If we act militarily we’ll do it with great precision and focus very closely on our objectives. … We’re developing a very strong humanitarian aid package. We can win without destruction. We’re already putting into effect a post-Saddam Iraq, and I believe there’s a good basis for a better future. Iraq has a good bureaucracy and a civil society that’s relatively strong. It could be organized into a federation… GWB to JM Aznar, former PM of Spain, 2-22-2003
The economic malaise [1973] had at least three deep-rooted causes. First, the Johnson administration had attempted to pay for both the Great Society and the war in Vietnam without a major tax increase, generating huge federal deficits, a major expansion of the money supply, and the inevitable price inflation. Second, and more important, by the late 1960s American goods faced stiff competition in international markets from West Germany, Japan, and other emerging industrial powers…. Third, the American economy had depended heavily on cheap sources of energy; no nation was more dependent on the automobile and the automobile industry, and no nation was more careless in its use of fossil fuels in factors and homes. … When administration economists kept predicting an imminent upturn, journalists recalled General Westmoreland’s predictions of victory in Vietnam. –G.B.Tindall AMERICA: A NARRATIVE HISTORY (1984) pp 1313, 1314.
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