George W Bush involves himself in Haiti...

[max_tranmere]

Agreed.

[David Johnson]

Lets get to the point here.

If Bush raises 20 million dollars from his business contacts for the Haiti fund and Clinton raises 10 million dollars.

1. As a fellow fund raiser or charity do you refuse the 20 million dollars from Bush? Yes or No?

2. As a Haitian caught in the quake do you demand that the 20 million dollars not be used to buy medical aid and food for aid? Yes or No?

D

[max_tranmere]

No and no.
The point though is that if someone is a tosser like Bush is, you can still dislike them for all the terrible things they've done even if they are doing a bit of good now. As I said in a comment above Bush hardly redeems himself with this, but as far as the people in Haiti are concerned any money coming in is a helpful and good thing. Could it not have happened without Bush's involvment, or with him doing it a bit less publicly? He may be well connected to big business but an appeal where every American could be asked to give, say, just $3.00 each would raise ?1 billion in aid money. After 9/11 in New York big business in America were bending over backwards to donate money to New York and I'm sure they would be just as keen to do it for Haiti if Obama asked.

[David Johnson]

These are the answers I would expect.

The subject of your initial post is "George Bush involves himself..." as if he put himself forward.

He didnt. Obama asked Bush and Clinton to get involved in fund-raising.

The reasons for this are obvious. Bush, a Republican President for two terms. Clinton, a Democratic President over two periods.

Their business contacts are vast and by setting up a joint fund they bring together the nation in terms of right and centre ground and they are as likely as anyone to achieve the maximum contributions from private citizens and businesses.

All we know is that Bush was asked by Obama to do this and he said Yes.

All your comments about why Bush is doing this are totally your guesswork.

I repeat what you, Porn Historian, me think about Bush is totally and completely irrelevant in this scenario. What matters is how good a job two past Presidents over a period of 20 years in power can do with their business connections to raise money.

I believe that they have as good as, if not better chance than anybody else.

D

[welkram]

Totally agree with you Max.

However,Obama must have had some reason to apoint him, could it have been that GWB becoming involved would be able to raise tens of millions of (none-goverment) donated dollars from his mega rich friends and his ex kitchen cabinet colleagues. That being the case it would have been a very wise decision on behalf of the President to make this appointment.

[Deano!]

I am possibly the only person in the world who likes Dubbya and if he can press his mates in the business world to cough up some money then its a good thing. No matter what he does, he'll get criticised and that makes me think he's probably OK.

[RoddersUK]

Bush Senior and Junior, were and still are, the biggest pair of ignorant greedy bastards ever to sit in the Oval Office in my lifetime.
Bush Junior was, and still is, the most ignorant yellow bastard to sit in the Oval Office.
At least Clinton was clever, and he did screwed wimmin.
It is patently obvious that one of Bushs' cronies has suggested that there will be brownie points to be earned by supporting the Haiti relief. This is something that the US government is more than capable of doing without the intervention of this dumbshit.

[beutelwolf]

I remember a few years ago seeing an article about Dubya on a German website, describing him as a right-wing war monger.

It was not any old website, it was the one of Deutsche Nationalzeitung, essentially the party organ of the German neofascists.

[Sam Slater]

It's probably due to him having emancipated ethnic groups who aren't white. I doubt they'd have said that if GWB had moved in against Mugabe when he was busy killing, raping and turfing out white farmers.