Dubya Files: The Character of G.W. Bush

Unmasked: The George W Bush the President Doesn't Want the World To See
Sunday Herald - 12 September 2004

With less than 50 days to the US polls and a 10-point lead over John Kerry, George W Bush’s re-election as President looks a breeze. Despite his dodgy past, he has successfully sold himself as a ‘hero’ War President and defender of traditional US values. How did he do it? Bush’s people have run riot over Kerry’s record, so what about the President’s?

By Neil Mackay, Investigations Editor

Is President George W Bush, who weaves a narrative about himself as a man of God, actually a charlatan? Is he really a wolf in sheep’s clothing? Is his faith a sham? Is he more bad boy than born again? More playboy than penitent?
This past month has seen John Kerry, Bush’s Democratic rival for the White House, take one almighty pasting from the Republican right wing over accusations that he exaggerated his military record in Vietnam. Kerry, a many times decorated navy Vietnam veteran, said the smear campaign was orchestrated by a Bush team desperate to divert attention from the woeful state of the US economy and the running sore of Iraq.

But this week it’s Bush’s turn to line up for a beating. But where Kerry has a single questionable question mark hanging over his past, Bush’s charge sheet for alleged wrongdoing has got it all – sex, drugs, cowardice, cruelty; his alleged failings and foibles are imperial in stature.

These are the issues being debated as a result of further revelations into the shrouded past of the President.

His Military Record

President Bush has wrapped himself in the Stars and Stripes since the horror of September 11. His presidency has pushed a simple message: America is in danger and he’s the man to keep the people safe; he’ll take the fight against the terrorists abroad and he’s proud of the USA’s troops.

If that is the case, why is Bush mired in a scandal about his Vietnam-era service, or lack of, with fresh allegations that he was able to sneak out of serving his country overseas because his daddy was famous, powerful and rolling in cash?

Bush joined the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam war as a pilot and never left the country. He even cut short his military commitment in 1973. In 1989, he told a local newspaper in Texas: “I regret not having gone to Vietnam.” He went on to say that “I did my time” and “I did my duty”.

Despite Bush’s claims, his service in the home-based National Guard is highly questionable. CBS Television’s acclaimed 60 Minutes programme interviewed Ben Barnes, a former speaker of the Texas House of Representatives, who said that he pulled strings for a Bush family friend to get George Jr into the National Guard so he could avoid service in Vietnam.

“I was a young, ambitious politician,” Barnes said, “doing what I thought was acceptable, that was important to make friends … I would describe it as preferential treatment.

“I was maybe determining life or death and that’s not a power that I want to have. I’ve thought about it an awful lot. You walk through the Vietnam memorial and, I tell you, you’ll think about it a long time.”

CBS also produced documents which allegedly showed that in 1973, Bush’s superior officer complained of being pressurised to “sugar-coat” an annual officer evaluation for Bush even though the future President had not been at the base for the year in question. His opponents accuse him of going awol – absent without leave.

According to airforce records, Bush did not meet his military commitments. On July 30, 1973, shortly before he moved from Houston, Texas, to Harvard to take an MBA course, he signed a document that declared: “It is my responsibility to locate and be assigned to another reserve forces unit or mobilisation augmentation position. If I fail to do so, I am subject to involuntary order to active duty for up to 24 months.”

Bush didn’t sign up with a National Guard unit when he moved to New England – but nor did he get drafted as a punishment. In May 1968, Bush signed a “statement of understanding” that he would “achieve satisfactory participation”, including attendance at 24 days of annual weekend duty and 15 days of annual active duty at home. The document also said that Bush would face two years in Vietnam for “unsatisfactory participation”.

Bush performed no service for an entire six-month period in 1972 and for a period lasting almost three months in 1973, yet Bush’s unit certified in late 1973 that his service had been “satisfactory”. His opponents say this was favouritism shown to a wilful rich boy.

Retired army colonel Gerald A Lechliter, who has studied Bush’s military records, says: “He broke his contract with the United States government – without any adverse consequences. And the Texas Air National Guard was complicit in allowing this to happen. He was a pilot. It cost the government a million dollars to train him to fly. So he should have been held to an even higher standard.”

The unit that Bush was assigned to was known as the Champagne Squadron because of the number of sons of American millionaires who served in it. The unit included the sons of former Texas governor John Connally and former senator Lloyd Bensten, as well as several members of the Dallas Cowboys American football team.

Retired Lt Col Albert C Lloyd Jr said that by not joining a unit in Massachusetts, Bush “took a chance that he could be called up for active duty, but the war was winding down and he probably knew that the airforce was not enforcing the penalty”.

Lawrence J Korb, an assistant secretary of defence in the Reagan White House, said Bush “gamed the system”, adding: “If I cheat on my income tax and don’t get caught, I’m still cheating on my income tax.”

When Bush enlisted in the US equivalent of the Territorial Army, he was given an automatic commission as a second lieutenant and underwent flight training for 13 months. In June 1970, he began what should have been a four-year posting with the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron. However, in May 1972 he moved to Alabama to work on a US senate campaign on the condition that he trained with the National Guard in that state.

Nobody has come forward with any memory of Bush serving in the National Guard while in Alabama or when he returned to Texas in 1973. In Alabama, Bush was removed from flight status as he failed to take an annual physical test in July 1972.

His last physical test had been in May 1971. Major General Paul A Weaver Jr, who retired in 2002 as head of the Pentagon’s Air National Guard, said: “There is no excuse for that. Aviators just don’t miss their flight physicals.”

After inspecting Bush’s brief record of flying, Weaver said: “I would not have let him near the airplane.” Weaver added: “It appears that nobody wanted to hold him accountable.” Former friends of the Bush family have said that Bush was sent to Alabama as he kept “getting in trouble and embarrassing the family”.

In May 1973, Bush’s superior officers said they could not complete his annual performance review as he had not been seen at the base in Houston for 12 months. Terry McAuliffe, chair of the Democratic National Committee, said that “the President did not serve honourably”.

Memos uncovered by CBS purport to show that Bush’s superior officer, Lt Col Jerry B Killian, felt he was being forced by his own commander, Brigadier General Walter B Staudt, to go soft on Bush for his underperformance.

The memo, dated August 1973, shows the political clout that Bush had and an attempt, opponents say, to embellish his service record. Bush’s father was a Houston congressman at the time of the Vietnam war.

Another Killian memo, headed “Subject: CYA” – a military acronym for “cover your ass” – reads that Staudt “has obviously pressured [Major-General Bobby W] Hodges more about Bush. I’m having trouble running interference and doing my job”.

The memo adds that Killian received “a message today … regarding Bush’s [annual officer efficiency report] and Staudt is pushing to sugar-coat it”. Killian also felt that Bush was “talking to someone upstairs” to engineer a move to Alabama.

Robert Strong, a friend of the late Killian who ran the Texas Air National Guard offices, said that because of Bush Killian had “found himself between a rock and a hard place”.

CBS reported that the White House did not dispute the authenticity of these documents. However, some questions have been raised about their provenance, with typographical experts saying the documents were produced by computers, not 1970s typewriters.

CBS, however, said it had the documents authenticated by its own experts. CBS also spoke to Killian’s superior, Major-General Hodges, who said the sentiments in the memos were the same as Killian expressed to him. However, Marjorie Connell, Killian’s widow, said she didn’t believe her husband would have used the words in the memos.

In a reversal of the sniper attacks launched on John Kerry and his military record by the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth organisation’s adverts on TV, an outfit calling itself Texans for Truth is going to start running television ads asking if Bush ever served with a unit in Alabama. The Republicans have already rubbished the planned ads as unfair and playing dirty.

Cocaine, Booze And Abortions

Being proved to be a little yellow- bellied about fighting in Vietnam would be mere collateral damage to the Bush campaign compared to the all-out nuclear holocaust which would ensue if the allegations made about Dubya’s cocaine use and abortion-fixing, in biographer and muck-raker Kitty Kelly’s forthcoming book on the Bush family, stand up to scrutiny.

Bush’s stance as a strongly moral Christian who prizes family values and Biblical ethics is just as powerful a pull on his supporters as his patriotism and militarism. Bush has come out as bitterly opposed to abortion. His acceptance speech for the presidential nomination at last month’s Republican Party Convention in New York City was peppered with sentiments about the rights of the unborn child and the wrongs of gay marriage.

The Republican party faithful see the President as a man of moral rectitude who will keep the liberal barbarians from the gates. But if, as alleged by Kelly, Bush used class A drugs and arranged for doctors to “kill” his own baby – as many in the party would regard an abortion – that would hole Bush below the waterline and scupper his chances of re-election.

Kelly – the bitch of biographers who has already assassinated the characters of such luminaries as the Reagans, Frank Sinatra, Jackie Onassis and the Windsors – says she spoke to the President’s sister-in-law Sharon Bush, who divorced the President’s brother, Neil.

Sharon Bush apparently told Kelly: “The President did coke at Camp David when his father was President [1989-93] and not just once either.” Camp David is the US presidential retreat. Sharon Bush, however, is now denying that she made the cocaine claim to Kelly.

Proof of coke use in the late 1980s and early 1990s would mean that Bush used the drug after his reported conversion to Christianity. If that was proved to be the case then the one thing that protects Bush from his hard- partying past – his born-again status and his repentance for past sins – would fall to bits. The cocaine claim is therefore political dynamite. Bush has pursued America’s so-called war on drugs with a vengeance. US jails, which now have the highest population figure ever, are filled with drug users.

Even more damaging is the allegation aired by Kelly in her book, The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty, that she has gathered “a great deal of circumstantial evidence” that the President helped arrange for a girlfriend to have an abortion in the 1970s.

Kelly says four friends of the woman who had the abortion provided affidavits to the authoritative US current affairs magazines Time and Newsweek about the abortion but the magazines did not run with the story.

Kelly also brings up allegations of George Bush Sr’s affair with his English secretary Jennifer Fitzgerald, which apparently devastated Barbara Bush, his wife. The book further delves into the sexually transmitted diseases which have afflicted one of Bush’s brothers following his habitual use of Asian prostitutes.

Sharon Bush told Kelly: “The Bushes don’t practise what they preach.” Bush has always been evasive about drugs. During his first presidential campaign, he said: “The current FBI form asks the question, ‘Did somebody use drugs within the last seven years?’ I will be glad to answer that question and the answer is no.”

Kelly quotes a former lieutenant, who refers to Bush not taking his medical during his Air National Guard days, saying: “There is circumstantial evidence pointing to substance abuse by Bush during this period.”

The book claims that Bush first used coke at university in the mid-1960s. Kelly quotes two sources, one of whom says Bush sold him the class A drug. Another acquaintance of Bush says that after work, Bush, in his mid-20s, “liked to sneak out back for a joint of marijuana or into the bathroom for a line of cocaine”.

There are even claims that First Lady Laura Bush was a drug dealer in her youth. She is the darling of the US right, adored for her schoolmarm demeanour and whiter-than-white aura, and one of the biggest assets in Bush’s attempt to appeal to middle America. But Kelly says she was the “go-to-girl for dime bags” of grass at the Southern Methodist University. Kelly quotes a PR executive, Robert Nash, who says: “She not only smoked dope but she sold dope.”

