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- and ethnocentricity in the President's speeches. (My husband likened his phraseology to the gardener character played by Peter Sellers in the movie, Being There). Since words are the tools, the representations, of thought, I wondered what Bush's choice of words said about where he was coming from. Or where we would be going.

First, in this essay, we will look at the characteristics of the so-called "dry drunk;" then we will see if they apply to this individual, our president; and then we will review his drinking history for the record. What is the dry drunk syndrome? "Dry drunk" traits consist of:

Exaggerated self-importance and pomposity
Grandiose behavior
A rigid, judgmental outlook
Impatience
Childish behavior
Irresponsible behavior
Irrational rationalization
Projection
Overreaction

Clearly, George W. Bush has all these traits except exaggerated self importance. He may be pompous, especially with regard to international dealings, but his actual importance hardly can be exaggerated. His power, in fact, is such that if he collapses into paranoia, a large part of the world will collapse with him. Unfortunately, there are some indications of paranoia in statements such as the following: "We must be prepared to stop rogue states and their terrorist clients before they are able to threaten or use weapons of mass destruction against the United States and our allies and friends." The trait of projection is evidenced here as well, projection of the fact that we are ready to attack onto another nation which may not be so inclined.

Bush's rigid, judgmental outlook comes across in virtually all his speeches. To fight evil, Bush is ready to take on the world, in almost a Biblical sense. Consider his statement with reference to Israel: "Look my job isn't to try to nuance. I think moral clarity is important... this is evil versus good."

Bush's tendency to dichotomize reality is not on the Internet list above, but it should be, as this tendency to polarize is symptomatic of the classic addictive thinking pattern. I describe this thinking distortion in Addiction Treatment: A Strengths Perspective as either/or reasoning-- "either you are with us or against us." Oddly, Bush used those very words in his dealings with other nations. All-or-nothing thinking is a related mode of thinking commonly found in newly recovering alcoholics/addicts. Such a worldview traps people in a pattern of destructive behavior.

Obsessive thought patterns are also pronounced in persons prone to addiction. There are organic reasons for this due to brain chemistry irregularities; messages in one part of the brain become stuck there. This leads to maddening repetition of thoughts. President Bush seems unduly focused on getting revenge on Saddam Hussein ("he tried to kill my Dad") leading the country and the world into war, accordingly.

Grandiosity enters the picture as well. What Bush is proposing to Congress is not the right to attack on one country but a total shift in military policy: America would now have the right to take military action before the adversary even has the capacity to attack. This is in violation, of course, of international law as well as national precedent. How to explain this grandiose request? Jane Bryant Quinn provides the most commonly offered explanation in a recent Newsweek editorial, "Iraq: It's the Oil, Stupid." Many other opponents of the Bush doctrine similarly seek a rational motive behind the obsession over first, the war on terror and now, Iraq. I believe the explanation goes deeper than oil, that Bush's logic is being given too much credit; I believe his obsession is far more visceral.

On this very day, a peace protestor in Portland held up the sign, "Drunk on Power." This, I believe, is closer to the truth. The drive for power can be an unquenchable thirst, addictive in itself. Senator William Fulbright, in his popular bestseller of the 1960s, The Arrogance of Power, masterfully described the essence of power-hungry politics as the pursuit of power; this he conceived as an end in itself. "The causes and consequences of war may have more to do with pathology than with politics," he wrote, "more to do with irrational pressures of pride and pain than with rational calculation of advantage and profit."

Another "dry drunk" trait is impatience. Bush is far from a patient man: "If we wait for threats to fully materialize," he said in a speech he gave at West Point, "we will have waited too long." Significantly, Bush only waited for the United Nations and for Congress to take up the matter of Iraq's disarmament with extreme reluctance.

Alan Bisbort argues that Bush possesses the characteristics of the "dry drunk" in terms of: his incoherence while speaking away from the script; his irritability with anyone (for example, Germany's Schröder) who dares disagree with him; and his dangerous obsessing about only one thing (Iraq) to the exclusion of all other things.

In short, George W. Bush seems to possess the traits characteristic of addictive persons who still have the thought patterns that accompany substance abuse. If we consult the latest scientific findings, we will discover that scientists can now observe changes that occur in the brain as a result of heavy alcohol and other drug abuse. Some of these changes may be permanent. Except in extreme cases, however, these cognitive impairments would not be obvious to most observers.

To reach any conclusions we need of course to know Bush's personal history relevant to drinking/drug use. To this end I consulted several biographies. Yes, there was much drunkenness, years of binge drinking starting in college, at least one conviction for DUI in 1976 in Maine, and one arrest before that for a drunken episode involving theft of a Christmas wreath. According to J.D. Hatfield's book, Fortunate Son, Bush later explained:

"[A]lcohol began to compete with my energies....I'd lose focus." Although he once said he couldn't remember a day he hadn't had a drink, he added that he didn't believe he was "clinically alcoholic." Even his father, who had known for years that his son had a serious drinking problem, publicly proclaimed: "He was never an alcoholic. It's just he knows he can't hold his liquor."

Bush drank heavily for over 20 years until he made the decision to abstain at age 40. About this time he became a "born again Christian," going as usual from one extreme to the other. During an Oprah interview, Bush acknowledged that his wife had told him he needed to think about what he was doing. When asked in another interview about his reported drug use, he answered honestly, "I'm not going to talk about what I did 20 to 30 years ago."

That there might be a tendency toward addiction in Bush's family is indicated in the recent arrests or criticism of his daughters for underage drinking and his niece for cocaine possession. Bush, of course, deserves credit for his realization that he can't drink moderately, and his decision today to abstain. The fact that he doesn't drink moderately, may be suggestive of an inability to handle alcohol. In any case, Bush has clearly gotten his life in order and is in good physical condition, careful to exercise and rest when he needs to do so. The fact that some residual effects from his earlier substance abuse, however slight, might cloud the U.S. President's thinking and judgment is frightening, however, in the context of the current global crisis.

One final consideration that might come into play in the foreign policy realm relates to Bush's history relevant to his father. The Bush biography reveals the story of a boy named for his father, sent to the exclusive private school in the East where his father's reputation as star athlete and later war hero were still remembered. The younger George's achievements were dwarfed in the school's memory of his father. Athletically he could not achieve his father's laurels, being smaller and perhaps less strong. His drinking bouts and lack of intellectual gifts held him back as well. He was popular and well liked, however. His military record was mediocre as compared to his father's as well. Bush entered the Texas National Guard. What he did there remains largely a mystery. There are reports of a lot of barhopping during this period. It would be only natural that Bush would want to prove himself today, that he would feel somewhat uncomfortable following, as before, in his father's footsteps. I mention these things because when you follow his speeches, Bush seems bent on a personal crusade. One motive is to avenge his father. Another seems to be to prove himself to his father. In fact, Bush seems to be trying somehow to achieve what his father failed to do - - to finish the job of the Gulf War, to get the "evildoer" Saddam.

To summarize, George W. Bush manifests all the classic patterns of what alcoholics in recovery call "the dry drunk." His behavior is consistent with barely noticeable but meaningful brain damage brought on by years of heavy drinking and possible cocaine use. All the classic patterns of addictive thinking that are spelled out in my book are here:

the tendency to go to extremes (leading America into a massive 100 billion dollar strike-first war);
a "kill or be killed mentality;" the tunnel vision;
"I" as opposed to "we" thinking;
the black and white polarized thought processes (good versus evil, all or nothing thinking).
His drive to finish his father's battles is of no small significance, psychologically.

If the public (and politicians) could only see what Fulbright noted as the pathology in the politics. One day, sadly, they will.

Katherine van Wormer is a Professor of Social Work at the University of Northern Iowa Co-author of Addiction Treatment: A Strengths Perspective (2002).

http://www.counterpunch.org/wormer1011.html

More Evidence that Bush Is a "Dry Drunk"?
by Katherine van Wormer
Published on Tuesday, January 27, 2004 by the History News Network

Paul O’Neill’s revelations, the primary source for Ron Suskind’s book The Price of Loyalty concerning the timing of George W Bush’s plans to overthrow Saddam in Iraq should have come as no surprise. The ostensible reasons for going to war -- the claimed link between Iraq and al-Queda and the claimed possession of weapons of mass destruction -- have been shown to be without substance. The typical explanation offered by the mainstream press and political pundits was that September 11 was a turning point.

What September 11 did was provide the justification. “From the start,” said Paul O’Neill in his book interview, “we were building the case against Hussein and looking at how we could take him out and change Iraq into a new country…It was about finding a way to do it that was the tone of it…the president saying, ‘Fine. Go find me a way to do this.’ And how would O’Neill know? O’Neill, as Secretary of the Treasury also sat on the National Security Council.

