Disgusting Moments from the Bush Presidency - None Involving Kanye West

So apparently, George W. Bush thinks that one of the most disgusting moment of his presidency was when Kanye West called him a racist. Really? Are you kidding me? Here is a short list of way more disgusting moments of the nightmare of an eight years spent under Bush:

Hurricane Katrina
Stories of conditions at the Superdome and images of the devastation are still seared in my memory.

September 11, 2001
The worst terrorist attack on our soil took place under George Bush's watch. How about the images of people who jumped to their death from the World Trade Center rather than face the fiery destruction? How about seeing people holding photos of their loved one, hoping to find out what happened to them? How about the sight of the Twin Towers crumbling to dust? What the terrorists did to us on that day was devastating and disgusting.

Abu Ghraib
Disgusting is the perfect word to describe what was going on in this Iraqi prison, where our soldiers were torturing and humiliating Iraqi prisoners. It was embarrassment to this country, tarnished our reputation, and endangered us even more as jihadists leveraged the photos as a perfect recruiting tool.

Wall Street greed
The unfettered greed and accumulation of wealth that took place under the Bush presidency and ultimately led to the financial collapse of 2008 and the need to pour billions and billions of taxpayer money into the banks to stabilize the markets and prevent another Great Depression was indeed disgusting. The fact that these bankers continued to make literally billions of dollars in bonuses following the bailout? Reprehensible.

The Unjustified Iraqi War
Let's not forget that the Bush Administration lied in order to lead this country into war against Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 and did not have any weapons of mass destruction. This war has resulted in over 4,000 U.S. deaths and 30,000 U.S. injuries. The number of Iraqi civilian casualties is a disputed figure that ranges from the thousands to over a million, but it definitely dwarfs the number people who died on 9/11.

The Outing of Valerie Plame
For Dick Cheney and Co to actually put politics above the safety of a CIA agent and the success of her work is absolutely disgusting.

America as Torturers
The fact that America began using waterboarding, a technique of torture that we executed Japanese soldiers for, is abhorrent. This authorization of torture came all the way from the top, as we now know from Bush's book and his talk show rounds. We lost the moral high ground under Bush and Cheney.

Yes, George, there were a quite a number of disgusting moments in your presidency. The fact that a celebrity went on TV -- after seeing horrifying image after image of his fellow African-Americans in a great American city being left to fend for themselves for days on end after a natural disaster -- and said something mean about you? That's not one of them.

September 11th and its Long-Lasting Impact

Last year, on this date, I wrote this post remembering September 11th. At that time, I wanted to focus on remembering those who perished on that fateful day. Now, one year later, with hatred, fear and bigotry even more pronounced, I can't help but reflect on the long lasting negative impact September 11th has had on this country. It's like we are still reeling from the blow to our innocence. My sister compared it to a case of national post traumatic stress disorder, and observing the turmoil and divisiveness taking place right now, I have to agree. The fear is so heightened that people are talking about "terror babies" and concocting wild scenarios of Islamic community centers being "victory mosques" or training compounds. There is no basis in fact for any of these outlandish theories, but people are still so scared, they will believe anything. And the very freedoms we are supposedly hated for and are supposed to be defending (freedom of religion, freedom from unlawful search and seizure, freedom from cruel and unusual punishment) are slipping through our fingers as fear takes over our rational minds and our Constitutional rights are diluted.

And of course, the money we have spent on the so-called "War on Terror" that could have helped our economy through the financial crisis is gone with absolutely nothing to show for it. Osama bin Laden was never found, Al Qaeda is still recruiting, we are caught in a quagmire in Afghanistan, and Iraq is a mess.

Yes, I remember 9/11 with terrible sadness, but now it's as much for where we are today as for what happened that horrible morning nine years ago.