Laura was also involved in a car smash that killed a friend when she was 17. The accident happened when she ran through a stop sign in her Chevrolet sedan on a clear night in November 1963, drove into an intersection and struck the Corvair sedan of 17-year-old Michael Douglas. No charges were ever filed.

Laura is also supposed to have had to flee her marital home on a number of occasions because of Bush’s apparently abusive behaviour. However, the police were said to have never been involved.

A friend of Bush, Tobery Macdonald, says: “Poor Georgie. He couldn’t relate to women unless he was loaded.” Another “friend” added: “He went out of his way to act crude. It’s quite amazing that someone you held in such low esteem became President.” A third says Bush wasn’t interested in anything except “booze and sports”.

In 1976, Bush was found drunk driving down his parents’ street in Washington. When his father challenged him, Bush apparently offered to fight his dad, saying: “You wanna go mano a mano right here?”

His consumption of alcohol – primarily beer and whisky – turned him into a belligerent boor. At one society party in Houston, he asked an older woman: “So, what’s sex like after 50, anyway?”

Bush allegedly confronted his alcoholism in 1986 – a decision he says set him off on the road to being born again. He dried out, joined an evangelical group and found the Lord.

Kelly’s book quotes a family friend saying of Bush: “George has no humility whatsover about being President. He really thinks he deserves the office; that it’s his by merit, not default. With each political job he’s had, he’s gotten worse, more arrogant. Now he’s unbearable.” Kelly’s book concludes that Bush’s faith makes him invulnerable to self-doubt – just like his political friend and fellow Christian Tony Blair.

A Caring Christian, A Compassionate Conservative?

America may not have the same sensibilities about the death penalty as “old” Europe, but there can’t be many US citizens who embrace the killing of their fellow man as gleefully as the President.

Perhaps the most disturbing example of Bush’s zeal for the Death House was shown in 1998 when he was governor of the state of Texas. Karla Faye Tucker was then facing execution by lethal injection. The former teen prostitute had committed murder after a three-day drug binge and later underwent a religious conversion in jail. As a born-again Christian – just like Bush – many religious leaders wanted her life spared. Tucker even appeared on Larry King’s TV show to discuss her case. Bush was caught out by a reporter mocking the condemned woman. Sneering at her, he put on a whiney voice, pouted his lips and whimpered: “Please, don’t kill me.” Significantly, Tucker had never even asked for mercy while on King’s show.

Bush later claimed in his biography, A Charge To Keep, that he had a “restless night” before Tucker’s execution and “felt like a huge piece of concrete was crushing me” as he waited for her to die. Bush said reading her postmortem was “one of the hardest things I have ever done”, adding that the whole experience left him “heavy of heart”.

Bush said he denied her a clemency appeal – which was based on the fact that her conversion had rehabilitated her – saying: “I have concluded judgments about the heart and soul of an individual on death row are best left to a higher authority.”

When governor of Texas between 1995 and 2000, Bush presided over more than 120 executions – that accounts for about a third of the executions in the entire USA during the same period.

Bush objected to a bill to stop the state executing people with mental problems. He also vetoed a unanimous bill by the Texas legislature requiring the appointment of a lawyer to an accused within 20 days. Most states require a lawyer be appointed within 72 hours.

In Texas, judges appoint lawyers for defendants. The bill which Bush vetoed would have allowed an independent body to appoint lawyers. There were concerns that the appointment of lawyers was being influenced by the fact that lawyers were making campaign contributions to judges. A survey by the State Bar of Texas found that half of all judges believed campaign contributions from attorneys were a factor in judges considering which lawyer to assign to which case.

Dodgy Deals And Insider Trading Allegations

Since his days in Yale, Bush has been strongly anti-intellectual and rampantly pro-business. Until the age of 30, he didn’t really do very much of anything, but by 1977 he started to use his family’s powerful connections to raise money for an oil business.

He describes his attitude to business as a “bulldog on the pantleg of opportunity”. However, in all Bush lost some $2 million of other people’s money in failed business ventures while still managing to walk away in 1990 with $840,000. One of his ventures was called Arbusto, which the President thought meant “bush” in Spanish – it actually translates as “shrub”. Shrub has now stuck as the nickname for him by his Texan detractors.

The most questionable business venture of Bush’s oil career came while he was with the Harken Energy Corporation. Harken made investments in the Middle East in the run-up to the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam . At the time, Bush Sr was the 41st President of the USA and Bush Jr was on the board of Harken. Harken took a pasting on the stockmarket. In June 1990, Harken consultants said only “drastic action” could save the company. Bush sold his entire stock in Harken before information about the dire state of the company was known publicly – despite a legal requirement on him to notify the Securities Exchange Commission immediately. Bush didn’t report his sale for eight months.

Bush – who now stakes his fiscal reputation on the fact that he loves to slash taxes and not spend public money unwisely – took a hefty slice of taxpayers’ cash when he later bought the Texas Rangers baseball team. He persuaded the city of Arlington to finance a new stadium for his team using public taxes. Arlington contributed $191m in public subsidies. Bush’s stake in the Rangers was later valued at rising from $640,000 to $15.4m.

Angry Bush Walks Out on Media, Refuses to Answer Questions About Relationship With Ken Lay
By Staff and Wire Reports
Jul 9, 2004, 05:44

A clearly-rattled President George W. Bush walked out of a media briefing Thursday, refusing to answer questions about his close relationship with indicted Enron executive Kenneth Lay, a campaign benefactor Bush nicknamed "Kenny Boy" when the two were up-and-comers in Texas.

The President, visibly upset, stomped off the stage when reporters pressed him about his relationship with Lay and left White House press secretary Scott McClellan to deal with the questions.

It has been "quite some time" since Bush and Lay talked with each other, McClellan said Thursday, brushing off questions about whether the two were friends.

"He was a supporter in the past and he's someone that I would also point out has certainly supported Democrats and Republicans in the past," McClellan said.

Lay clearly favored the GOP. He and his wife, Linda, donated $882,580 to federal candidates from 1989-2001, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. All but $86,470 went to Republicans.

McClellan declined to discuss the federal indictment charging Lay with a wide-ranging scheme to deceive the public, company shareholders and government regulators about the energy company that he founded and led to industry prominence before its collapse.

Instead, McClellan answered questions about Lay by talking about Bush's desire to curb corporate fraud.

"This president has worked to go after those wrongdoers and directed his administration to pursue those who are dishonest in the boardroom," McClellan said.

"The president has made it very clear that we will not tolerate dishonesty in the boardroom. This administration worked to uncover abuses and scandals in the corporate arena. And certainly the president's concern is with those workers and other people who have been harmed by corporate wrongdoing," McClellan said.

Democrat John Kerry's campaign had a different view, accusing the administration of dragging its feet on Enron. "It was three years too late," Kerry spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter said of the Lay indictment.

Lay's relationship with the Bush family dates from at least 1990 when he was co-chairman of former President Bush's economic summit for industrialized nations, which was held in Houston. Lay also was co-chairman of the host committee for the Republican National Convention when it was held in Houston in 1992.

The Center for Public Integrity, a Washington-based nonprofit group, said the Lays had given $139,500 to George W. Bush's political campaigns over the years.

Those donations were part of $602,000 that Enron employees gave to Bush's various campaigns, making Enron the leading political patron for Bush at the time of the company's bankruptcy in 2001.

In addition to Lay's political campaign donations, he and his wife contributed $100,000 to Bush's 2001 inauguration. Lay also was a fund-raiser for Bush, bringing in at least $100,000 for the president's 2002 campaign. That put Lay in "Pioneer" status as one of the president's top money-raisers.

Bush Using Drugs to Control Depression, Erratic Behavior
By TERESA HAMPTON
Editor, Capitol Hill Blue
Jul 28, 2004, 08:09

President George W. Bush is taking powerful anti-depressant drugs to control his erratic behavior, depression and paranoia, Capitol Hill Blue has learned.

The prescription drugs, administered by Col. Richard J. Tubb, the White House physician, can impair the President’s mental faculties and decrease both his physical capabilities and his ability to respond to a crisis, administration aides admit privately.

“It’s a double-edged sword,” says one aide. “We can’t have him flying off the handle at the slightest provocation but we also need a President who is alert mentally.”

Tubb prescribed the anti-depressants after a clearly-upset Bush stormed off stage on July 8, refusing to answer reporters' questions about his relationship with indicted Enron executive Kenneth J. Lay.

“Keep those motherfuckers away from me,” he screamed at an aide backstage. “If you can’t, I’ll find someone who can.”

Bush’s mental stability has become the topic of Washington whispers in recent months. Capitol Hill Blue first reported on June 4 about increasing concern among White House aides over the President’s wide mood swings and obscene outbursts.

Although GOP loyalists dismissed the reports an anti-Bush propaganda, the reports were later confirmed by prominent George Washington University psychiatrist Dr. Justin Frank in his book Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President. Dr. Frank diagnosed the President as a “paranoid meglomaniac” and “untreated alcoholic” whose “lifelong streak of sadism, ranging from childhood pranks (using firecrackers to explode frogs) to insulting journalists, gloating over state executions and pumping his hand gleefully before the bombing of Baghdad” showcase Bush’s instabilities.

“I was really very unsettled by him and I started watching everything he did and reading what he wrote and watching him on videotape. I felt he was disturbed,” Dr. Frank said. “He fits the profile of a former drinker whose alcoholism has been arrested but not treated.”

Dr. Frank’s conclusions have been praised by other prominent psychiatrists, including Dr. James Grotstein, Professor at UCLA Medical Center, and Dr. Irvin Yalom, MD, Professor Emeritus at Stanford University Medical School.

The doctors also worry about the wisdom of giving powerful anti-depressant drugs to a person with a history of chemical dependency. Bush is an admitted alcoholic, although he never sought treatment in a formal program, and stories about his cocaine use as a younger man haunted his campaigns for Texas governor and his first campaign for President.

“President Bush is an untreated alcoholic with paranoid and megalomaniac tendencies,” Dr. Frank adds.

The White House did not return phone calls seeking comment on this article.

Although the exact drugs Bush takes to control his depression and behavior are not known, White House sources say they are “powerful medications” designed to bring his erratic actions under control. While Col. Tubb regularly releases a synopsis of the President’s annual physical, details of the President’s health and any drugs or treatment he may receive are not public record and are guarded zealously by the secretive cadre of aides that surround the President.

Veteran White House watchers say the ability to control information about Bush’s health, either physical or mental, is similar to Ronald Reagan’s second term when aides managed to conceal the President’s increasing memory lapses that signaled the onslaught of Alzheimer’s Disease.

It also brings back memories of Richard Nixon’s final days when the soon-to-resign President wandered the halls and talked to portraits of former Presidents. The stories didn’t emerge until after Nixon left office.

One long-time GOP political consultant who – for obvious reasons – asked not to be identified said he is advising his Republican Congressional candidates to keep their distance from Bush.

