racist, he felt no white person should suffer from the Depression, and tried to soften the blow to white people, but leaving blacks, latinos and asians out. Later he became a critic of the New Deal, which was just on tool used by Roosevelt to pull the United States out of Depression.

[Perfection]

It's amazing to me that people credit Clinton with the economy, when he clearly had nothing to do with the tecnological innovation sparked by the internet which drove the economy farther than it ever should have gone in the 90's, and then eventually crashed back down to ruins as Bush was entering office.  

Yeah if you listen to Al Gore he was the reason for the economy because he invented the internet.

Nixon was the worst of the 20th

[Suffice]

Thanks, Funk for the post. It was very informative. I didnt know much about this until now.

[Jay ay Beee]

Come on M_Dogg LBJ was the greatest domestic President of the century after FDR.  He was responsible for Civil Rights and Medicare/aid.

[Lincoln]

Come on M_Dogg LBJ was the greatest domestic President of the century after FDR.  He was responsible for Civil Rights and Medicare/aid.

Exactly.

[M Dogg™]

Come on M_Dogg LBJ was the greatest domestic President of the century after FDR.  He was responsible for Civil Rights and Medicare/aid.

You are forgetting College Aid, programs like Upward Bound in intercity schools to help out poor high school students get ready for college, and government housing for homeless. I know. LBJ was by far on of the greatest domestic presidents of our time. But I think it would hypocritical of me to over look Vietnam, and at the sametime bash Bush for Iraq. I love LBJ. I am very lucky to benefit off of what he has done, but at the sametime, he did not take us out of Vietnam, a conflict started by Eisenhower, continued slightly by JFK, and taken further by LBJ. Johnson was not a military mind to say the least, and the way Vietnam was handled caused the death of 700,000 solders, look at U.S. lose in Iraq right now, it's no where close. Also, 1.7 million Vietnamese people died as a result of the war. That's over 2 million people, which is WAY more than the resent Iraq war, and Afganistan put together. LBJ was a great domestic president, yes, but he should not have lead a "conflict". Also, LBJ is the reason the old Democratic party split like it did, as the southern vote left the Democrats. The south was a strong Democrat region for over 100 years, and after 1968, the south became Republican, and the older Democrats also left. Like in 1912, when the Republican party split, and the liberals left the Republicans to first go Bull Moose, and then go FDR and New Deal, the old school Democrats left to first go American Independent, then later to go Republican waving the stars and bars. Not saying we miss those types of Democrats, but it's been harder to win an election since. And the funny thing is that no one complained about the Civil Rights that were given, everyone complained about Vietnam. Inside the Convention, the liberal Democrats were singing "We Shall Over Come" when Hurbert Humphery took the nomination. That does not look good on television. Funny fact, even though the Democrats feel apart in 1968, they still lost by a very small margin... lol. That's how strong the Democrat party was back then. You could not begin to imagion how strong they were. And Johnson's lack of a good foreign policy ended the Democrat's hold in Washington that they have had since 1932 when Roosevelt swept the United States into a New Deal. We still are living in FDR, and LBJ's legacy, but we liberals forget that the war we protested, was one of our presidents wars. Next time you protest about Iraq, think about that.

[dexter]

G W Bush

[Now_Im_Not_Banned]

G W Bush

20th century, buddy.