Even though, under pressure, while O’Neill has tried to tone down his statements, the mass media have continued to highlight the revelations. Missing from all the recent analyses and editorials, however, is any attention to the reason why: Why did Bush have this thing about Saddam? Why the “detour into an unnecessary war in Iraq?” as the U.S.Army War College recently put it.

“He tried to kill my Dad,” the President once explained. But I believe there was more to this unnecessary war than that. I believe there was a method in Bush’s madness, a method that most likely had as little to do with oil as it did to terrorism. For the answer we need to look deeply in the psyche of the man (inferred from his biography).

Earlier several other writers and I likened Bush’s personality characteristics to those of a person who, in AA parlance, is “dry” but whose thinking is not really sober. Grandiosity, rigidity, and intolerance of ambiguity, and a tendency to obsess about things are among the traits associated with the dry drunk. The dry drunk quits drinking, but his or her obsession with the bottle is often replaced with other obsessions. Twelve Step programs help their members modify their all-or-nothing thought patterns which associated with the disease alcoholism. “Easy does it” and “One day at a time” are among the slogans; the serenity prayer, similarly, helps persons with addictive tendencies to curb the tendency to excess.

In Bush’s irrational patterns of thought lie the clues to his single-minded obsession with Iraq. For the explanation for Bush’s vendetta against this one country, we have to look to his biography and to the meaning that Iraq held for his father.

The father-son relationship can be problematic in any family. When the father is considered a big hero, the first-born son, especially one bearing the father’s name, identity issues are common. As any chronology of George W Bush’s childhood will show, the son was set up to follow in the exact footsteps of his father. Sent away to the very New England prep school where his father’s accomplishments were still remembered, the younger Bush became better known for his pranks than athletic or academic achievements. His drinking bouts caused problems during his military service as well. (Remember that his father had been a war hero.) In college there was heavy drinking and other drug misuse, one arrest for a wild college prank and one conviction for drunken driving.

A much later religious conversion turned his life around. George W. Bush’s father set him up in business, and his father’s presidency helped him get his start in politics. His father, for all his success, experienced failure on three occasions. He was widely criticized for not finishing the job in Iraq-- for not moving the troops in to “take out” Saddam following the Gulf War victory--and he failed to get his bill to fund a NASA flight to Mars, and finally, he lost his bid for re-election.

What a unique opportunity has fallen George W Bush’s way. The prodigal son can not only prove himself to his father but he can show up his father at his own game. Remember that for his cabinet and key advisers, he chose some of the same men from his father’s regime. He chose people, furthermore, who would be favorable to a return campaign, “a crusade” against Iraq. Given his past history and tendency toward obsessiveness, the temptation to achieve heroism through a re-enactment of his father’s war clearly would have been too much for George Bush Jr. to resist.

To accomplish his mission he would have to throw caution and international diplomacy to the winds, lie convincingly to the American people, threaten allies, bully members of the United Nations, but in the end he would be able to dress in full military regalia and declare “mission accomplished.”

The fact that the targeting of Iraq had become one man’s personal crusade even seemed somewhat extreme to the father who was indirectly responsible. Yes, the man who knows George W. best, the person most familiar with his rashness of thought, indirectly sent him a message. In a speech at Tufts University, George Bush Sr. emphasized the need for the U.S. to maintain close ties with Europe and the UN. “You’ve got to reach out to the other person,” he advised.

More recently, Bush has raised an unprecedented amount of money for his re-election campaign. And his grandiose (and much ridiculed) plans to launch rockets to Mars (and the moon) could have been predicted. The method in his madness is clear once you understand the pattern. Whether the majority of the American people will ever see the light remains to be seen. The starting point may be Paul O’Neill’s revelations, because one is then to prone to ask the question, Why?

Ms. van Wormer is a Professor of Social Work at the University of Northern Iowa and co-author of 'Addiction Treatment: A Strengths Perspective'.

http://hnn.us/articles/3165.html

Berating the Generals : The Siege of Washington

By WAYNE MADSEN

March 31, 2003

March 25, 2003 may serve as a crucial turning point in American history. On that day, George W. Bush displayed his increasingly erratic and irresponsible behavior before America's top military leadership. The friction between Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on one hand and the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the other was evident at the afternoon Pentagon press briefing. This reporter had the pleasure of meeting and chatting with Joint Chiefs Chairman General Richard Myers at a swank reception for Afghan leader Hamid Karzai a few months after U.S. troops launched Operation Enduring Freedom against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Myers demonstrated that he is an affable individual and not one to bask in the conceitedness of constant media attention.

Trailing the pompous Rumsfeld into the briefing room, Myers' jaws were tight and his lips were pursed as he stared straight down at his notes during Rumsfeld's opening statements. I was in the military long enough to know when someone has either just been chewed out or has had it out with his superiors. It doesn't matter if you're wearing four stars on your shoulders or one stripe on your sleeves, the telltale signs are always same.

Myers, on two occasions, appeared to differ with Rumsfeld. One was on the issue of Iran's conduct during the war. Myers said Iran had done nothing to make him unhappy. Rumsfeld, however, chastised Iran for supporting and training Iraqi Shia militia in Iraq. In a few days, Rumsfeld obliquely warned both Iran and Syria of the potential for U.S. retaliation against them. When Myers was asked about Iraq's possible use of chemical weapons, the general responded that no such weapons had yet been used. Rumsfeld indicated that he expected Iraq would use chemical weapons and warned that there was a retaliatory plan to deal with such an occurrence.

The gulf between Rumsfeld and his neo-con advisers is now wider than both the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Add to this the increasingly nasty and un- presidential demeanor of George Bush. Pentagon insiders report that Bush, in a not-too-rare Hitleresque moment, used his March 25 visit to the Pentagon to berate the Joint Chiefs for the conduct of HIS war. Moreover, Rumsfeld did nothing to defend his generals and admirals from such a verbal beating by a draft dodging and often AWOL member of a posh and cozy Texas Air National Guard unit. Rumsfeld, from the outset of his Pentagon stint, treated his generals and admirals like dog crap. They were not even invited to Pentagon planning meetings. These were reserved for Rumsfeld's coterie of neo-con gargoyles like Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, outside and well- paid "consultants," and wet-nursed GOP political hacks.

Bush, who fancies himself a "born-again" Christian, is actually a foul- mouthed and erratic alcoholic. For example, the "pretzel" incident had nothing to do with a pretzel. While watching a football game at the White House, the "leader of the free world" got so drunk he fell right on his face and blamed it on his inability to remember his mother's missive about chewing all one's food before swallowing. Such alibis and ruses are the trademarks of drunks. During the presidential campaign Bush called a New York Times reporter a "major league asshole." In 1986, a clearly drunk and disorderly Bush told The Wall Street Journal's Al Hunt, "You fucking son of a bitch . . . I saw what you wrote. We're not going to forget this." The rich frat boy was irate about an article Hunt wrote about Bush's father. Time magazine is reporting that during a March 2002 briefing for three senators by Condoleezza Rice, Bush poked his head into a White House meeting room and bellowed, "Fuck Saddam. We're taking him out!"

But for Bush to vent his spleen on America's military leadership defies logic and clearly demonstrates that he is mentally unfit for his office. Never mind the fact that Army Chief of Staff, General Eric Shinseki, was harangued by Rumsfeld and his chickenhawks for suggesting not enough troops were provided for the invasion of Iraq. The head of the U.S. Army's V Corps, Lieutenant General William Wallace, said of Iraqi forces, "the enemy we're fighting is different from the one we war-gamed against." Score two for the generals and nothing for the neo-con draft dodgers who planned this idiotic war.

Richard Perle, the ethically-challenged former chairman of the Defense Policy Board and virtual agent for the Russian-mafia dominated Likud government of Israel, got it completely wrong in the hours leading up to the war when he suggested, along with a pathetic Iraqi opposition capo, that U.S. troops would be met with "flowers and candy" upon entering Iraq. Obviously, Perle's military experience does not permit him to distinguish between flowers and candy and bullets and mortar rounds. It is a shame that Rumsfeld still can't pry his lips from Perle's backside. After Perle resigned as chairman of the advisory board amid a financial scandal involving personal war profiteering, Rumsfeld praised him and asked him to remain as a board member.

The fact of the matter is that Bush, Rumsfeld, the other war makers in the administration, and their political allies in Britain, Denmark, Australia, and Spain, are all dangerous megalomaniacs. On March 30th, Rumsfeld continued his deception by claiming on Fox "News" that Bush's war coalition has expanded to 66 countries. This is a bald-faced lie. Some of the countries on the list published by both the White House and Pentagon claim they are not members of any coalition and never have been. The list is false propaganda. It is worthy of Joseph Goebbels

Slovenian Prime Minister Anton Rop said the State Department told him his country had been listed by mistake. But Slovenia remains on Bush's coalition list. The Prime Minister of the Solomon Islands, Allan Kemakeza, said his country was erroneously listed as a member of the coalition. But the Solomons, which don't even have a military, remains on the White House list.