“We have to face the very real possibility that the President of the United States is loony tunes,” he says sadly. “That’s not good for my candidates, it’s not good for the party and it’s certainly not good for the country.”

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_4921.shtml

Pampered Bush meets a real reporter

By John Nichols
June 29, 2004

On the eve of his recent sojourn in Europe, President Bush had an unpleasant run-in with a species of creature he had not previously encountered often: a journalist.

He did not react well to the experience.

Bush's minders usually leave him in the gentle care of the White House press corps, which can be counted on to ask him tough questions about when his summer vacation starts.

Apparently under the mistaken assumption that reporters in the rest of the world are as ill-informed and pliable as the stenographers who "cover" the White House, Bush's aides scheduled a sit-down interview with Carole Coleman, Washington correspondent for RTE, the Irish public television network.

Coleman is a mainstream European journalist who has conducted interviews with top officials from a number of countries - her January interview with Secretary of State Colin Powell was apparently solid enough to merit posting on the State Department's Web site.

Unfortunately, it appears that Coleman failed to receive the memo informing reporters that they are supposed to treat this president with kid gloves. Instead, she confronted him as any serious journalist would a world leader.

She asked tough questions about the mounting death toll in Iraq, the failure of U.S. planning, and European opposition to the invasion and occupation. And when the president offered the sort of empty and listless "answers" that satisfy the White House press corps - at one point, he mumbled, "My job is to do my job" - she tried to get him focused by asking precise follow-up questions.

The president complained five times during the course of the interview about the pointed nature of Coleman's questions and follow-ups - "Please, please, please, for a minute, OK?" the hapless Bush pleaded at one point, as he demanded his questioner go easy on him.

After the interview was done, a Bush aide told the Irish Independent newspaper that the White House was concerned that Coleman had "overstepped the bounds of politeness."

As punishment, the White House canceled an exclusive interview that had been arranged for RTE with first lady Laura Bush.

Did Coleman step out of line? Of course not. Watch the interview (it's available on the www.rte.ie Web site) and you will see that Coleman was neither impolite nor inappropriate. She was merely treating Bush as European and Canadian journalists do prominent political players. In Western democracies such as Ireland, reporters and politicians understand that it is the job of journalists to hold leaders accountable.

The trouble is that accountability is not a concept that resonates with our president. The chief executive who gleefully declares that he does not read newspapers cannot begin to grasp the notion that journalists might have an important role to play in a democracy. And, if anything, the hands-off approach of the White House press corps has reinforced Bush's conceits.

Bush would be well served by tougher questioning from American journalists, especially those who work for the television networks. And it goes without saying that more and better journalism would be a healthy corrective for our ailing democracy.

Come to think of it, maybe one of the American networks should hire Carole Coleman and make her its White House correspondent. It would be Ireland's loss and America's gain.

http://www.madison.com/captimes/opinion/column/nichols/77302.php

New Information Shows Bush Indecisive, Paranoid, Delusional
By TERESA HAMPTON
Editor, Capitol Hill Blue
Jun 17, 2004, 08:47

The carefully-crafted image of George W. Bush as a bold, decisive leader is cracking under the weight of new revelations that the erratic President is indecisive, moody, paranoid and delusional.

“More and more this brings back memories of the Nixon White House,” says retired political science professor George Harleigh, who worked for President Nixon during the second presidential term that ended in resignation under fire. “I haven’t heard any reports of President Bush wondering the halls talking to portraits of dead Presidents but what I have been told is disturbing.”

Two weeks ago, Capitol Hill Blue revealed that a growing number of White House aides are concerned about the President’s mental stability. They told harrowing tales of violent mood swings, bouts with paranoia and obscene outbursts from a President who wears his religion on his sleeve.

Although supporters of President Bush dismissed the reports as “fantasies from anonymous sources,” a new book by Dr. Justin Frank, director of psychiatry at George Washington University, raises many similar questions about the President’s mental stability.

"George W. Bush is a case study in contradiction," Dr. Frank writes in Bush On The Couch: Inside the Mind of the President. "Bush is an untreated ex-alcoholic with paranoid and megalomaniac tendencies."

In addition, a new film by documentary filmmaker, and frequent Bush critic, Michael Moore shows the President indecisive and clearly befuddled when he learned about the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

While conservative critics who have not yet seen Fahrenheit 9/11 dismiss the work as an anti-Bush screed, Roger Friedman of the normally pro-Bush Fox News Network has seen the film and calls it “a tribute to patriotism, to the American sense of duty — and at the same time a indictment of stupidity and avarice.”

Friedman also says the films “most indelible moment” comes when Bush, speaking to a group of school kids in Florida, is first informed of the 9/11 attacks.

“Instead of jumping up and leaving, he instead sat in front of the class, with an unfortunate look of confusion, for nearly 11 minutes,” Friedman says. “Moore obtained the footage from a teacher at the school who videotaped the morning program. There Bush sits, with no access to his advisers, while New York is being viciously attacked. I guarantee you that no one who sees this film forgets this episode.”

Dr. Frank says the episode is typical of how Bush deals with death and tragedy. He notes that Bush avoids funerals.

“President Bush has not attended a single funeral - other than that of President Reagan. In my book I explore some possible reasons for that, whether or not it is "presidential". I am less interested in judging his behavior on political grounds than I am in thinking about its meaning both to him and to the rest of us,” Dr. Frank says. “He has spent a lifetime of avoiding grief, starting with the death of his sister when he was 7 years old. His parents didn't help him with what must have been confusing and frightening feelings. He also has a history of evading responsibility and perhaps his not attending funerals has to do with not wanting to see the damage his policies have wrought.”

In his book, Dr. Frank also suggests Bush resents those in the military.

“Bush's behavior strongly suggests an unconscious resentment toward our own servicemen, whose bravery puts his own (nonexistent) wartime service record to shame,” he wrote.

Supporters of President Bush dismiss Frank’s book as the work of a Democrat who once headed the Washington Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility, but his work has been praised by other prominent psychiatrists, including Dr. James Grotstein, Professor at UCLA Medical Center, and Dr. Irvin Yalom, MD, Professor Emeritus at Stanford University Medical School.

Dr. Carolyn Williams, a psychoanalyst who specializes in paranoid personalities, is a registered Republican and agrees with most of Dr. Frank’s conclusions.

“I find the bulk of his analysis credible,” she said in an interview. “President Bush grew up dealing with an absent but demanding father, a tough mother and an overachieving brother. All left indelible impressions on him along with a desire to prove himself at all cost because he feels surrounded by disapproval. He behavior suggests a classic paranoid personality. Additionally, his stated belief that certain actions are 'God's Will' are symptomatic of delusional behavior.”

Ryan Reynolds, a childhood friend of Bush, concurs.

“George wanted to please his father but never felt he measured up, especially when compared to Jeb,” Reynolds said.

Dr. Williams wonders if the Iraq war was not Bush’s way of “proving he could finish something his father could not by deposing Saddam Hussein.”

But Bush's desire to please his father may have backfired. Former President George H.W. Bush has remained silent publicly about the war, saying he will only discuss it with his son "in private." Close aides say that is because he disapproves of his son's actions against Iraq.

"Former President Bush does not support the war against Iraq," says former aide John Ruskin. "It is as simple at that."

While current White House aides and officials would not allow their names to be used when commenting about Bush’s erratic behavior, others like former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill confirm concerns about Bush’s mood swings.

O’Neill says Bush was moody in cabinet meetings and would wander off on tangents, mostly about Saddam Hussein and Iraq. Bush, O’Neill says, seemed more focused on Iraq than on finding Osama bin Laden and would lash out at anyone who disagreed with him.

Harleigh says it is not unusual for White House staffers to refuse to go public with their concerns about the President’s behavior.

“We saw the same thing in the Nixon years,” he says. “What is unusual is that the White House has not been able to trot out even one staffer who is willing to go public and say positive things about the President’s mental condition. That says more than anything else.”

Dr. Frank, the Democrat, says the only diagnosis he can offer for the President’s condition is removal from office.

Dr. Williams, the Republican, says she must “reluctantly agree.”

“We have too many unanswered questions about the President’s behavior,” she says. “You cannot have those kinds of unanswered questions when you are talking about the leader of the free world.”

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/printer_4704.shtml

May 21, 2000, Sunday
NATIONAL DESK

A Philosophy With Roots In Conservative Texas Soil
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Surviving a Family Loss

In addition to church groups, various civic organizations were also active, and one of the local rituals for children was the meetings with cookies and milk at the home of a nice old lady who represented the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

The cookies were digested more thoroughly than the teachings.

''We were terrible to animals,'' recalled Mr. Throckmorton, laughing. A dip behind the Bush home turned into a small lake after a good rain, and thousands of frogs would come out.

''Everybody would get BB guns and shoot them,'' Mr. Throckmorton said. ''Or we'd put firecrackers in the frogs and throw them and blow them up.''

When he was not blowing up frogs, young George -- always restless and something of a natural leader -- would lead neighborhood children on daredevil expeditions around town, seeing how close they could come to breaking their necks. George also quickly acquired a colorful vocabulary.

''Georgie has grown to be a near-man, talks dirty once in a while and occasionally swears, aged 4 and a half,'' his father despaired in a letter to a friend in 1951. In another letter four years later, he lamented: ''Georgie aggravates the hell out of me at times.''

There was one terrible interruption in this relaxed life, occurring when George was 7. He was at school when he saw his parents' green Oldsmobile drive up in the parking lot. At first he thought he saw his 3-year-old sister, Robin, through the window.

But his eyes were playing tricks on him. His parents had come to break the news to him that Robin had just died of leukemia. The loss staggered the Bush family, and some friends say that George's closeness to his mother dates partly from his efforts to comfort her at that time.

His mother's hair began to turn gray, though she was just 28, and she often dissolved into tears. George's father worked hard and traveled frequently, and so the boy spent much more time with his mother than his father -- acquiring in particular her lacerating wit.

Robin's death is something that he has talked about very rarely with friends, and even some of his roommates at boarding school and college did not know about her. But occasionally when the moment was right, he would confide to friends about his tears and grief at the time, about his incomprehension that Robin could have been dying without his parents telling him.

Close friends say he had nightmares for years afterward. The death also left him as a quasi-only child, for his next-oldest sibling, Jeb, was six and a half years younger. Neil and Marvin were 9 and 10 years younger than George, and Dorothy was 13 years younger. So while George occasionally used Jeb as a punching bag in childhood squabbles, and always relished his role as elder brother, most of the time his playmates and confidants were friends and roommates rather than siblings.

Soon after Robin's death, George returned to school. Most of the time, the despair was hidden, and on the surface he soon reverted to the wise-cracking imp they had known before.

Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
http://www.makethemaccountable.com/articles/A_Philosophy_With_Roots_in_Conservative_Texas_Soil.htm

The Bushes
Portrait of a Dynasty
ABCNEWS.com
April 6— Based on interviews with family members and close family friends, The Bushes: Portrait of a Dynasty, by Peter and Rochelle Schweizer, gives an inside look at the family's inner workings. Here is an excerpt.

