Debating the Bush legacy

>> but let us take a look at part of the tribute video to the presidents bush.

>> people will remember george and i think they will, for having the determination and the toughness and the persistence to be able to see us through in our country through such a very difficult time after the terrorist attack. i'm so proud of george.

>> integrity. honesty. never a scandal around his presidency. i think we forget the importance of that. they'll remember him for being an honest president who got a lot of things done, but i think the thing i take pride in is integrity.

>> history will remember him as a great president. not only was he well prepared for the job, but when the unexpected took place, he handled it with vision, a clear strategy, and calm nerves.

>> he is the most decent, honorable, wonderful, nobody's ever been as lucky as i have been. i want people to remember him as courageous. i want them to remember him as he is.

>> dad and i both know what it takes to be president. and there's no doubt in our mind that mitt romney will be a great president.

>> he's a good man.

>> and i hope that all of the people at the convention work really, really hard because i think the romneys are prepared. i think ann romney will be great. and i think mitt romney will do a fabulous job.

>> that video is the way that the -- both presidents bush are being represented at the rnc. neither of them is there in person. the republicans did not have to do this. they have brought the bush years back a little bit on second night. is this the right thing to do?

>> well, i think it's something they have to do, generationally speaking because the bush family is so engrained in american politics . it's rough history for the country. what the bushes put us through, especially bush 43 . i agree with some of the things that were said about bush 41 . he was probably one of the most qualified people as far as experience and all the different things he had done in government before he went into the oval office . and he did deal with gulf war i and it wasn't based on lies. the second time around, it was. honesty is not a word i would put to george w. bush , look at his budgeting process. the war is off budget, medicare, the tax cuts, all of those things, but you can make the case, and i said this to a georgetown university class just last year, you can make the case that george w. bush was one of the best conservative presidents the country had in terms of generational push. he put two people on the supreme court that delivered citizens united to us that we're dealing with to this very day in this election cycle. the bushes have had a tremendous impact. the country understands that we're dealing with the aftermath of the decisions that bush 43 made, that barack obama inherited, and now it's being hung on him, and i think the irony is that, well, i'll let that go for now. i know there is a great deal of anger in the country about the way things were handled under bush. there is a great deal, and there's a lot of people who are upset the way it unfolded and how we move forward from here is the big question.

>> what i think is remarkable is to see specifically bush foreign policy . dan senor , who was the spokesman for the bush iraq war effort at the invasion and after, at the top staffer for paul ryan .

>> and condoleezza rice . and for someone to suggest, you know, maybe i missed something, but for someone to suggest that saying weapons of mass destruction was somewhere was not there is not some kind of scandal, i mean, is absurd. you send us to war, people lose their lives on something that wasn't there. that's pretty scandalous to me.

>> i would like to jump in as someone who was honored to work for president bush . i think the notion that, and it was a name that republicans did not respond to effectively during the bush years, but the notion that george w. bush deliberately lied about weapons of mass destruction is complete and total nonsense. it's something that bill clinton talked about. it was something that most of the democrats on the intelligence committee s believed and saddam hussein had those weapons of mass destruction . he's a man of decency and integrity. he didn't do everything correct. mistakes were made in that administration like they are in every administration, but i think he did his best by this country every day he was in office.

>> it's one thing to say i believe they're there. it's another thing to say those weapons of mass destruction have been confirmed to be there by sources who did not confirm that. that was a lie, and it was told by condoleezza rice , dick cheney , and bush.

>> to assert that the president deliberately lied the country into war --

>> if somebody says something is confirmed that wasn't confirmed, that is an untruth or a lie. and then to have the same team, whether you say it was a fail eed team or a lying team, the team is primetime tonight with your new generation. condoleezza rice , senien senor, guess who is there tonight?

>> let's stipulate it was a lie. let's stipulate. we have between -- almost 5,000 american lives lost in that war. a minimum, a minimum, and this has been, of 100,000 iraqis. 100,000 human lives. that's a minimum. those lives do not weigh, i think, anywhere near as heavily on our body politic as they should. and that, to me, is amazing how much the spector of that has been removed. whether or not there were lies, it was still a policy engineered by that administration, and there is still has to be accountability, just in the basic conscience and soul of the people who oversaw that. whether or not you think it was deliberate.

>> the fact that the foreign policy team that brought us the iraq war , i think you're troith to stipulate, whether or not it was a lie, have been brought forward as if we should get new ideas from them, is