The White House and Pentagon lie purveyors include Croatia in their coalition but Croatian President Stipe Mesic has condemned America's war on Iraq as "illegitimate." The White House claims the Czech Republic is a coalition member but the country's president, Vaclav Klaus, said that anyone who thinks democracy can be imposed on Iraq is "from another universe." Klaus means that people like Bush, Tony Blair, Rumsfeld, and the other neo-Crusaders are just plain nuts. Indeed they are.

U.S. ambassadors in Canada, Norway, Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean, Jamaica, and New Zealand have publicly condemned the host governments for failing to support the U.S. war on Iraq. Such behavior in modern times is unprecedented. Bush heralds Tonga's accession to his pitiful coalition but continues to lose the support of major countries like Italy, Norway, and South Korea. Also, Bush just can't understand why the "Grecians" and "East Timorians" are opposed to his unlawful war.

As U.S. troops began to get bogged down in Iraq with heavy Iraqi resistance and sporadic supply lines, forcing the down to one meal ration a day instead of three, U.S. Marines were handed a pamphlet called a "Christian's Duty." The Marines were exhorted to pray for Bush, his family, and his staff and then mail in a pledge form to Bush to prove that such prayers were rendered. I cannot even begin to fathom a young American military man or woman, risking life and limb on an Iraqi battlefield for U.S. oil companies, being asked to pray for the likes of Ari Fleischer, Andy Card, or John Ashcroft. It rates about a "10" on the puke meter.

But I have a better idea for our brave troops who are being mishandled by the crowd that incrementally seized unconstitutional power between January 20, 2001 and in the weeks after September 11th. Instead of being forced to offer prayers for Bush and his cabal, their commanders should seek a pledge of their support for a military action to return the United States to its people.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff, armed with enough support from their subordinate commanders, troops, and civilian staff, could place a team of Delta Force commandos and armor on the South Lawn of the White House and in front of the North Portico on Pennsylvania Avenue. Using large loudspeakers designed for use in civil action campaigns like the ones currently taking place in Umm Qasr, Basra, and Safwan, Iraq, the Delta Force commander would instruct the Secret Service to exit the White House and lay down weapons. Five minutes should be sufficient. They should then secure the "football" and the military officer who maintains it. The football is actually a large briefcase that contains the nuclear firing codes and it would have to be quickly separated from the madmen in the White House.

Bush, Cheney, Card, Rove, Fleischer, Rice, and the rest should then be taken into custody and transferred to a remote facility like Wackenhut's large detention center in Kern County, California, which was originally designed to hold American political prisoners and anti-war protestors.

The Joint Chiefs should quickly name a transition Executive to plan for new presidential elections. Executive authority could be vested in the man who received the majority of votes in the 2000 election. Al Gore would be sworn in as the 44th President of the United States. In the interest of national unity, Gore would be asked to pledge not to seek re-election in the upcoming presidential election, which should be held no later than nine months from his inauguration.

Former Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter could be named as co-Vice Presidents (it would be constitutional since neither ever served two full presidential terms). These one-time political adversaries are also the best of friends. Although the Joint Chiefs would also have to remove Rumsfeld and his war hawk advisers, Bush Cabinet members (sans Ashcroft and Tom Ridge) who pledged to support the transition government could remain in office pending new elections. However, in all likelihood, many of the Bush appointees would probably be too embarrassed to remain in any official capacity. Washington, DC has a huge reservoir of talented people who could assume Cabinet and other governmental functions - there are a number of ex-senators, representatives, ambassadors, and cabinet members who could step up to the plate during such a national emergency transition.

The first act of the new Defense Secretary would be to extricate U.S. and allied troops from the Iraq morass. The new Secretary of State would be charged with trying to help stabilize the Persian Gulf region, seeking widespread international support for a new Iraqi administration with the help of the United Nations but without an Anglo-American occupation force. The UN and Red Cross should facilitate the repatriation of refugees and prisoners of war. The autonomy of the Kurdish zone in northern Iraq should be internationally guaranteed. The European Union should apply pressure on Turkey not to take advantage of new transitional governments in both Washington and Baghdad.

The new State Department leadership would fan out across the world to reassure allies, friends, and potential adversaries that America once again adheres to multilateralism, international law, and collective action by the UN, NATO, and other regional bodies. Fences would have to be quickly mended with France, Germany, Russia, Canada, and Mexico. The war against Al Qaeda should continue with a primary focus on the governments of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Both countries should be warned that the "business as usual" policies of the Bush regime will not be continued. The new administration would warn that the bankrolling of Al Qaeda in any form will be considered an act of war against the United States. Saudi assets in the United States should be identified for possible seizure in the event of non-cooperation. Pakistan should be required to bring to justice military and intelligence officers who have aided Al Qaeda.

In the United States, special care would have to be taken in appointing a new Secretary for Civil Defense (the new name for the Department of "Homeland Security"). This individual would have to be committed to the U.S. Constitution and the laws of the land status quo ante to September 11th. His or her first steps would be the dismantling of Bush's surveillance web. Gone would be the Total Information Awareness program, the Freedom Corps, "Tips" programs, invasive airline passenger profiling, government "data mining," routine wiretaps, "First Amendment Zones," and unlawful detentions. Back would be the writ of habeas corpus, the unhindered right to an attorney, open government, the right of peaceful assembly, and the right to vote without intimidation. New would be the real and well-funded coordination of public safety across federal, state, county, and municipal lines.

Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Doug Feith would join their fellow war criminals in Kern County. The new administration should ensure that photos of the inmates in their bright orange coveralls are transmitted around the world. Post-Bush regime America would demonstrate that America's democracy is unshakable and resilient.

As for Congress and their responsibilities, this doesn't really matter. Congress abrogated its constitutional responsibilities long ago. They could continue to voice their opinions, because that is all they are - opinions. But knowing how vapid and pimp-like most members of Congress are, they would probably quickly support the military's actions and the transition government. After all, why irritate the military when they could pump a few more military contracts into a member's district? That's all that motivates these so- called "representatives of the people."

But contingencies should be made to handle some congressional troublemakers. The Kern County detention facility could add people like Tom DeLay, Dennis Hastert, and Zell Miller to their inmate roster. Others, like John McCain, Arlen Specter, Joe Lieberman, Joe Biden, Steny Hoyer, and Dick Gephardt, should be offered an Air Force ride to a retirement place of their choice.

The Supreme Court is the only institution that would be problematic. But international law would trump the Supremes in this case. The Kern County detainees would eventually be turned over to the International Criminal Court for trial. The temporary administration's first action would be to adhere to the treaty setting up the international court in The Hague. The new administration could also argue before the Supreme Court that the 25th Amendment could not be properly invoked since a significant number of Cabinet members were too mentally unstable or incompetent to properly vote on declaring both the President and Vice President as being mentally incapable of carrying out their duties.

Although military coups often obliterate democratic rule, there have been a few cases when the military has stepped in to return a country to democratic rule or protect a democratic government from an anti-democratic rebellion. Portugal in 1974, Spain in 1981, and the Soviet Union in 1990 serve as cases in point.

An American Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which would be named by President Gore, would look into what Bush and his cronies really knew about the September 11th attacks and whether they allowed them deliberately to occur in order to seize unconstitutional power, who was responsible for the anthrax attacks on the Democratic leadership of the Senate and the media, i.e., the attempted assassinations of the Democratic Majority Leader and the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Jeb Bush's malfeasance in the 2000 presidential election in Florida, the alleged profiteering of George H. W., Marvin, and Neil Bush in post-September 11th Middle East business deals, and the role of The Carlyle Group, Halliburton, Enron, and others in disastrous pipeline politics in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission should also be empowered to direct the new Attorney General to bring criminal charges against criminal conspirators. For example, if there was one shred of evidence that anyone in the Bush regime had advance knowledge of the September 11th attacks, treason charges should be brought against the conspirators.

Our Founding Fathers established the blueprint for such an action to remove Bush and his criminals and gangsters from office. Let us remember these words from Thomas Jefferson:

"Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that Whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new Government ... it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future."

And these from Abraham Lincoln:

"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it."

Amen.

Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and columnist. He wrote the introduction to Forbidden Truth.

http://www.counterpunch.org/madsen03312003.html

George W. Bush is a "Murderer," in the Eyes of at Least One Prominent European Cabinet Minister
Reuters, Dec 14, 2000

The U.S. president-elect's record of 152 executions in 5 years as Texas governor could be an irritant in dealings with Europe, even if its governments, which all ban the death penalty, are unlikely to let distaste for American penal habits disrupt more vital diplomatic business.

Bush, branded a killer this year by a senior French minister, had a further taste of what he can expect within hours of his confirmation in office on Thursday as the head of the continent's intergovernmental human rights body, the Council of Europe, sent him a barbed message of congratulation.

"The death penalty is a grim shadow on the United States. I call on George Bush to show the courage of a true leader and begin the debate on abolition -- following the lead of Europe," the Council's secretary- general Walter Schwimmer said.

Banning executions is one of the prime conditions of membership for the Council's 41 members, from Iceland to Russia.

Abolition was never an issue under Bush's predecessor, Bill Clinton. Nor would it have been under his defeated opponent, Al Gore, who has also spoken up in favor of capital punishment.

Yet Bush's championing of executions -- Texas set a U.S. record of 40 for one state this year -- has added particular salt to an issue that has long been a minor transatlantic irritant.

"This is becoming a clear area of dissent between the U.S. and Europe. We have to ask whether our community of shared values really exists," said Rudolf Bindig, a human rights expert for German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats.

"Does the U.S. really want to remain in the company of China, Iraq and Saudi Arabia?"

"Although the states determine their own policies, his position on this and behavior in the past clearly affects the intellectual climate in which the national debate takes place," he told Reuters.

Amnesty Worried

In London, a spokesman for Amnesty International said: "We fear Governor Bush's record on the death penalty -- he has presided over more than 150 executions, including of juvenile offenders, the mentally impaired and the inadequately represented -- does not bode well for efforts to rein the USA back from its increasing resort to judicial killing."

"We will be urging President-elect Bush to adopt a broader awareness of human rights and international standards than he has displayed in Texas."

The death penalty is an issue that has caused widespread outrage in Europe, most dramatically in Italy where Pope John Paul has been at the forefront of criticism of Washington and demands for an end to the taking of life by governments.

Yet most Americans are unaware of or bemused by the uproar.

And for all the talk from private activists and officials in the outer reaches of the corridors of power in Europe, those who will have the most to do with cultivating the transatlantic partnership in key areas like defense and trade were silent.

It was Jack Lang, France's Socialist education minister, who called Bush a murderer in March when Texas executed convicted killer Odell Barnes by lethal injection. Then out of office, Lang led a campaign for clemency, arguing Barnes was innocent.

"The execution of Odell Barnes is murder. How can Governor Bush hope to aspire to the presidency of the United States after committing such a crime?" Lang said 9 months ago, calling Texas's Huntsville prison a "production line killing factory."

Since then, however, Lang has returned to the cabinet and kept his own counsel on Bush's elevation to the White House.

Governments Unlikely To Spoil Relations

So, too, have German ministers who went so far as to take their close American ally to the International Court of Justice in the Hague last month and won their case that the United States violated international law by executing two Germans in Arizona last year without giving them access to consular help.

German Justice Ministry officials, who organized protests in that and other cases, declined to comment on Bush's election.

That may change in further contacts over the fate of 3 Germans presently on death row. But a lawyer for 2 of them, who also defended the brothers executed in Arizona, said Bush's election would not help his case and doubted whether Berlin would risk ructions with Washington over it.

"The election to the presidency of a man who in part owes his success to his hard line on the death penalty is absolutely unhelpful to our case," Steffen Ufer told Reuters.

"I'm sure the German government will continue to make its position felt on this. But I question how far it will go in exerting pressure -- experience shows that its relations with its bigger relation take precedence."

Foreign policy experts agree that this is an issue that European leaders will not allow to sour long-term relations.

"When Schroeder meets his counterpart, I don't think it will play a big role," said Michaela Hoenicke, an expert in U.S. affairs at the German Foreign Policy Society (DGAP).

That is not to say, however, that Bush will get an easy ride from the public and media when he visits the Old World.

She detected a growing anti-American tone in some quarters, with the death penalty often cited to justify such criticism.

"Certainly in terms of how the German media treat the U.S., (Bush's record on executions) could have an impact," she said.

This article can be found on the web at http://www.ccadp.org/texecutioner-outrage.htm

"Please, don't kill me."

From: "Devil May Care" by Tucker Carlson, Talk Magazine, September 1999, p. 106

"Bush's brand of forthright tough-guy populism can be appealing, and it has played well in Texas. Yet occasionally there are flashes of meanness visible beneath it.

While driving back from the speech later that day, Bush mentions Karla Faye Tucker, a double murderer who was executed in Texas last year. In the weeks before the execution, Bush says, Bianca Jagger and a number of other protesters came to Austin to demand clemency for Tucker. 'Did you meet with any of them?' I ask.

Bush whips around and stares at me. 'No, I didn't meet with any of them,' he snaps, as though I've just asked the dumbest, most offensive question ever posed. 'I didn't meet with Larry King either when he came down for it. I watched his interview with [Tucker], though. He asked her real difficult questions, like 'What would you say to Governor Bush?' 'What was her answer?' I wonder.

'Please,' Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, 'don't kill me.'

I must look shocked -- ridiculing the pleas of a condemned prisoner who has since been executed seems odd and cruel, even for someone as militantly anticrime as Bush -- because he immediately stops smirking.

'It's tough stuff,' Bush says, suddenly somber, 'but my job is to enforce the law.' As it turns out, the Larry King-Karla Faye Tucker exchange Bush recounted never took place, at least not on television. During her interview with King, however, Tucker did imply that Bush was succumbing to election-year pressure from pro-death penalty voters. Apparently Bush never forgot it. He has a long memory for slights." [Carlson, Talk, 9/99]

[Ed. Note: During the Larry King-Faye Tucker exchange, Tucker never asked to be spared.]

'They impeach murderers, don't they?'

Bush Must Step Down

By Ted Rall, TedRall.com

NEW YORK--George W. Bush told us that Iraq and Al Qaeda were working together. They weren't. He repeatedly implied that Iraq had had something to do with 9/11. It hadn't. He claimed to have proof that Saddam Hussein possessed banned weapons of mass destruction. He didn't. As our allies watched in horror and disgust, Bush conned us into a one-sided war of aggression that killed and maimed thousands of innocent people, destroyed billions of dollars in Iraqi infrastructure, cost tens of billions of dollars, cost the lives of American soldiers, and transformed our international image as the world's shining beacon of freedom into that of a marauding police state. Presidents Nixon and Clinton rightly faced impeachment for comparatively trivial offenses; if we hope to restore our nation's honor, George W. Bush too must face a president's gravest political sanction.

As the Bush Administration sold Congress and the public on the "threat" posed by Saddam Hussein last winter, White House flack Ari Fleischer assured the American people: "The President of the United States and the Secretary of Defense would not assert as plainly and vocally as they have that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction if it was not true and if they did not have a solid basis for saying it." That's unambiguous rhetoric. But since allied occupation forces have failed to find WMDs, Bush is backtracking: "I am absolutely convinced with time we'll find out that they did have a weapons program," the C-in-C now says.

What's next? Claiming that Saddam had WMDs because, you know, you could just feel it?

A ferocious power struggle is taking place between Langley and the White House. "It's hard to tell if there was a breakdown in intelligence or a breakdown in the way intelligence was used," says Michele Flournoy of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. No it's not. Career analysts at the Central and Defense Intelligence Agencies, furious at Bush for sticking them with the blame for the weapons scandal, are leaking prewar memoranda that indicate that the Administration covered up the spooks' assessments, making the case for war with a pile of lies constructed on a bedrock of oil-fueled greed.

A September 2002 DIA study said that there was "no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons," but Bush ignored the report--and told us the exact opposite. After Bush used the discovery of two alleged mobile weapons labs to claim "we found the weapons of mass destruction," CIA "dissenters" shot back that Bush had lied about their reports and that they "doubted the trailers were used to make germ agents, not[ing] that the plants lacked gear for steam sterilization, which is typically necessary for making bioweapons." Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld parried: "Any indication or allegation that the intelligence was in any way politicized, of course, is just false on its face...We haven't found Saddam Hussein either, but no one's doubting that he was there." Rummy also floated the CIA-debunked tale of an Iraq-Al Qaeda link.

Both factions are missing the point.

Calling for a full Congressional investigation, Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) of the Armed Services Committee, says: "I think that the nation's credibility is on the line, as well as Bush's." But not even the discovery of a vast WMD arsenal should save Bush now. Assuming that one accepts preemption as a legitimate cause for war--and one ought not--you must possess airtight substantiation that a nation poses an imminent and significant threat before you drop bombs on its cities. Evidence that falls short of 100 percent proof, presented in advance, doesn't pass the pre-empt test.