CHAPTER 10

ONE-ON-ONE

Anytime the rains came to Midland, rejoicing could be heard in the Bush home. Little George would anxiously pace around the living room in a soiled T-shirt and jeans waiting for it to let up. When it did, he would burst out the front door and join his friends at a nearby pond.
Thousands of frogs would be there, croaking and hopping about. "Everybody would get BB guns and shoot them," recalls Terry Throckmorton, a childhood friend. "Or we'd put firecrackers in the frogs and throw them and blow them up."

For the Bush children, Midland was an idyllic place of adventuresome days and placid, star-filled nights. Little George, Jebbie, Marvin, and Neil had the run of the house. Each had their own place in the family, and each tried to define himself within it.

Little George, the eldest by more than six years and also his father's namesake, spent his free time riding around on his bicycle looking for adventure. It could be something very simple like throwing dirt clods, or catching the matinee at the theater in town. "On Saturdays we'd meet at the ball field and put together a ball game," recalled Robert McCleskey. "In the afternoons we would ride our bikes down to the Ritz and watch the serials, mostly Buck Rogers and cowboy movies."

Little George was, like his father, a great collector of friends. They came from school, the neighborhood, or the baseball diamond. To those he was particularly close to, he would assign nicknames. It was his mark of friendship. Most of his time was spent dreaming about baseball. He had heard from family and friends about the great triumphs of his grandfather, father, and uncles on the baseball diamond. Little George played catcher on the Midland little league team and was a member of the Midland All-Stars. While not the most gifted athlete, he more than made up for it with an innate aggressiveness. He swung the bat so fiercely, coaches would have to urge him to loosen his grip. "He tries so very hard," his father wrote to his friends.

George often arrived early at Sam Houston Elementary School to play baseball with his friends. The school principal, John Bizilo, would come out on the field, take off his jacket, loosen his tie, and hit a few balls for the boys. Some neighborhood girls would come and watch. One who didn't was a small, pretty girl named Laura Welch, who lived only a few blocks away. Laura and her friends were interested in more refined matters, at least as defined by a young girl. They spent their Saturdays at the Rexall Drug Store sipping Cokes and passed their free time reading or listening to 45s-mostly Buddy Holly, the Drifters, and Roy Orbison-and dancing in their socks.

Little George didn't have much interest in that sort of thing. If his father was a gentle and obedient child, this son was different. George Walker Bush was, many in the family said, more Walker than Bush. He did little reading except for the occasional Hardy Boys story or a series of mystery books about baseball. He did make one early run at electoral politics, however. In the seventh grade he ran for class president against Jack Hanks, a popular kid. Few expected him to win, but with heavy campaigning and a smile he managed to do so narrowly. (Hanks went on to a political triumph of his own. Four years later he went to Boys Nation and was elected vice president, defeating a young candidate from Arkansas named Bill Clinton.) Perhaps baseball more than anything gave George something to share with his father. Big George coached his son's team, which usually played its games on Saturday mornings. Then in the afternoon the fathers would play a pickup game. Word got out-not from George himself-that the coach had been a star player at Yale. And his skills were on display for all to see during the afternoon dads' game.

"If he was standing in the outfield when someone hit a fly ball, he could put his glove behind him at belt level, drop his head forward, and catch the ball behind his back," recalls Joe O'Neill, a childhood friend. "We'd try to do it too, but the ball would always hit us on the back of the head. We all had scabs on our heads from trying to catch the fly balls like Mr. Bush did."

For Little George, life would be defined by the need to live up to his name. He had seen his father's photos of the Yale team and heard stories from his uncles and great uncles about Poppy's playing days. Little George would have trouble matching those accomplishments. Fay Vincent, a family friend who later went on to be baseball commissioner, remembers visiting Texas in the 1950s and watching Little George play. "I remember him striking out a lot. Wild swings with lots of muscle; but he was swinging so hard, trying so hard, he didn't take the chance to watch the ball."

Little George loved the game and became fixated on becoming a star.

"All George ever wanted to be was a major league baseball player," recalls Terry Throckmorton. "That's all he ever talked about." In an instant he could recall the batting averages and slugging percentages of his favorite players. He swapped baseball cards with a passion and proved to be so shrewd at it that his friends had to carefully think through any deal or they might be taken. "He would sit there on the floor with his brothers and they would argue for hours about the value of a Pee Wee Reese card," recalls Elsie Walker. "He was so tenacious about it, it was ridiculous. He either convinced them to make a bad trade, or he just waited them out." Soon he was writing notes to famous players, offering words of encouragement and enclosing a baseball card with return postage. His diligence paid off as he got signed cards returned from Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, and some of his other favorite players.

At school Little George was not exactly a serious student. He would get into trouble because of that Walker swagger. In the fourth grade he was clowning around in class and used an ink pen to draw a mustache, beard, and long sideburns on his face. When he shared his artistic work with his classmates, they erupted in laughter. The teacher, Frances Childress, promptly grabbed him by the arm and took him down the corridor to see the principal.

"Just look at him," she said. "He's been making a disturbance in class."

The principal took George by the hand and told him to bend over and reach for the ground. He then promptly administered three licks with a paddle.

"When I hit him, he cried," John Bizilo recalls. "Oh, did he cry! He yelled as if he'd been shot."

When Bar found out, she was furious. With the death of Robin, she had become fiercely protective of her oldest son. She called Bizilo immediately. "My husband's going to kill you," she said with slight exaggeration. "He's out of town, but he's coming home to kill you immediately."

Bizilo calmly explained what Little George had done: When sent to the principal's office to explain his actions, he had been far from contrite. Instead, George had "swaggered in as though he had done the most wonderful thing in the world." When Bar heard the full story, she ended up supporting Bizilo. When George Sr. was at home, he sometimes clashed with his oldest son. "Georgie aggravates the hell out of me at times (I am sure I do the same to him)," he wrote his father-in-law, "but then at times I am so proud of him I could die."

Little George was strong-willed and stubborn. Even as a young boy, Little George constantly butted heads with his father, recalls Gerry Bemiss, who saw them frequently in Kennebunkport. Otha Taylor, who helped out in the Bush home, recalls the two Georges "were always tussing about something."

Excerpted from THE BUSHES by Peter Schweizer and Rochelle Schweizer Copyright 2004 by Peter Schweizer and Rochelle Schweizer.

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/GMA/Books/The_bushes_excerpt_040406-1.html

The President rides out

George Bush's foes see him as an inarticulate bully. Friends say that evangelical faith underpins his every action. Ed Vulliamy goes back to Bush's dusty Texan roots to find out what really drives the man who now stands on the brink of war

Sunday January 26, 2003
The Observer

At 4.40pm on Friday 14 September 2001, George Walker Bush finally became President of the United States. He was amid the ruins of the World Trade Centre, greeting a crowd of rescue workers. On the way, New York governor George Pataki had jibed: 'See those people? None of them voted for you.' Then Bush overheard one of the multitude saying: 'Don't let me down.' ('Don't let me down,' Bush would later recall, 'It was so personal .') 'They want to hear him,' panted a presidential aide. A 69-year-old fireman called Bob Beckwith was standing on a charred truck, and was asked if he could test it for stability as a podium. He did. Bush clambered up, put his arm round the old man's shoulder and kept it there. Someone thrust a megaphone into Bush's hand, and he embarked on a version of the pedestrian speech he had been making all week: 'America today is on bended knee in prayer... '

'Can't hear you!' someone shouted. 'Well, I can hear you!' retorted Bush. 'The rest of the world hears you, and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!' The hard hats drowned him out with a lusty chant of 'USA! USA!' The world heard loud and clear. Among the taut faces, one was beaming: that of Karen Hughes, Bush's spin-mistress, watching a moment that she and the entire Bush power machine had previously failed to achieve. No wonder Bush later described himself as 'comfortable' that night.

This weekend will prove to be another defining moment for the Bush presidency. He is poised to lead his country into a controversial campaign to topple Saddam Hussein; he is preparing for a critical State of the Union address this week to rally wavering national and international opinion behind his strategy; and he is facing a wave of opposition to his plan to haul the world away from recession. But what kind of a man is George W Bush?

We know he's the man who lost a presidential popular vote to the biggest centre-left majority since 1964; many would say he won office courtesy of a coup d'etat by the Supreme Court. Some believe he is the supposed leader of a nation who disappeared from sight on 11 September itself. What is beyond any doubt is that he has become the most powerful, popular, unfettered President in American history. Is he the stumbling, charmless, inarticulate bully caricatured so often by his liberal critics, especially in Europe? Or is he - as new insights into his White House suggest - a complex, intelligent man, driven by a strong morality and clear sense of political purpose?

'I'm an observer, a listener, a learner,' wrote Bush of himself. It is as though a banal, modern-day performance of Shakespeare's Henry IV Part Two is being played out, whereby the prince learns to set aside his cravings and appetites to assume an assigned role in the larger plan, as the Warrior King, Henry V.

There is a curious entwinement between Bush the youthful prankster, Bush the lucky millionaire, Bush the buffoon, Bush the politician and now Bush the warrior. The clue to that which binds them lies in his reply to speechwriter Michael Gerson after addressing Congress the Monday after he had won over the New York crowds with his impromptu speech. Gerson said: 'God wanted you there.' 'He wants us all here, Gerson,' replied his President.

George Bush Senior, the President's father, was suspicious of what he called 'that vision thing'. Bush the son, however, said recently in filial defiance: 'The vision thing matters. That's another lesson I learnt.'

A gust of wind whips up dry dirt around the neighbouring sister towns of Midland and Odessa in the high desert of Texas. Two dust devils rise on the endless horizon; pieces of loose brush blow across a scrubland spattered with flotsam, jetsam and countless 'nodding donkeys' pumping up liquid, black gold from the Permian oil basin. A couple of Harley Davidson motorbikes fart along the loop road, one bareheaded rider wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the word: 'WAR!'

It was to Odessa that George Bush senior was dispatched by his father, the imperious Senator Prescott Bush, director of Dresser Industries, then the world's largest oil equipment company. 'This west Texas is a fabulous place,' wrote George to a friend in 1949. 'Fortunes can be made in the oil business... If a man could go in and get just a few acres of land which later turned out to be good, he would be fixed for life.'

Odessa is spliced by railroad tracks: blacks and Hispanics on the 'wrong' side, huddled around refineries and chemical plants; roughneck and suburban whites sharing the other. This was the honky-tonk town to which the 'wildcatter' prospectors came on a hope in hell, and either made and kept their fortunes or else gambled them away at poker in the 'End of the World' hotel, often betting oil lots themselves when they ran out of cash. 'You raise your family in Midland,' goes the saying, 'you raise hell in Odessa.'

Bush accordingly moved his family a little up the road to Midland: a colony of wealthy East-Coasters marooned in the desert, in which George W. Bush grew up. Midland, pretending to be Connecticut, once boasted more millionaires per capita than any other American city.

