Your 2016 Presidential Candidate Speculation Thread

Who could've thought Presidentin' would be so darn hard!

"I don't want to have to tell those people they died for nothing... (please don't make me say it)"

going back in time wld be extremely tight actually

to me the best response is prob "i wldve invaded north korea instead"

then at least ppl know that when u go back in time they will still sacrifice

I guess it's cool to make people die for no good reason, as long as everyone is too polite to talk about it

xp

"i wldve invaded a very cool to invade country that i will prob still invade if... you make me the next president of the united states! and if u dont ill never tell u which country it is it could be any of them and there are more than one hundred"

a good debate question wld be "which country will u invade if elected president"

No fair invading Grenada again, though. It's paid its dues.

they would all say Iran

if you could invade any central american country, which one would you choose and why?

Walmart-Clinton pledges to save Rwanda this time

candidates lining up for this one

Talking Points Memo ‏@TPM 2m2 minutes ago
Rand Paul to Jeb Bush: "invading Iraq was a mistake" — even as a hypothetical

Talking Points Memo ‏@TPM 24h24 hours ago
Chris Christie: I wouldn't have invaded Iraq knowing what we know now

is someone gonna punch a hole in that "knowing what we know now" cuz um there were a bunch of us who knew BACK THEN that it was a stupid fucking idea

but we were all unpatriotic terrorist-sympathizing dangerously naive idjits

and/or professional weapons inspectors

sad lol

indulging the convenient collective amnesia of "mistakes were made/what we know now" media narrative infuriates me so much - as if there are not very specific people to blame for that war, and as if everyone who went along with it shouldn't have to admit that they were either too gullible or too cowardly to stop it.

otm

Most of us were there during those horrible months in 2002 and 2003. Of course We Didn't Know if Saddam had nukes or bio weapons -- that was never the point! He had nothing do with 9-11, the sanctions were working, and what was the bloody rush? Plenty of countries own nukes, and only has used them iirc.

We also knew then and now that you are more likely to be killed by your own furniture than a terrorist plot.

also that invading north korea wldve been a lot cooler

think of the "24" episodes it could have inspired! K-Suth glowering about a foot rest falling on a child's head.

y'know invading North Korea probably would've gone more smoothly

The invasion went great, occupation the issue

eh we coulda left that to South Korea

i know! cause u can just give it to south korea after duh hello earth to george bush!

and now north korea actually does have nukes and is the worst country that puts all of its ppl into camps and wont even let them have internet

ur hilarious

my new internet persona is liberal guy who thinks we shd invade north korea

its... not too late

We never invaded Cuba :(

I feel like if we start making enough noise now we can totally get "invade North Korea" onto Hil-dog's platform

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CE6sfwBVIAAukJy.png

"knowing what we know now" is also doing a lot of rhetorical/ideological work, by binding together "we now know that there were no WMDs, because if there had been, then it surely would have been right!" and "we now know that it was an enormous long-term nightmare with a huge cost in american life and dollars, whereas it would have been fine if it was short and we just killed tens of thousands of iraqis!" and maybe other variants, into a vaguer, bite-sized "hey, hindsight's always 20/20 right? whattyagonnado?" thing that (a) absolves the guilty, as Οὖτις, Alfred and others have discussed, and (b) lets somebody take what now seems popular or self-evident ("the war was bad") without exactly explaining why.

via Sprout Social

more lolz with Jeb:

Ziedrich: The threat of ISIS was created by the Iraqi Coalition Authority which ousted the entire government of Iraq. It was when 30,000 individuals who were part of the Iraqi military, they were forced out, they had no employment, they had no income. Yet they were left with access to all of the same arms and weapons. Your brother created ISIS.

Bush: Is that a question?

Ziedrich: You don’t need to be pedantic to me, sir.

Bush: Pedantic? Wow.

Ziedrich: You could just answer my question.

Bush: So what is the question?

Ziedrich: My question is why are you saying that ISIS was created by us not having a presence in the Middle East when it’s pointless wars, when we sent young men to die for the idea of American exceptionalism? It’s this idea – like, why are you spouting nationalistic rhetoric to get us involved in more wars?

Bush: We respectfully disagree... Al Qaeda had been taken out, there was a fraudulent system that could have been brought up to create, to eliminate the sectarian violence and we had an agreement that the president could have signed, it would have kept 10,000 troops, which is less than what we have in Korea. It could have created the stability that would have allow for Iraq to progress. The net result was, the opposite occurred because immediately that void was filled. And so, look, you can rewrite history all you want but the simple fact is that we’re in a much more unstable place because America pulled back.

you can rewrite history all you want

you sure can

We never invaded Cuba :(

That botch on 4/17/61 doesn't count?

Hell, the moon landing counts as more of an invasion than that one.

That's it! We can invade the moon! Problem solved.

blow up the moon imo

this writer has me blocked on twitter idk why http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/jeb-bush-iraq-question-week

http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1383499560l/3422651.jpg

Pretty good book.

http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/05/13/college-student-to-jeb-bush-your-brother-created-isis/

nyt link to it

Hillary tweets:

Hillary Clinton ‏@HillaryClinton May 7

Stand with Hillary if you agree it’s time for criminal justice reform. Add your name!

In private conversations, Mr. Bush’s allies have often taken note that his brother’s approval ratings among likely primary and caucus voters are sky high.

this is kind of incredible tbh, I had thought the base had disowned Dubya as a RINO what with his deficit-busting spending etc.

social justice apple pie

breaking

Talking Points Memo ‏@TPM 13s13 seconds ago
Jeb Bush now says he "would not have gone into Iraq"