Bush claimed to have that proof. He said that Iraq could deploy its biological and chemical weapons with just 45 minutes notice. He painted gruesome pictures of American cities in ruins, their debris irradiated by an Iraqi "dirty bomb." It was all a bald-faced lie, and lying presidents get impeached.

George W. Bush, like Richard Nixon, "endeavor[ed] to misuse the Central Intelligence Agency." George W. Bush, like Richard Nixon, "[made] or caus[ed] to be made false or misleading public statements for the purpose of deceiving the people of the United States." (The legalese comes from the first Article of Impeachment against Nixon, passed by the House Judiciary Committee on July 27, 1974. Faced with certain impeachment in the House and conviction in the Senate, Nixon resigned two weeks later.)

In the words of Bill Clinton's 1998 impeachment, George W. Bush "has undermined the integrity of his office, has brought disrepute on the Presidency, has betrayed his trust as President, and has acted in a manner subversive of the rule of law and justice, to the manifest injury of the people of the United States."

Nixon and Clinton escaped criminal prosecution for burglary, perjury and obstruction of justice. George W. Bush, however, stands accused as the greatest mass murderer in American history. The Lexington Institute estimates that the U.S. killed between 15,000 and 20,000 Iraqi troops during the fraudulently justified invasion of Iraq, plus 10,000 to 15,000 wounded. More than 150 U.S. soldiers were killed, plus more than 500 injured. A new Associated Press study of Iraqi civilian casualties confirms at least 3,240 deaths. Although Bush, Rumsfeld, Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice denied such legal niceties to the concentration-camp inmates captured in their illegal invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, these high-ranking Administration henchmen should be quickly turned over--after impeachment proceedings for what might properly be called Slaughtergate--to an international tribunal for prosecution of war crimes.

Anything less would be anti-American.

Ted Rall is the author of "Gas War: The Truth Behind the American Occupation of Afghanistan," an analysis of the underreported Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline project and the real motivations behind the war on terrorism. Ordering information is available at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.

Reprinted from TedRall.com:
http://www.uexpress.com/tedrall/index.html?uc_full_date=20030610

Angel of the apocalypse
Paul Sheehan
March 8 2003

Richard Williams knew he was about to die last week. So he didn't watch his weight. His last meal was two chilli cheese dogs, two cheeseburgers, a double order of onion rings, french fries, turkey salad and jalapeno peppers. Then chocolate cake, apple pie, butter pecan ice-cream, egg rolls, a peach and three Dr Pepper sodas.

He died the next day, Tuesday, February 25, killed by a mixture of sodium thiopental (a sedative), pancuronium bromide (a severe muscle relaxant) and potassium chloride, which stops the heart. The drugs cost $86.

On February 6 Henry Dunn had also faced death with a hearty appetite - 25 breaded fried shrimp, a cheeseburger with extra cheese, a tray of french fries, two banana splits with chocolate syrup and four cans of pineapple juice. He was later administered a lethal injection, the method of execution in Texas since 1972, when electrocution was declared a "cruel and unusual punishment" by the US Supreme Court.

The process of emptying Death Row is implacable in Texas. On Wednesday, Delma Banks is scheduled to be strapped to a gurney at Huntsville prison, the 300th execution in Texas since the death penalty was resumed in 1982. Yet both the two lead prosecution witnesses have since recanted their testimony, new evidence has emerged and the former director of the FBI, William Sessions, has filed a brief to have the execution stayed. Such life-and-death dramas are common here in Texas.

Another 447 men and women have been sentenced for capital crimes and await their fate. Their names and the details of previous executions and capital crimes are punctiliously set down for the public record by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, including the last meals requested by those about to die. A flicker of the mythical spirit of Hannibal Lecter entered this process on January 29 when Richard Dinkins, a double murderer, requested a last meal of liver and onions with two double meat hamburgers and bacon.

Thirty-eight states have the death penalty but only one stands out. Over the past 20 years, Texas has carried out more than three times as many executions as any other state (Virginia, with 81, ranks second). Texas is big - with 22 million people and a sense of cultural sovereignty, it is, in some ways, a nation unto itself - but it executes more people than all the other states combined.

It is a righteous anger. Texas and the other states which comprise the top 10 in terms of executions are all among those with the highest proportion of evangelical or born-again Christians, a group that has grown enormously to more than 100 million Americans, and whose political influence has surged proportionately.

Now President George Bush, who did not disturb the flow of state retribution when he was governor of Texas, is seeking the execution of a foreign murderer, Saddam Hussein.

And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice, saying, loose the four angels, which are bound in the great river Euphrates. And the four angels were loosed ... And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand.

Book of Revelation (9:13)

BY A REMOTE fluke, on the flight from Sydney to the US, the two people sitting next to me were Texans, Jim and Pat Morton. They were going home to Waco, where I was also heading. Jim is a dentist; Pat is a member of a lay Christian ministry. During the Vietnam War, Jim volunteered for the US Army. They both voted for Bush. They both were friendly, polite, and in the context of Waco, utterly mainstream.

On my first day in Texas, listening to talkback while heading down I35, the state's main artery, the big news was the capture of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the planner of the September 11 attacks. "I want this sucker tortured," said syndicated talk host Greg Knapp. On the next shift, the next host, Glen Beck, picked up the same theme: "If he has any fingernails left, we're not doing our job." Beck noted the large amount of hair on Khalid's back and suggested variousways of removing it.

As I crossed the central Texas flatland that was once prairie, two themes repeated themselves again and again, not just on the radio but on a staggeringly large number of flags, road signs, bumper stickers and churches small and large - patriotism and salvation. The gun and the Bible.

The soul of Texas has been shaped by war more than any state in America. Its historians describe "a frontier of continual war", first with the plains tribes, then with Mexico (Texas fought its own War of Independence and is the only sovereign nation to have joined the Union), then the Civil War with the Union itself and, through all this, the 50-year war with the Comanches, an adversary that one historian called "a long-ranging, barbaric, war-making race".

Like Australia, Texas was only settled in large numbers after 1820, but its formative decades were marked by bloody conflict. Every woman taken prisoner by the plains tribes was, without exception, raped. In 1850, the Comanches were still raiding the state capital; the last raid was in 1869. The bloodbath and defeat in the Civil War left an indelible mark. As recently as 1948, the most powerful man in Congress, the legendary House Speaker, Sam Rayburn of Texas, had a photograph of Confederate general Robert E. Lee in his Capitol Hill office. Texas sent a disproportionately large number of men to combat in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War. Once again, the state plays a disproportionate role among the forces deployed for an invasion of Iraq.

The financial power of Texas oil wealth has also sent a disproportionate number of Texans to the White House in the past 40 years, each of whom has led the US into hot wars: Lyndon Johnson in Vietnam, George Bush in the Persian Gulf and George W. Bush in Afghanistan.

On September 11, 2001, the current Commander-in-Chief recorded in his personal diary: "The Pearl Harbor of the 21st century took place today." He believes the eight years of the Clinton administration left a legacy of dangerous passivity. "The antiseptic notion of launching a cruise missile into some guy's, you know, tent, really is a joke," Bush told Bob Woodward for the latter's latest book, Bush At War (2002).

"I mean, people viewed that as the impotent America ... a flaccid, you know, kind of technologically competent but not very tough country that was willing to launch a cruise missile out of a submarine and that'd be it.

"I do believe there is the image of America out there that we are so materialistic, that we're almost hedonistic, that we don't have values and that when struck, we wouldn't fight back." No one believes that any more.

And a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus with violence shall that great city, Babylon, be thrown down.

Revelation (19:11)

IF IT WERE possible for Bush to move to an even more hard-core, fundamentalist Texas than the one he grew up in, he managed to do it three years ago. Highway I35 runs between the largest and wealthiest metropolitan area of Texas, Dallas-Fort Worth, down through the centre of evangelicalism, Waco, to the state capital, Austin, then to the traditional centre of Mexican Texas, San Antonio.

George and Laura Bush took the exit at Waco. They bought a 650-hectare cattle ranch on Prairie Chapel Road, near Crawford. "This is the place," he said, "where I will live the rest of my life." They built a new home. And the people who built the home all came from a nearby Christian commune, Homestead Heritage, which looks and feels like a modern variant of the Amish, with pick-up trucks instead of buggies.

All the women have long hair and long skirts; all the children are schooled at home; nearly all the men practise skills and crafts that enable the community to be self-sufficient. One of the craftsmen who built the President's home is Lyn Fritzlan, a blacksmith, carpenter and sweet-natured Christian. "We build barns the old way, using oak pegs and not one nail," he says.