Last Sunday morning, like every Sunday, the gentry of the oil business met at the all-white Belle View Baptist Church on Big Spring Avenue. Rev Andrew Stewart prayed that 'the foes of our nation be forever vanquished', and asked God to bless 'our President, friend and fellow Texan, George Walker Bush'. Afterwards at a lunch with a family in the congregation he prayed again that God might 'guide our President against the enemy'. 'You want to understand about President George Bush?' inquired David Campbell, a real estate broker, over jelly and cream. 'Well, you ain't never going to understand President Bush unless you understand the faith of west Texas around here.'

Campbell is spot on; this is where the most powerful man in the world got his 'vision thing'. Everything that has happened to Bush, the Republican party, America and - if Bush has his way - the world order, has its genesis here. As Bush himself says: 'To understand my wife Laura and me, you must understand Midland. All that we are, all the things we believe in, come from that one place.'

George Bush's Christian faith - with its messiah shared by both Martin Luther King and the racist Right - is a complex political weave. On the wrong side of the tracks in Odessa, blacks and Hispanics also went to church last Sunday. But at neither the Pilgrim Rest Baptist Church on Dixie Boulevard nor that of El Divino Salvador on Muskingum Street were there prayers for the President, and few, if any, votes. The Catholic and black Baptist churches operate like radical opposition parties. 'We are the people who have worked against Bush and his father for decades around here,' said Gene Collins, pillar of the community on the 'other' side of Odessa's tracks, who vividly remembered George W Bush. 'For the poor, against the big interests.'

It is part of American lore that the Bush dynasty is based upon oil. As President Bush junior wrote in his autobiography: 'I lived the energy industry.' But more than just oil propels the presidency, personality and 'vision' of George W Bush. Conservative ideologue David Frum has just published the first book offering a glimpse into the White House (The Right Man: The Surprise Presidency of George W Bush). Frum wrote speeches for Bush and coined the phrase 'Axis of Evil' to describe Iraq, Iran and North Korea. The most compelling sentence is the first: 'Missed you at Bible study,' Frum was scolded, upon entering the White House. Bible study, concludes Frum, 'if not compulsory, is not uncompulsory either'. Bush opens every Cabinet meeting with a prayer. 'To understand the Bush White House,' he writes, 'you must understand its predominant creed.' Frum calls it 'modern evangelicalism', and finds it, despite himself being Jewish, 'a kindly faith'.

Another, less trumpeted but more illuminating, book has also appeared: Made In Texas by Michael Lind. It concerns two divergent religious and political traditions in Lind's and Bush's native state. One came from hill country where Catholics and Lutherans from Germany and Scandinavia had settled, spawned loyalty to the Union during the civil war and then the liberal 'Great Society' of President Lyndon Johnson. The other, among Confederate Anglo-Ulster-Scots, nurtured a vehement, millenarian Protestantism, now the 'fundamentalism' of the Christian hard Right in Texas, which believes the Bible to be the literal word of God and demands that politicians enact the faith. Bush's father, a theologically temperate Anglican, remained very much the East-Coast paternalist. George W, by contrast, is an authentic cultural West Texan. 'He is clearly the wild son,' said Karl Rove, mastermind behind Bush's political career. 'Even today.'

People in Midland like to talk about how young Bush kicked a football through the classroom window or drew Elvis Presley sideburns on his face in Biro. But even the prankster had a sense of innate superiority: when he left for his father's elite school at Andover in Massachusetts, classmate Bill Semple recalls: 'He was one of the cool guys. He rose to prominence for no ostensible, visible reason... He really came as "to the manner born".' In 1964, Bush followed in his father's footsteps to Yale, but unlike Bush senior, embarked on a student career of what he himself calls 'things I wouldn't want my daughters to do'.

An average student, he nevertheless devoted great energy to his presidency of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, exposed in the New York Times back then as prone to sadistic initiation rites. He had a couple of brushes with the law - one for removing goalposts on a football pitch at Princeton, the other for drunken driving, and, as a friend in Midland recalls: 'He liked to go woman-hunting, and quite often caught one.'

During an after-dinner speech two years ago, Bush recognised the conservative leader William Buckley in the audience and cracked one of those inimitable Bush jokes (people who know him often mention his quick sense of humour, a quality not often noticed in public): 'I see Bill Buckley's here tonight,' he said, 'a fellow Yale man. We go way back and have a lot in common. Bill wrote a book at Yale and I read one. He founded the Conservative Party and I started a few parties myself.'

These days Bush can be relied upon to raise a laugh when he fails to remember the names of important world statesmen. But an episode recalled by friends from Yale reveals that Bush, like Clinton, has a politician's photographic memory when it comes to what he regards as important. At college, Clay Johnson, his drinking partner, had been ordered by seniors in the DKE fraternity to stand up and name its every member. He stumbled after only a few. Bush, defiant, rose to his feet and recited the names of all 54 frats present, one by one.

A Jordanian fellow student, Muhammed Saleh, who went on to lead the Timex corporation, recalls: 'We were in the Vietnam era, and the big thing about George is that he really was not doctrinaire about anything.' Bush would be the first to agree. 'I don't remember any kind of heaviness ruining my time at Yale,' he said.

Yet political instinct was hardwired into Bush's DNA. 'I'll be a sort of surrogate for my father,' he said, taking to George senior's campaign trail in 1964. 'I remember him well,' says Don Dangerfield, a retired fireman in Odessa, then an activist against both racial segregation and Bush senior. 'That boy knew he was going places, touring the white side of town like there was never going to be any doubt about it, just because of who he was.'

After Yale, Bush's father arranged a spell in the Texas National Guard, allowing him to escape service in Vietnam. He won a notoriety, however, by being shipped from the barracks to Washington aboard a government plane for a date with Richard Nixon's daughter, Tricia. Next, he tried the oil business. His lucrative venture through the boardrooms of the oil and then the baseball trade is well known: he was an inept executive who made a fortune in both, due to investment from those seeking influence with his father. Biographer JH Hatfield wrote during the presidential election campaign: 'This is the man who, had he not been George Herbert Bush's son, would not now be favourite for the Republican nomination. Despite attempts to step out of his father's intimidating shadow, his life has been one lucky break after another because of that relationship.'

Bush would punctuate his working life with wild excursions down to Odessa with his old school buddy Clay Johnson. There were three-day, 24-hour bar parties for golfers at the Midland Country club. By the time of his fortieth birthday party, Bush was an alcoholic. In a Dallas restaurant, he spotted the Washington Bureau Chief for the Wall Street Journal, Al Hunt, who had omitted his father's name from a potential list of candidates for the 1988 presidency. He lurched over to Hunt and his family (Hunt's wife is the CNN anchor Judy Woodruff) and bawled: 'You fucking son of a bitch - I'll never forget what you wrote!' 'George was on the road to nowhere at age 40,' admits John Ellis, his cousin.

But Bush had met Laura Welch, a librarian: she was quiet, apolitical; the antithesis of Bush. The couple married after three months' dating. 'It was like Aubrey Hepburn walking into Animal House,' says Bush's brother Marvin. 'He was ready,' says Laura, 'to be rescued.' Bush's 'moment' came soon afterwards. 'Most lives have defining moments,' he would write later, 'Moments that would forever change you. Moments that set you on a different course.' Laura had given birth to twin daughters, Jenna and Barbara. Meanwhile, Bush launched himself on a series of drinking binges, including a week-long session at the end of which he looked into the mirror and saw his own face stained with dried vomit. He fell on his knees, and implored the help of God. Not only George Bush, but American politics - and then those of the world - were about to change.

Shortly beforehand, family friend and celebrated evangelist Billy Graham visited the Bush vacation compound in Maine. 'Over the course of that weekend,' Bush recalls, 'Reverend Graham planted a mustard seed in my soul.' Graham has remained a strong influence: he was once called from the White House during a debate between then Vice-President Bush senior and his son over whether those who had not accepted Jesus as their saviour could go to Heaven. George W thought this unthinkable; Graham ruled him correct.

Bush continued to work the network on his father's campaigns, nurturing his own political ambitions. Old friend Joe O'Neill remembers him, 'focused to prove something to his dad. Right away he started talking about running for Congress'. Bush's initial motive, however, had nothing to do with religion: 'What if I run?' he said. 'What if we sent a friend of oil to Congress?'

Bush duly met the man who - along with his father's friend and the now Vice-President Dick Cheney - steered his political career more than any outside the family: Karl Rove. Rove was a Texas political consultant and is now, with Cheney, the most powerful man behind Bush in the White House. In 1994, helped by Rove and lavish donations from the father's friends and the oil industry, Bush won the governorship of Texas. 'I am convinced,' he said, 'to fundamentally and permanently change our culture. We need a spiritual renewal in America'.

Bush's tenure in the governor's mansion was not only a litany of favours to the oil industry, but also a programme to delight new friends on the Christian Right. On the wall of his office, he kept a framed copy of his favourite hymn: 'A charge to keep I have.../To serve the present age/My calling to fulfil.' (He entitled his autobiography A Charge to Keep.)

The catchphrase of his presidential campaign, 'Compassionate Conservatism', was seen to be a gesture to the political centre, but was in fact coined by a firebrand evangelist with the Assembly of God called Doug Wead whom Bush met in 1988, campaigning for his father. Wead had been asked to fend off challenges to Bush senior from the Christian Right, and counselled: 'Do whatever for the evangelicals.'

Bush was the obvious - if sometimes apparently unlikely - figurehead to take his family and party back to the White House. He was duly presented to the nation by the fund-raising machine on his father's Rolodex, the network on his mother's so-called 'Christmas card list', Karl Rove's genius and Dick Cheney's guiding hand. But privately, Bush took counsel from people such as Dallas evangelist Tony Evans, who recalls: 'One of the impetuses for his considering running for President was biblical teaching. He feels God is talking to him.'

On the campaign trail, it was impossible not to be struck by Bush's tactile political skill, the eye-to-eye contact that secures instant loyalty (like that of Bill Clinton, indeed) and which his opponents underestimated. Yet George and Laura Bush proved the opposite of the Clintons as soon as they moved into the White House. An unabashed admirer of Jackie Kennedy ('She had the most perfect taste'), Laura yanked down the Clintons' living room curtains and had them replaced with Jackie's. Bush had Jack Kennedy's desk brought out of storage, a gift from Queen Victoria to President Rutherford Hayes in 1878.

Traditions of etiquette were restored among a staff appalled by the notion that Clinton and his Cabinet, dressed in jeans, would discuss policy at sweaty midnight sessions in the Oval Office over takeout pizza. Dark suits and ties were obligatory again; Bush's name was never mentioned - he was 'the President'. 'Anyone who puts on airs and tries to get puffed is going to get punctured mighty quickly,' says David Sibley, a close friend and former Texas senator who stays regularly at the White House and at Bush's ranch.

The order is always the same: 'We did the dinner, and we were all in bed by 10 o'clock,' says John Rowland, governor of Connecticut, after one evening with the President. 'Oh yeah, that's the rule'.

And something else was installed: Bible study, and the prayers before cabinet meetings. Husband and wife praying together before bedtime. Early last year, the Texan Republican House whip Tom DeLay assured a congregation of Baptists in Houston of another cornerstone of the new White House: that God Almighty had himself placed Bush there, now using the President 'to promote a Biblical world view'. Bill Clinton liked Tom Clancy; Bush does enjoy a novel by John Grisham, but his favourite book is 'the Bible ... a good political handbook'.

Now on the brink of war, George Bush has turned the 'vision thing' into an international crusade. On the world stage, where America is this weekend ready to stand alone if necessary, his faith has done two things: first, it has welded a curious alliance between gritty, hard-headed Christians and the East-Coast, moneyed, invariably intellectual, Zionist movement, making Ariel Sharon's Israel by far Bush's closest ally. Second, it has become a quest for unchallenged power.

In 1998, George and Laura Bush visited Israel. After dinner one night, Bush and a group of Mormons, Baptists, Methodists and Jews went down to the Sea of Galilee, joined hands underwater, 'and prayed together on bended knee', Bush recalls.

The Christian Bush has brought to prominence Israel's heaviest hitters in America, such as Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Elliot Abrams as his special adviser on the Middle East. Abrams wrote a strident book about the danger of extinction to American Jewry through inter-marriage. David Frum's book is too clever to be pure hagiography. Frum, an ardent Zionist, sometimes praises Bush with faint damnation, especially over his being 'soft on Islam' after 11 September. But then Frum traces Bush's progression from 'softness' to his regarding Islam as 'one of the world's great empires', against which the United States must 'enforce respect'. Bush, he writes, is 'one of the staunchest friends of Israel ever to occupy the Oval Office' (to the chagrin of what Frum calls 'the paranoiacs of Europe'). The rationale for war, says Frum is to bring 'new stability' which would 'put America more wholly in charge of the region than any power since the Ottomans, or maybe the Romans'. Ironically, every Christian church in America (including Bush's own First Methodists) now opposes his upcoming war against Iraq, with one exception: the extreme right-wing, all-white Southern Baptist church.

On 25 February last year, the fireman Bob Beckwith was invited to the White House to celebrate the admission of the megaphone Bush had used to make his crucial and impromptu speech to the Bush Presidential Library museum in Texas. As Beckwith walked in the door, someone greeted him warmly and said: 'Nice job, Bob.' Karl Rove ushered him through to the West Wing - it had been him, he let on, who asked the fireman to test the stability of the truck. Then Beckwith was re-united with George Walker Bush. 'Bob,' joked the President, 'you made me famous that day.'

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/worldview/story/0,11581,882219,00.html

Our Insane Focus on Iraq
By William Raspberry
The Washington Post

Monday, September 9, 2002; Page A17

One sign of maturity is the ability to suffer outrage and gut-wrenching grief without going nuts. Days before America's saddest anniversary since Pearl Harbor, Americans remain clearly -- and justifiably -- outraged, and our grief is palpable. But must we go nuts?

The administration's monomaniacal focus on Iraq's Saddam Hussein as the fount of all terrorism was starting to sound like a clinical case of transference until, in recent days, the White House seemed to take a deep breath. Wouldn't any clinician worth her salt observe that Hussein (without having done much of anything since last September) has become immensely bigger and more menacing precisely as Osama bin Laden (remember him?) has become less available?

To say such a thing is, I know from hard experience, to invite the incredulity of those who wonder if you are proposing to wait until Hussein does something before you take care of that weasel. Well, actually, yes.

It isn't as though the "something" the Iraqi president could do would change our way of life. We're not talking about Hitler (though the name keeps coming up). We're not talking about the Soviets, who did threaten to bury us. Hussein's military has been both decimated (by us) and exposed as unmenacing. What threat has Iraq uttered against us to justify the war talk that permeates Washington these days?

Ah, but don't forget his weapons of mass destruction.

I don't. But it strikes me as a little weird that we are willing to take lethal, potentially globally destabilizing action on our surmise that he (1) has such weapons and (2) intends to use them against us, when, as far as I can tell, we took no useful action in the face of pretty firm knowledge before last September.

This point is made by Dennis L. Cuddy, a historical researcher, in one of the 150 or so books timed for publication at the 9/11 anniversary. Says Cuddy ("September 11 Prior Knowledge"): As early as the mid-1990s, more than 8,000 former Iraqi soldiers were settled around the United States by our government. Might some of those be terrorists?

The CIA was monitoring hijacking leader Mohamed Atta in Germany until May 2000 -- about a month before he is believed to have come to the United States to attend flight school. Does it make sense that the monitoring stopped when he entered this country?

"Relevant to the atttacks of Sept. 11," Cuddy says, "Vice President Cheney acknowledged that the government knew something big was going to happen soon, but they didn't have the details. Even if that were true, why was no preventive contingency planning done? Why was it not considered that the World Trade Center might be the target, since terrorists had already tried to blow it up once?"

Cuddy's point is that we had sufficient prior knowledge to have prevented 9/11. Mine is that the knowledge Cuddy adduces shows how difficult it is to prevent terrorist attacks. Should we have shut down U.S. airports in light of the pre-9/11 threat? And for how long and at what cost to the U.S. and world economies?

Maybe the difficulty of preventing the random acts of terrorism is another reason for our focus on Hussein.

That's frustration. This is insanity: to believe that Saddam has chemical and biological weapons and, in addition, has murderous sympathizers around the world -- and to believe that his last order wouldn't be to unleash those weapons and those sympathizers on America and American interests abroad.

That we are the principal target of his weapons of mass destruction is, as far as I can see, shakily based speculation. That we would be the principal target after an attack on Baghdad is beyond doubt. How then would such an attack reduce the threat of anti-American terrorism?

But doesn't that amount to defending the Iraqi butcher? No, it is a call for a return to sanity. Alfred L. McAllister, a behavioral science professor at the University of Texas, Houston, did a survey on how Americans think of war and enemies pre-9/11 and post-9/11. He found significant increases in the numbers of those who, post-attack, believe that military force is needed when our economic security is threatened, that terrorists do not deserve to be treated like human beings and that in some nations, the leaders and their followers are no better than animals. Oh, and he also found a significantly increased tendency to substitute euphemisms for "ghastly events."

Perhaps like "regime change" for "premeditated murder?"

"Shrub" Bush's Pathological Focus On Saddam Hussein
by Alvin Wyman Walker, PhD, PD, PC

In an unusual piece that deserves wider attention, William Raspberry ("Our Insane Focus on Iraq," The Washington Post, 9 September, 2002) laid out some of the psychological issues underlying the "Shrub" Bush's pathological obsession with Iraq and Saddam Hussein. Mr. Raspberry wrote:

The administration's monomaniacal focus on Iraq's Saddam Hussein as the fount of all terrorism was starting to sound like a clinical case of transference.... Wouldn't any clinician worth her [or his] salt observe that Hussein (without having done much of anything since last September) has become immensely bigger and more menacing precisely as Osama bin Laden (remember him?) has become less available?

To say such a thing is, I know from hard experience, to invite the incredulity of those who wonder if you are proposing to wait until Hussein "does" something before you take care of that weasel. Well, actually, yes.

It isn't as though the "something" the Iraqi president could do would change our way of life. We're not talking about Hitler (though the name keeps coming up). We're not talking about the Soviets, who did threaten to bury us. Hussein's military has been decimated (by us) and exposed as unmenacing [sic]. What threat has Iraq uttered against us to justify the war talk that permeates Washington these days?

Ah, but don't forget his weapons of mass destruction.

I don't. But it strikes me as a little weird that we are willing to take lethal, potentially globally destabilizing action on our surmise that he (1) has such weapons and (2) intends to use them against us, when, as far as I can tell, we took no useful action in the face of pretty firm knowledge before last September.

While I found Mr. Raspberry's analysis of "Shrub" Bush's obsession with Hussein incisive, I think the analysis should be extended. I also think that Mr. Raspberry misunderstands the concept of transference.

I suspect that "Shrub" Bush's obsession with Mr. Hussein has obvious transferential import in the classic psychoanalytic sense. You may be aware that in psychoanalytic therapy, the phenomenon of transference is the projection of feelings, thoughts, and wishes onto the analyst who has come to represent a significant person from the patient's past. The analyst is reacted to as though he was someone from the patient's past. While such reactions may have been appropriate to the conditions that prevailed in the patient's previous life, they are patently inappropriate and anachronistic when applied to a person, the analyst, in the present.

It should be noted that the term, transference, does not refer to reactions of the patient to the analyst that are based on reality factors in the therapeutic relationship. And so, a patient may be angry with her or his therapist if the latter misses an appointment, but to call such a reaction a manifestation of transference is incorrect.

It should also be recognized that transference can exist outside the analytic situation in relation to other people in the person's environment or life space.

Now recall a few details of "Shrub" Bush's history. As the first-born child, he spent much of his early childhood in an essentially single parent home since his father was frequently away on extended business trips. To exacerbate matters even more, he had a younger sister who died of leukemia just two months shy of her fourth birthday when "Shrub" was just seven years old. The sister's illness probably took up much of the mother's time, energy, and emotional focus making her less available to her other children. I also suspect that his mother may have been reactively depressed during this arduous and traumatic period making her even less emotionally available during a crucially important, developmental period of "Shrub" Bush's life.

Indicative of the trauma Mrs. Bush endured, after the daughter's death, her hair turned completely white while she was still in her twenties.

Lack of parental availability typically leads to lack of parent-child attunement. And lack of parent-child attunement often makes for deficient empathic ability and a relative inability to identify with others. Frequently, such youngsters become rule busters or rule breakers as adults in the psychopathic sense. Clinicians who have studied attachment have noted the similarities between the behavioral manifestations of insecure attachment and disruptive behavior disorders. Antisocial behavior is seen, in part, as a covert communication to an unresponsive, emotionally distant parental figure. Perhaps this perspective illuminates, in part, the dynamic of "Shrub" Bush's unilateralism, his disavowal of treaties, and his seeming proclivity to violate international law with impunity. It is as if he thinks rules do not apply to him.

Myriam Miedzian in "Growing Up Is Hard To Do" (The Baltimore Sun, 12 September 2000) perspicaciously and presciently addresses the assertion that "Shrub" Bush evidences "deficient empathic ability and a relative inability to identify with others." She writes:

So when he was a kid, George W. enjoyed putting firecrackers into frogs, throwing them in the air, and then watching them blow up. Should this be cause for alarm? How relevant is a man's childhood behavior to what he is like as an adult? And in this case, to what he would be like as president of the United States?

Cruelty to animals is a common precursor to later criminal violence. [In fact, the triad of cruelty to animals, fire setting, and enuresis are symptoms typically found in the histories of serial killers!] But in rural West Texas, where George W. grew up, it was not uncommon for some boys to indulge in such cruelty.

His blowing up frogs or shooting them with BB guns with friends does not have the same significance it would have if, for example, a city boy blew up the family cat. In fact, George's childhood friend, Terry Throckmorton, openly and laughingly admits, "We were terrible to animals."

But there were surely many boys in George's hometown of Midland, Texas, who would have been repelled at the thought of blowing up frogs. So how much importance should we attribute to this early behavior?

Is boy George's lack of empathy [italics mine] and cruelty not just childhood insensitivity, but rather a personality trait still present in the man? If so, we have much to be concerned about.