Bush's adopted local town is Crawford, population 705, dominated by a grain silo, a railway track, some churches, a scattering of prefabricated homes and, until the First Family arrived, a little main street of brick storefronts where the Depression arrived in 1929 and never left.

Since November 2000, Crawford has gained a new restaurant, the Coffee Station (chicken fried steak, chicken fried chicken, fried hot dogs, fried jalapenos, french fries and burgers), a new corner emporium and five souvenir shops. Each store has a sign in the window: "Support Our Troops." The Yellow Rose has a much bigger sign at its front door: "We will not tire. We will not falter. We will not fail."

If there is failure, if too many bodybags come back, the pain will not be hard to find. The largest army base in America, Fort Hood, home to the elite First Cavalry, is just 30 minutes' drive to the west. This base has sent 29,500 men and women to the Gulf, a cause of massive angst and economic pain to the district. If there is a charge into Iraq, the tanks of the First Cavalry will be at its head.

Crawford sits between Fort Hood and, to the east, Waco, the nearest city. Waco is dominated by a single institution, Baylor University, which is dominated by the Baptist Church. Baylor is the Harvard of the Baptists, and favoured to be the site of the G.W. Bush Presidential Library. The city has one other landmark, the Texas Rangers Hall of Fame. The gun and the Bible.

It has another landmark it resents deeply. On April 19, 1993, the city (named after the Waco tribe) became globally known after a former Seventh Day Adventist called Vernon Howell, aka David Koresh, led a fundamentalist sect called the Branch Davidians into a gun battle and siege with the federal government that would end with Koresh, 80 of his followers and four federal agents dead.

No signs mark the way to the bleak field where the tragedy unfolded. The site is marked by a memorial chapel, a ruin, a burnt-out bus and a memorial to victims of the "holocaust" erected by the "Northeast Texas Regional Militia". In a bizarre footnote, the only surviving Branch Davidian still living at the site is an Australian, Clive Doyle. Originally from Melbourne, Doyle, 62, has a caravan next to a lonely little visitors' centre. "I accepted David as a prophet," he says, "and someone needs to tell the world what it was all about."

A very different version of this story is told by a second memorial on the site, an inscribed red granite stone which serves as an anti-monument to the militia movement: "In remembrance of all the men, women and children who were victimised and brutally slaughtered in the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building, on April 19, 1995." The Oklahoma bombing, timed for the anniversary of the "holocaust" at Waco, was the worst act of domestic terrorism in American history until then, and an act of symbolic retaliation.

The gun and the Bible. Righteous vengeance. Some 448 men and women await execution in Huntsville prison and there is something achingly poignant about the details of the last meals of those who have gone before them.

But it would be a disservice to the state of Texas not to mention why these people were on Death Row. Richard Williams, who ordered two chilli cheese dogs, two cheeseburgers, onion rings, peppers, chocolate cake, apple pie and ice-cream the day before he died, carried out a contract killing of a 44-year-old woman he did not know, stabbing her repeatedly with a steak knife, and left her body in the middle of a street. Henry Dunn, who ordered 25 breaded fried shrimp, cheeseburger with extra cheese and two banana splits, abducted, with two accomplices, a 23-year-old clerk, took him to a deserted location, made him strip, stole his wallet and shot him between nine and 15 times.

Richard Dinkins, who ordered liver and double meat burgers with bacon, shot two women dead after an argument in a therapeutic massage parlour. Texas considered these cases, and the offenders' previous crimes, and made a moral decision: do unto others - kill them all.

Texas is not a caricature. It is a source of real power and forceful beliefs. More than 20 years ago, Robert Caro, in the first volume of his magnificent history of Lyndon Johnson and Texas politics, both explained and predicted when he wrote: " ... the rise of Lyndon Johnson sheds light on the new economic forces that surged out of the South-West in the middle of the 20th century, on the immense influence exerted over America's politics, its government institutions, its foreign and domestic policies by these forces: the oil and sulphur and gas and defence barons of the South-West ... By 1941, the influence of these new forces on national policy would only be beginning to be felt, but the pattern had been established."

And the pattern has been maintained. Three of the last eight presidents have been from Texas, and Caro, writing in 1981, could have been writing about the 2000 presidential elections, and the enormous swell of money and political organisation on which George W. Bush rode to victory.

On the main street of Crawford, most of the stores have "Bush 2004" stickers in the windows. But if the forces that the President has massed around Iraq fail to deliver a quick and decisive strike, there will be no Bush victory in 2004.

Much more than this is at stake, so the gathered forces are massive, and the CIA is already inside Iraq, just as it was in Afghanistan before the bombers came.

Some of these CIA agents appear in Bob Woodward's Bush at War, which ends with a scene inside Afghanistan, where a group of agents had built a stone tombstone over a piece from the World Trade Centre: "One of the men read a prayer. Then he said, 'We consecrate this spot as an everlasting memorial to the brave Americans who died on September 11, so that all who would seek to do her harm will know that America will not stand by and watch terror prevail. We will export death and violence to the four corners of the earth in defence of our great nation."

This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/03/07/1046826531870.html

The Gift: "Who Cares What You Think?"

So when the President was here on July 4, I had the opportunity to shake his hand. I wasn't sure if that was a good idea or not but I did it anyway, and said to him, "Mr President, I hope you only serve four years. I'm very disappointed in your work so far."
He kept smiling and shaking my hand but answered, "who cares what you think?" His face stayed photo-op perfect but his eyes gave me a look that said, if we'd been drinking in some frat house in Texas, he'd've happily answered, "let's take it outside." A nasty little gleam. But he was (fortunately) constrained by presidential propriety.

But that was the end of it, until I turned away and started scribbling the quote down in my notepad, so as to remember The Gift forever. When he saw me do that he got excited and craned his neck over the rubberneckers to shout at me, "who are you with? Who are you with?" People started looking so he made a joke: "make sure you get it right." But he kept at it: "Who do you write for?" I told him I wasn't "with" anybody and pointed to one of his staff people, who knows me a little, and said, "ask him, he'll tell you." Then I split.

Half an hour later, my boss (who had helped organize the event we were at) came up to me and said, "did you really tell the President that he was doing a 'lousy f***ing job'?" No way, I said, I was very polite, I just told him what I thought. Fortunately, he believed me. He wasn't happy with me, but he believed me.

But anyway, if you ever wondered if the Prez really was kind of a jerk, I'm here to tell you, he is, and I got The Gift to prove it. I'm thinking of making up t-shirts so we can share The Gift with everyone:

"Who cares what you think?"
- President George W. Bush, July 4, 2001
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Confronted by a critic at a block party, President Bush lost his vaunted charm and reportedly replied, "Who cares what you think?"

The blunt conversation, said to have taken place at a Fourth of July block party outside the Greater Exodus Baptist Church in Philadelphia, was described in an E-mail message freelance writer Bill Langley sent to 25 friends on July 12.

The E-mail has become chat-room fodder and been forwarded to thousands of people around the world.

Langley, 32, of Philadelphia, confirmed yesterday he wrote the E- mail.

"I had no intention of this becoming a public event," he said yesterday from the City of Brotherly Love. "I was speaking as a constituent and nothing more."

In his E-mail, Langley said he shook hands with the President and told him, "I hope you only serve four years. I'm very disappointed in your work so far."

Bush maintained his smile and handshake, and answered, "Who cares what you think?" according to Langley's E-mail.

"I was surprised to get any reaction at all - I wasn't looking for one," said Langley, who writes about public policy and social issues.

"I had no intention to be rude," Langley said. "I meant no disrespect to the President or the office of the President of the United States."

The Rev. Herbert Lusk, pastor of Greater Exodus, has consulted with Bush about faith-based initiatives and said he doubted the President said such a thing.

"That doesn't sound like the man I've sat with for seven [meetings]," Lusk said.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said, "I don't think I'm going to dignify something so ridiculous with a response."

Langley's E-mail said he mused about making T-shirts that said, " 'Who cares what you think?' - George W. Bush, July 4, 2001."

Langley, however, said he has no plans to market T-shirts.

"If I wanted to, I might make a little money - there's a market for it," he said yesterday.

Andrew Hudson, a spokesman for Denver Mayor Wellington Webb, can confirm for Langley there's a market for the shirts.

Hudson forwarded the Langley E-mail, with his E-mail signature mistakenly attached to the bottom of the document. For weeks after, Hudson has had to stay late at work responding to hundreds of phone calls and E-mails - some from as far away as Tel Aviv - from people who think Hudson is selling T-shirts.

"I kind of regret [forwarding] it," said Hudson, who won't be selling T-shirts. "I thought it was funny. It really struck a nerve with folks."