Last year. George W. Bush gave an interview to a Talk magazine reporter about the execution of convicted Texas murderer Karla Faye Tucker, who became a Christian after her incarceration. Mr. Bush chose to mimic the late Karla Faye begging for mercy: "Please," Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, "don't kill me."

Gov. George H. Ryan of Illinois favors the death penalty but has put a temporary moratorium on executions because of recent DNA evidence exonerating a number of prisoners on death rows.

By contrast, Mr. Bush has chosen to go ahead with executions in Texas, including that of Gary Graham, whose court-appointed attorney was judicially admonished for sleeping through much of his trial. Mr. Bush's much-vaunted religious conversion seems to have done little to encourage Christian mercy.

Can this conservative be compassionate?

It takes a certain capacity for empathy [italics mine] for a man born to wealth and social standing to imagine what it is like to live on a $12,000 a year salary and be unable to afford proper medical treatment for an ill child.

As president, Mr. Bush would undoubtedly continue to oppose raising the minimum wage or providing health insurance for all American children.

When it comes to foreign policy, Roger Fisher and William Ury of the Harvard Negotiation Project and authors of "Getting to Yes," say that "the ability to see the situation as the other side sees it... is one of the most important skills a negotiator can posses [because] failing to deal with others sensitively... can be disastrous as negotiation."

Tragically, few men in political power excel at these qualities and many mistakes have been made in our foreign policy.

I shall never forget former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, who played a major role in one of our greatest foreign policy mistakes - the Vietnam War - speaking regretfully of errors he and others made during the Cold War. In a 1988 interview, he told me that "the necessity of looking at your actions through the eyes of your opponent - that is absolutely fundamental, and we don't do that."

Do we really want a man who appears to be empathically challenged [italics mine] to hold the most powerful position in America?

But even more salient, "Shrub" Bush's developmentally immature and regressive obsession with Mr. Hussein seems to be part of an unfolding Oedipal drama. For him, the goal is to "defeat" the idealized father who "Shrub" was never able to measure up to and in whose footsteps "Shrub" seems to have assiduously sought to tread by defeating and destroying Mr. Hussein, someone his father was unable to vanquish. In this fashion, Mr. Bush hopes to win the Oedipal battle. Or as a colleague who is a socially committed, board certified psychiatrist, Dr. Carol Wolman, put it in "Diagnosing Dubya: Is the President Nuts?": "Dubya may be acting out a classical Oedipal drama - overcome Daddy to get Mommy. By deposing Saddam, when his father did not, he may want to prove himself more worthy of his mother's love. His rationale that he is avenging the [alleged] assassination attempt on George, Sr., may be a reaction formation - his way of hiding his true motive from himself." And I might add, to deny, suppress, and repress his own ambivalence and hostility toward his father.

And so we are left with foreign policy as psychodrama, as well as service to Israel and, as Nelson Mandela has pointed out, US oil interests and the military industrial complex.

Alvin Wyman Walker, PhD, PD, PC, is a clinical psychologist/psychotherapist. He has a PhD in Personality/Social Psychology/Cultural Anthropology and the equivalent of a second PhD in Clinical Psychology.

He has spent his professional life working with "underserved" patients -- people of color, working class whites, and children and adolescents -- in public settings and is currently in private practice.

http://www.blackcommentator.com/28/28_guest_commentary_1.html

Our self-professed family values president has a strange set of family values – selective memory, hypocrisy, lying, and scapegoating.
By William Marvel

Posted Thursday, May 12, 2003

More than anything else, the growing scandal over Iraq's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction highlights the profound hypocrisy that seems to be required of the Republican faithful these days. In order to continue supporting George Bush and his Wolfowitz pack of co-conspirators, Republican Party animals must ignore the furor they raised, only five years ago, over a president who (like many Republican and Democratic presidents before him) had engaged in an extramarital affair. Those who impeached Bill Clinton for disguising a private transgression now expect the rest of us to forgive George Bush for lying to the entire world about matters of grave national and international importance.

As the self-professed "family values" president, George Bush ought to be able to tell me how I should explain his dishonesty to my stepson, who has begun to demonstrate a willingness to sneak and lie as a means of achieving his desired goals in the face of parental refusal. Most teenagers encounter such temptations, and if they are not discovered in time and dealt with expeditiously they can become habitual, evidently even into adulthood. It becomes more difficult to illustrate the evils of such a habit, however, when the man who considers himself President of the United States so casually and continually deceives the American public and still wins his original aims, even after his lies have been revealed.

Republican damage control will now consist of finding a scapegoat. He will have to be someone like Oliver North, who is willing to take the fall for his superiors in return for certain considerations. He will have to say that he, either or alone or with a band of fellow criminals, manufactured the evidence that fooled a trusting George Bush and his perfectly moral cabinet members. Like Ronald Reagan, who persistently dozed through crucial meetings, George W. Bush is a perfect candidate for a plea of ignorance: who could doubt that someone of his limited intellect would be gullible enough to accept phony intelligence concocted by a cohort of intriguing amateurs?

Colin Powell will not escape so easily. Late last month he and his British counterpart, Jack Straw, were caught sharing their doubts about the claims that Iraq still held biological or chemical weapons, or that he sought to produce nuclear weapons. Those doubts did not prevent Powell from taking the case to the UN and presenting the evidence that even he did not believe, but then Powell is a team player. That is how he got to the top, by molding his statements and actions to match the outcomes his superiors desired: one of his earliest examples of such accommodation was his 1968 whitewash of the first complaint from an American GI about atrocities within the Americal Division. Later an inspector general double-checked similar complaints and uncovered the My Lai massacre, but in his memoir Powell conveniently forgets his initial participation in that investigation.

The real story here is how the scandal took so long to develop. As early as last March 22 I attended some lectures at American University that included former intelligence personnel who were denouncing the Bush administration for ignoring information provided by the CIA and for inventing substitute information that better suited the argument for war. Ray McGovern, a career analyst for the CIA, warned us that George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and Colin Powell were all lying outright, but no one listened. The Washington Post, which once relieved us of a pathological liar named Nixon, all but ignored those lectures; Time and Newsweek were nowhere to be seen. Every institution that once supported American democracy failed us, from the presidential palace to the pressroom.

William Marvel is a freelance writer in New Hampshire and served in the U.S. Army from 1968-1971. His many books include the award-winning Andersonville: The Last Depot and Lee's Last Retreat: The Flight to Appomattox.

http://www.interventionmag.com/cms/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=418

Bush lied about his arrest, a reporter says

The Texas governor said he had not been arrested since a 1968 college prank, covering up the 1976 DUI incident.

By Jake Tapper

November 03, 2000 | MILWAUKEE -- Sitting in the bar of the downtown Hyatt Hotel here Thursday night, Mark McKinnon, the media advisor to Gov. George W. Bush, was smoking a stogie, looking serene. He said he thought that his boss's disclosure earlier in the day that he had been arrested for driving while intoxicated in Maine in 1976, at the age of 30, would blow over.

"I did 13 one-person focus groups," McKinnon joked, saying that he'd called family and friends, who all reassured him that their positive impression of the governor hadn't changed as a result of the story, which was broken Thursday evening by the Portland, Maine, NBC station. McKinnon, who wouldn't say whether he had known of the arrest previously, did allow that the story could become more of a problem for the governor if it surfaced that he had ever lied about the arrest.

And by the next morning, it began to look as though Bush had, in at least once instance, lied about it.

In the media's breakfast room, Wayne Slater, a reporter with the Dallas Morning News, confirmed an account, first mentioned in the New Republic, that in the fall of 1998 Bush had lied to him about whether he'd ever been arrested after 1968.

In the midst of Bush's gubernatorial reelection effort, Slater reported that while in college, Bush had been arrested for stealing a Christmas wreath from a New Haven, Conn., hotel. Cornering Bush in the press room of the State Capitol in Austin, Texas, after a press conference, Slater pressed Bush on his arrest record.

"I asked him if he'd ever been arrested after 1968," when the wreath incident took place, Slater recalled. "And he said, 'No.'"

Slater emphasized the context of the conversation, however, and his gut feeling now that Bush was on the brink of disclosing the 1976 drunken-driving arrest to him. "When he said the word 'no,' clearly he wasn't telling the truth," Slater said. But, Slater said, he then asked Bush if "had he ever been arrested before 1968, and he said, 'Well ...,' and I felt he may have been ready to correct what he had just said, but [Bush spokeswoman] Karen Hughes stepped in and stopped the interview."

About the writer:
Jake Tapper is the Washington correspondent for Salon News.

salon.com
http://dir.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/11/03/lie/index.html

Bush Acknowledges 1976 DUI Arrest

By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 3, 2000; Page A01

George W. Bush confirmed last night that he was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol in Maine 24 years ago, saying he regretted the incident and had "learned my lesson."

Bush, who spoke to reporters after Fox News reported the incident, said that he had been drinking beer in a bar on Labor Day weekend in Kennebunkport, Maine, where his family has a summer home, and that he had been pulled over by a police officer.

Bush, 30 at the time, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of driving under the influence, paid a $150 fine and had his driving privileges suspended in Maine for 30 days. His Texas driver's license was not affected, according to his campaign.

"It's an accurate story," Bush said after a campaign stop in Wisconsin. "I'm not proud of that. I've often times said that years ago I made some mistakes; I occasionally drank too much. I did on that night. I was pulled over. I admitted to the policeman that I had been drinking. I paid the fine. I regretted that it happened. I learned my lesson."

Bush's decision not to volunteer the information early in his campaign represented a calculated political risk by a presidential candidate in an era when personal information of that nature is routinely revealed. Some Bush advisers long have known about the incident, according to a campaign spokesman, but the governor preferred to keep it private.

Bush said last night that he never revealed the episode to the public because he did not want his twin daughters, 18, to know about it, preferring to implore them not to drink and drive rather than tell them of his mistakes. "I made the decision that as a dad I didn't want my girls doing the kinds of things I did and I told them not to drink and drive," Bush told reporters. He said he talked to his daughters about the incident last night.

It was not clear how news about the arrest might affect his race against Vice President Gore. Bush has consistently criticized Gore for a lack of credibility and presented himself as a leader who can be trusted.

Bush and his aides suggested the timing might be politically motivated. During his brief appearance last night, Bush repeatedly questioned the timing of the news report. "Why now, four days before an election?" he said. At another point, he said, "I've got my suspicions."

Spokesmen for two Portland, Maine, television stations said their reporters came across the incident while covering an unrelated arson case yesterday and overheard hallway conversations about the arrest. Reporters for the stations, WPXT-TV and WCSH-TV, pursued the story and found several documents confirming the Sept. 4, 1976, arrest, as well as the name of the arresting officer.

Erin Fehlau of WPXT told ABC's "Nightline" that she was asked about the episode by a police officer yesterday morning who said a judge and lawyer had been talking about it. Fehlau said the lawyer, who was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention, had a copy of the docket and that she pursued the case from that information.

Yesterday, Bush said he had been drinking beer with friends, including the tennis player John Newcombe, but could not recall how many beers he had consumed that night. The Associated Press, citing an interview with the arresting officer, reported that Bush failed a roadside sobriety test and a second test in the police station, registering a 0.10 blood-alcohol level--the legal limit at the time.

Campaign officials said Bush had been pulled over because he was driving too slowly. The arresting officer, Calvin Bridges, said he recalled the car briefly slipping off onto the shoulder before returning to the road. Bridges also told the AP that Bush was "a picture of integrity" that night.

Throughout the campaign, Bush has acknowledged improper behavior in his youth but has generally refused to answer specific questions about his past, particularly about whether he had used illegal drugs. He has freely acknowledged, however, that he had drinking problems and that he quit drinking 14 years ago when he turned 40.

Bush said last night he did not think the news report should be relevant to the presidential race, arguing that he has been "very candid about my past" with voters in Texas and in his presidential campaign. "I think the people knew I had been straightforward, that I'd made mistakes in the past," he said.

He added that he had never tried to cover up the incident. "I'm not trying to get away with anything. I didn't want to talk about this in front of my daughters," he said.

Politicians have faced increased scrutiny about their personal lives in recent presidential campaigns. In 1988, Gore and other then-candidates for the White House acknowledged using marijuana as youths, while in 1992 Bill Clinton survived reports of marital infidelity and charges that he lied about his draft status.

The Dallas Morning News reported that Bush was struck from a jury that was empaneled in 1996 in Austin to hear a drunk driving case. He was asked by reporters if he had ever been arrested for drunk driving. "I do not have a perfect record as a youth," he said at the time. "When I was young, I did a lot of foolish things. But I will tell you this, I urge people not to drink and drive. It's an important message for all people to hear."

Gore campaign spokesman Chris Lehane said, "This is just not something the Gore campaign is involved with in any shape, way or form. It's not something we would engage in."

Staff writer Mike Allen, with Bush, contributed to this report.

© 2000 The Washington Post Company
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A4085-2000Nov2&notFound=true

Dry Drunk
Is Bush making a cry for help?
by Alan Bisbort

Sept. 24, 2002 -- HARTFORD (APJP) -- Alcoholics Anonymous has a name for someone who is a drunk in every way except for the actual imbibing of spirits. They call that person a "dry drunk." This is not a judgmental term, nor should this be a judgmental topic in America, where there are, by even the most conservative estimates, 10 million adult alcoholics, and very few families that have not been touched, in one way or another, by this national scourge. This same scourge has, by his own admission, also touched the life of our Commander in Chief.

Whether George W. Bush is or was an alcoholic is not the point here. I am taking him at his word that he stopped what he termed "heavy drinking" in 1986, at age 40. The point here is that, based on Bush's recent behavior, he could very well be a "dry drunk." Of course, he may just be an immature bully who will gladly sacrifice thousands of lives to get his way even against the advice of the most respected and mature members of his own party.

Still, Bush's past battles with the bottle are worth pondering at a time like this, one of the most dangerous in the nation's history. When a recovering alcoholic begins to engage in what AA calls "stinking thinking," he or she begins to exhibit the old attitudes and pathologies of their drinking years. These include an increase in anxiety, mild tremors, mild depression, disturbed sleep patterns, inability to think clearly, craving for junk food, irritability, sudden bursts of anger and unpredictable mood swings. According to AA literature, "Boredom and listlessness may alternate with intense feelings of resentment against family and friends, and explosive outbursts of violence."

Bush said he was a "heavy drinker." But let's not be coy here. Anyone who has ever imbibed heavily over a long period of time knows that "heavy drinker" is the rich man's (or the politician's) code for alcoholic.

For the record, Bush claims to have stopped drinking for reasons that change each time he's asked about his substance-abusing past (which isn't often, thanks to a cowed press). Let's say he started experimenting with alcohol, as per the national norm, at 16 at prep school, and he began getting regularly wasted at Yale at 18. This would mean that Bush drank steadily "heavily" for at least 22 years. We are, then, asked to believe that he went cold turkey after more than two decades of heavy drinking, a nearly impossible feat even for someone, as he claims, who was rescued by God.

Far be it from me to cast stones when it comes to alcohol. I've seen the devastating toll alcoholism can take. My brother was an honors student in college, when he began drinking heavily (party drinking, as was the tradition at southern colleges back then). By the time he was in his mid-30s, real and dramatic changes had occurred in his metabolism and brain chemistry. Medical experts told me at the time that just 15 years of sustained drinking can do irreversible physical harm of this sort. In other words, even if my brother stopped drinking, the damage would remain done. But by most measuring sticks, my brother was a functioning member of society. He held jobs, paid his rent and bills, and he made heroic efforts to beat his cursed addiction. He climbed the 12 steps more times than Stallone climbed those steps in "Rocky."

Though I deeply loved my brother and miss him terribly now, I could not deny the damage, even in his long periods of sobriety, that alcohol did to him. Rather, I could not deny the damage, but I could not bear to watch it happen. I could feel it in my bones that he was up against something stronger than his will and his prodigious intellect. Stinking thinking, like kudzu, simply overtook his mind, and alcohol killed his body.

It is worth reflecting on George W. Bush's academic history. He graduated from two of the finest institutions of higher learning in this country: Yale and Harvard. He didn't make great grades, but he graduated, an accomplishment warranting some respect. Many rich, well-connected boys have flunked out. [NOTE from the editors: ...or tossed out, as was one Richard Scaife, from Yale, allegedly for his own love of the bottle.]

The question is then begged, and seems to at least deserve some pause for pondering: how did he, at age 58, get so fumble-tongued, incapable of stringing more than two coherent sentences together, snippily irritable with anyone who dares disagree with him or even ask a question, poutily turning his back on the democratically elected president of one of our most important allies because of something one of his underlings said about him (Germany's Schroder, of course), listlessly in need of constant vacations and rest, dangerously obsessed with only one thing (Iraq), to the exclusion of all other things (including an economy that is slowly sucking the life from the nation as ! well as the retirement savings of anyone reading these words)?

Furthermore, why is Bush so eager to engage in violence and so incapable of explaining why?

For drunks to function for any length of time in the world, they need enablers. Congress is filling that bill splendidly right now for Bush. As BuzzFlash put it about the recent corporate scandals, "For most of his adult life, those people around him enabled Bush's alcoholism. Now the Democratic Senate is enabling the corporate corruption problem of his administration by not using their Constitutional powers to demand the truth."

Not only the Congress but the nation seems to be watching this happen. No. They are encouraging it to happen. Who knows, maybe we are all in shock, just as we are when a member of our family does something appalling or outrageous under alcohol's bidding. God knows, the crazy behavior by the administration is so wild and unprecedented, covering such frightening unknown territory up ahead that it may be easier to look away.

But we can't look away. George W. Bush needs an intervention. Let's be his interveners. Let's raise our sober voices. Let's ask questions, demand more than temper tantrums and pouting from the Commander in Chief. Let's do this before it's too late and a dry drunk's dream of glory becomes our national nightmare.

Alan Bisbort is a columnist for the Hartford Advocate. His more recent book is "Famous Last Words" (Pomegranate).

http://www.americanpolitics.com/20020924Bisbort.html

Is the President Nuts?
Diagnosing Dubya
by CAROL WOLMAN, M.D.

CounterPunch

October 2, 2002

Many people, inside and especially outside this country, believe that the American president is nuts, and is taking the world on a suicidal path. As a board-certified psychiatrist, I feel it's my duty to share my understanding of his psychopathology. He's a complicated man, under tremendous pressure from both his family/junta, and from the world at large. So the following is offered with humility and questioning, in the form of a differential diagnosis.

From the Freudian point of view:

Dubya may be acting out a classical Oedipal drama--overcome Daddy to get Mommy. By deposing Saddam, when his father did not, he may want to prove himself more worthy of his mother's love. His rationale that he is avenging the assassination attempt on George, Sr., may be a reaction formation- his way of hiding the true motive from himself.

From the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Fourth Edition:

Antisocial Personality Disorder--301.7

There is a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others since age 15 years as indicated by at least three of the following: 1) failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest; 2) deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure; 5) reckless disregard for safety of self or others; 7) lack of remorse by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated or stolen from others.

Another possibility from DSM IV:

Dissociative Identity Disorder (formerly Multiple Personality Disorder) 300.14

A) The presence of two or more distinct identities, each with its own enduring pattern of perceiving, relating to and thinking about the environment and self.

B) At least two of these identities or personality states recurrently take control of the person's behavior.

This disorder is typical of people raised by satanic cults, and might explain how Dubya can think of himself as a born-again Christian and yet worship money, oil and profit, and sanction killing thousands of innocent Iraqi and Afghani children.

Another possibility:

Narcissistic personality disorder 301.81

1) has a grandiose sense of self-importance- exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements;

2) in preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty or ideal love;

3) believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or
high-status people;

4) requires excessive admiration;

5) has a sense of entitlement- unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her
expectations;

6) is interpersonally exploitative;

7) lacks empathy, is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others;

9) shows arrogant, haughty behavior or attitudes.

This set of characteristics may describe Rumsfeld and Cheney better than Dubya.

Or, for those who feel that he's just a puppet for others:

Dependent Personality Disorder 301.6

1) has difficulty making everyday decisions without an excessive amount of advice and reassurance from others;

2) needs others to assume responsibility for most major areas of his life;

3) has difficulty expressing disagreement with others because of fear of loss of support or approval;

4) has difficulty initiating projects or doing things on his own because of a lack of self-confidence in judgment or abilities.

5. goes to excessive lengths to obtain nurturance and support from others, to the point of doing things that are unpleasant.

From a Jungian point of view:

Dubya may be identifying with an archetype (as Hitler did with the ubermensch)--something out of Revelations, perhaps, whereby he sees himself as an instrument of God's will to bring about Armageddon.

Dr. Carol Wolman is a board certified psychiatrist, in practice for 30 years. She can be reached at: cwolman@mcn.org
http://www.counterpunch.org/wolman1002.html

Addiction, Brain Damage and the President
"Dry Drunk" Syndrome and George W. Bush
by KATHERINE van WORMER

Ordinarily I would not use this term. But when I came across the article "Dry Drunk" - - Is Bush Making a Cry for Help? in American Politics Journal by Alan Bisbort, I was ready to concede, in the case of George W. Bush, the phrase may be quite apt.

Dry drunk is a slang term used by members and supporters of Alcoholics Anonymous and substance abuse counselors to describe the recovering alcoholic who is no longer drinking, one who is dry, but whose thinking is clouded. Such an individual is said to be dry but not truly sober. Such an individual tends to go to extremes.

It was when I started noticing the extreme language that colored President Bush's speeches that I began to wonder. First there were the terms-- "crusade" and "infinite justice" that were later withdrawn. Next came "evil doers," "axis of evil," and "regime change", terms that have almost become clichés in the mass media. Something about the polarized thinking and the obsessive repetition reminded me of many of the recovering alcoholics/addicts I had treated. (A point worth noting is that because of the connection between addiction and "stinking thinking," relapse prevention usually consists of work in the cognitive area). Having worked with recovering alcoholics for years, I flinched at the single-mindedness and ego- an