A Rare Glimpse Inside Bush's Cabinet
CBS News, Nov. 17, 2002

In a 60 Minutes interview with Mike Wallace, Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward discloses previously unknown information from his new book about how the president and his cabinet prosecuted the war on terror in the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks.

"Bush at War," draws on four hours of interviews with President Bush and quotes 15,000 words from National Security Council and other White House meetings in reconstructing the internal debate that led to U.S. military action in Afghanistan and the decision to aggressively confront Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

The book describes Secretary of State Colin Powell as frequently at odds with Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and struggling to establish a relationship with Mr. Bush.

Woodward interviewed Mr. Bush in August at the president's ranch in Crawford, Texas.

"He said, 'One of the things I learned is, the vision thing matters,'" Woodward tells 60 Minutes about what Mr. Bush told him.

And his vision includes getting rid of the evil from what he calls the axis of evil: Iraq, Iran, North Korea. Talking with Woodward, Mr. Bush dropped all pretense of diplomatic language as he tore into North Korea's leader Kim Jong II. And the President permitted Woodward to tape record his interview.

President Bush: "I loathe Kim Jong II. — I've got a visceral reaction to this guy because he is starving his people. It appalls me. — I feel passionate about this. — They tell me, well we may not need to move too fast, because the financial burdens on people will be so immense if this guy were to topple. — I just don't buy that."

Clearly transformed by Sept. 11, the President makes a point of projecting strength, confidence, and determination.

President Bush: "A president has got to be the calcium in the backbone. — If I weaken, the whole team weakens. — If I'm doubtful, I can assure you there will be a lot of doubt."

And Mr. Bush wants strength, not doubt, in his cabinet.

"In the midst of tough times I don't need people around me who are not steady," Bush tells Woodward. "And if there's a kind of a hand-wringing attitude going on when times are tough, I don't like it."

Woodward managed to get the notes from more than 50 National Security Council and War Cabinet meetings, in which, he says, Mr. Bush dominates his more experienced cabinet members Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld - and even Vice President Dick Cheney.

Woodward says the president told him that when he chairs a meeting he often tries to be provocative. When Woodward asked him if he tells his staff that he is purposely being provocative, Mr. Bush answered: "Of course not. I am the commander, see?"

President Bush: "I do not need to explain why I say things. — That's the interesting thing about being the President. — Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation."

Woodward reports that Powell believes Cheney and Rumsfeld are too quick to go for the guns - too macho; while Powell remains the reluctant warrior.

"When Powell would be asked to go on television talk shows, the White House would tell him no," Woodward tells Wallace "And Powell would say, privately to his deputy Richard Armitage, 'I'm in the refrigerator. — I'm in the ice box. — They've got me put away and they'll pull me out like a carton of milk when they need me, and then put me back.'"

Woodward says it is the hidden political hand in the White House, and communications operations.

"Often they called on Powell to carry the message, but sometimes into the refrigerator he went," Woodward says.

Woodward says the president was furious when he had to wait a week to bomb Afghanistan after the military told him they needed more time to prepare.

"Bush gets fiery. Actually explodes, and says, 'Why that's unacceptable,'" Woodward says.

But while Mr. Bush was waiting for the military, at his direction, the CIA led by George Tenet, was already on the ground buying Afghan warlords.

Woodward: Tenet sent his secret paramilitary team in, and the team leader, who's named Gary, is riding in his helicopter and he has a big suitcase between his legs. — Giant. — What's in it is three million dollars in cash.

Gary, who reportedly met with the intelligence chief for the Northern Alliance put a half a million dollars in cash on the table.

"And the intelligence chief for the Northern Alliance said, essentially, 'What do you want us to do?'" Woodward says.

And at one time, the CIA offered a Taliban commander $50,000 to defect and he asked for time to think it over.

And then they dropped a bomb on him in his area. — And then they went back and said, the offer now which used to be $50,000 is now $40,000. — And he said "I accept."

Woodward reports the president has the CIA actively pursuing al Qaeda in 80 countries now, no longer restrained by what had been a 25 year ban on assassination, as we saw two weeks ago in Yemen when a CIA plane fired a missile into a car killing six members of al Qaeda.

Woodward: The gloves are off. — There are no restraints on the CIA. — And there's this whole invisible war where the CIA has had foreign intelligence services and police forces arrest or detain terrorists, al Qaeda members, thousands of them.

Woodward reports that the United States has bought the intelligence services of Egypt, Jordan, and Algeria, among others.

Woodward: Tens of millions of dollars goes to these intelligence services. — They can get new equipment. — They can develop new agent networks within terrorist cells.

Woodward reveals that shortly after Sept. 11 FBI Director Robert Mueller told President Bush that 331 suspected terrorists had somehow slipped into the U.S., and that the FBI didn't know where they were.

When Woodward asked the President about this, he said, "I was floored."

Woodward: He directly said he did not release it publicly because It was so soon after 9/11, feeling that the country had gone through enough trauma. — So he kept it secret.

President Bush: "The idea of saying there's 331 Al Qaeda type killers lurking to the point where they made a list, just wasn't necessary. — On the other hand what was necessary was for our FBI to realize that their mindset had to change. — There has to be a sense of accountability."

Some of those 331 suspected terrorists have been apprehended, Woodward says.

"There are cells all over that are being watched. And there are 125 al Qaeda related investigations going on by the FBI that are very secret," Woodward says.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/11/17/60minutes/main529657.shtml

A Nation of Victims
by RENANA BROOKS

[from the June 30, 2003 issue]

George W. Bush is generally regarded as a mangler of the English language. What is overlooked is his mastery of emotional language--especially negatively charged emotional language--as a political tool. Take a closer look at his speeches and public utterances, and his political success turns out to be no surprise. It is the predictable result of the intentional use of language to dominate others.

President Bush, like many dominant personality types, uses dependency-creating language. He employs language of contempt and intimidation to shame others into submission and desperate admiration. While we tend to think of the dominator as using physical force, in fact most dominators use verbal abuse to control others. Abusive language has been a major theme of psychological researchers on marital problems, such as John Gottman, and of philosophers and theologians, such as Josef Pieper. But little has been said about the key role it has come to play in political discourse, and in such "hot media" as talk radio and television.

Bush uses several dominating linguistic techniques to induce surrender to his will. The first is empty language. This term refers to broad statements that are so abstract and mean so little that they are virtually impossible to oppose. Empty language is the emotional equivalent of empty calories. Just as we seldom question the content of potato chips while enjoying their pleasurable taste, recipients of empty language are usually distracted from examining the content of what they are hearing. Dominators use empty language to conceal faulty generalizations; to ridicule viable alternatives; to attribute negative motivations to others, thus making them appear contemptible; and to rename and "reframe" opposing viewpoints.

Bush's 2003 State of the Union speech contained thirty-nine examples of empty language. He used it to reduce complex problems to images that left the listener relieved that George W. Bush was in charge. Rather than explaining the relationship between malpractice insurance and skyrocketing healthcare costs, Bush summed up: "No one has ever been healed by a frivolous lawsuit." The multiple fiscal and monetary policy tools that can be used to stimulate an economy were downsized to: "The best and fairest way to make sure Americans have that money is not to tax it away in the first place." The controversial plan to wage another war on Iraq was simplified to: "We will answer every danger and every enemy that threatens the American people." In an earlier study, I found that in the 2000 presidential debates Bush used at least four times as many phrases containing empty language as Carter, Reagan, Clinton, Bush Senior or Gore had used in their debates.

Another of Bush's dominant-language techniques is personalization. By personalization I mean localizing the attention of the listener on the speaker's personality. Bush projects himself as the only person capable of producing results. In his post-9/11 speech to Congress he said, "I will not forget this wound to our country or those who inflicted it. I will not yield; I will not rest; I will not relent in waging this struggle for freedom and security for the American people." He substitutes his determination for that of the nation's. In the 2003 State of the Union speech he vowed, "I will defend the freedom and security of the American people." Contrast Bush's "I will not yield" etc. with John F. Kennedy's "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."

The word "you" rarely appears in Bush's speeches. Instead, there are numerous statements referring to himself or his personal characteristics--folksiness, confidence, righteous anger or determination--as the answer to the problems of the country. Even when Bush uses "we," as he did many times in the State of the Union speech, he does it in a way that focuses attention on himself. For example, he stated: "Once again, we are called to defend the safety of our people, and the hopes of all mankind. And we accept this responsibility."

In an article in the January 16 New York Review of Books, Joan Didion highlighted Bush's high degree of personalization and contempt for argumentation in presenting his case for going to war in Iraq. As Didion writes: "'I made up my mind,' he had said in April, 'that Saddam needs to go.' This was one of many curious, almost petulant statements offered in lieu of actually presenting a case. I've made up my mind, I've said in speech after speech, I've made myself clear. The repeated statements became their own reason."

Poll after poll demonstrates that Bush's political agenda is out of step with most Americans' core beliefs. Yet the public, their electoral resistance broken down by empty language and persuaded by personalization, is susceptible to Bush's most frequently used linguistic technique: negative framework. A negative framework is a pessimistic image of the world. Bush creates and maintains negative frameworks in his listeners' minds with a number of linguistic techniques borrowed from advertising and hypnosis to instill the image of a dark and evil world around us. Catastrophic words and phrases are repeatedly drilled into the listener's head until the opposition feels such a high level of anxiety that it appears pointless to do anything other than cower.

Psychologist Martin Seligman, in his extensive studies of "learned helplessness," showed that people's motivation to respond to outside threats and problems is undermined by a belief that they have no control over their environment. Learned helplessness is exacerbated by beliefs that problems caused by negative events are permanent; and when the underlying causes are perceived to apply to many other events, the condition becomes pervasive and paralyzing.

Bush is a master at inducing learned helplessness in the electorate. He uses pessimistic language that creates fear and disables people from feeling they can solve their problems. In his September 20, 2001, speech to Congress on the 9/11 attacks, he chose to increase people's sense of vulnerability: "Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen.... I ask you to live your lives, and hug your children. I know many citizens have fears tonight.... Be calm and resolute, even in the face of a continuing threat." (Subsequent terror alerts by the FBI, CIA and Department of Homeland Security have maintained and expanded this fear of unknown, sinister enemies.)

Contrast this rhetoric with Franklin Roosevelt's speech delivered the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He said: "No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.... There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger. With confidence in our armed forces--with the unbounding determination of our people--we will gain the inevitable triumph--so help us God." Roosevelt focuses on an optimistic future rather than an ongoing threat to Americans' personal survival.

All political leaders must define the present threats and problems faced by the country before describing their approach to a solution, but the ratio of negative to optimistic statements in Bush's speeches and policy declarations is much higher, more pervasive and more long-lasting than that of any other President. Let's compare "crisis" speeches by Bush and Ronald Reagan, the President with whom he most identifies himself. In Reagan's October 27, 1983, televised address to the nation on the bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut, he used nineteen images of crisis and twenty-one images of optimism, evenly balancing optimistic and negative depictions. He limited his evaluation of the problems to the past and present tense, saying only that "with patience and firmness we can bring peace to that strife-torn region--and make our own lives more secure." George W. Bush's October 7, 2002, major policy speech on Iraq, on the other hand, began with forty-four consecutive statements referring to the crisis and citing a multitude of possible catastrophic repercussions. The vast majority of these statements (for example: "Some ask how urgent this danger is to America and the world. The danger is already significant, and it only grows worse with time"; "Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists") imply that the crisis will last into the indeterminate future. There is also no specific plan of action. The absence of plans is typical of a negative framework, and leaves the listener without hope that the crisis will ever end. Contrast this with Reagan, who, a third of the way into his explanation of the crisis in Lebanon, asked the following: "Where do we go from here? What can we do now to help Lebanon gain greater stability so that our Marines can come home? Well, I believe we can take three steps now that will make a difference."

To create a dependency dynamic between him and the electorate, Bush describes the nation as being in a perpetual state of crisis and then attempts to convince the electorate that it is powerless and that he is the only one with the strength to deal with it. He attempts to persuade people they must transfer power to him, thus crushing the power of the citizen, the Congress, the Democratic Party, even constitutional liberties, to concentrate all power in the imperial presidency and the Republican Party.

Bush's political opponents are caught in a fantasy that they can win against him simply by proving the superiority of their ideas. However, people do not support Bush for the power of his ideas, but out of the despair and desperation in their hearts. Whenever people are in the grip of a desperate dependency, they won't respond to rational criticisms of the people they are dependent on. They will respond to plausible and forceful statements and alternatives that put the American electorate back in touch with their core optimism. Bush's opponents must combat his dark imagery with hope and restore American vigor and optimism in the coming years. They should heed the example of Reagan, who used optimism against Carter and the "national malaise"; Franklin Roosevelt, who used it against Hoover and the pessimism induced by the Depression ("the only thing we have to fear is fear itself"); and Clinton (the "Man from Hope"), who used positive language against the senior Bush's lack of vision. This is the linguistic prescription for those who wish to retire Bush in 2004.

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030630&s=brooks

Bush anything but moronic, according to author
Dark overtones in his malapropisms President

by MURRAY WHYTE

When Mark Crispin Miller first set out to write Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder, about the ever-growing catalogue of President George W. Bush's verbal gaffes, he meant it for a laugh. But what he came to realize wasn't entirely amusing.

Since the 2000 presidential campaign, Miller has been compiling his own collection of Bush-isms, which have revealed, he says, a disquieting truth about what lurks behind the cock-eyed leer of the leader of the free world. He's not a moron at all -- on that point, Miller and Prime Minister Jean Chrétien agree.

But according to Miller, he's no friend.

"I did initially intend it to be a funny book. But that was before I had a chance to read through all the transcripts," Miller, an American author and a professor of culture and communication at New York University, said recently in Toronto.

"Bush is not an imbecile. He's not a puppet. I think that Bush is a sociopathic personality. I think he's incapable of empathy. He has an inordinate sense of his own entitlement, and he's a very skilled manipulator. And in all the snickering about his alleged idiocy, this is what a lot of people miss."

Miller's judgment, that the president might suffer from a bona fide personality disorder, almost makes one long for the less menacing notion currently making the rounds: that the White House's current occupant is, in fact, simply an idiot.

If only. Miller's rendering of the president is bleaker than that. In studying Bush's various adventures in oration, he started to see a pattern emerging.

"He has no trouble speaking off the cuff when he's speaking punitively, when he's talking about violence, when he's talking about revenge.

"When he struts and thumps his chest, his syntax and grammar are fine," Miller said.

"It's only when he leaps into the wild blue yonder of compassion, or idealism, or altruism, that he makes these hilarious mistakes."

While Miller's book has been praised for its "eloquence" and "playful use of language," it has enraged Bush supporters.

Bush's ascent in the eyes of many Americans -- his approval rating hovers at near 80 percent -- was the direct result of tough talk following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. In those speeches, Bush stumbled not at all; his language of retribution was clear.

It was a sharp contrast to the pre-9/11 George W. Bush. Even before the Supreme Court in 2001 had to intervene and rule on recounts in Florida after a contentious presidential election, a corps of journalists were salivating at the prospect: a bafflingly inarticulate man in a position of power not seen since vice-president Dan Quayle rode shotgun on George H.W. Bush's one term in office.

But equating Bush's malapropisms with Quayle's inability to spell "potato" is a dangerous assumption, Miller says.

At a public address in Nashville, Tenn., in September, Bush provided one of his most memorable stumbles. Trying to give strength to his case that Saddam Hussein had already deceived the West concerning his store of weapons, Bush was scripted to offer an old saying: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. What came out was the following:

"Fool me once, shame ... shame on ... you." Long, uncomfortable pause. "Fool me -- can't get fooled again!"

Played for laughs everywhere, Miller saw a darkness underlying the gaffe.

"There's an episode of Happy Days, where The Fonz has to say, `I'm sorry' and can't do it. Same thing," Miller said.

"What's revealing about this is that Bush could not say, `Shame on me' to save his life. That's a completely alien idea to him. This is a guy who is absolutely proud of his own inflexibility and rectitude."

If what Miller says is true -- and it would take more than just observations to prove it -- then Bush has achieved an astounding goal.

By stumbling blithely along, he has been able to push his image as "just folks" -- a normal guy who screws up just like the rest of us.

This, in fact, is a central cog in his image-making machine, Miller says: Portraying the wealthy scion of one of America's most powerful families as a regular, imperfect Joe.

But the depiction, Miller says, is also remarkable for what it hides -- imperfect, yes, but also detached, wealthy and unable to identify with the "folks" he's been designed to appeal to.

An example, Miller says, surfaced early in his presidential tenure.

"I know how hard it is to put food on your family," Bush was quoted as saying.

"That wasn't because he's so stupid that he doesn't know how to say, `Put food on your family's table' -- it's because he doesn't care about people who can't put food on the table," Miller says.

So, when Bush is envisioning "a foreign-handed foreign policy," or observes on some point that "it's not the way that America is all about," Miller contends it's because he can't keep his focus on things that mean nothing to him.

"When he tries to talk about what this country stands for, or about democracy, he can't do it," he said.

This, then, is why he's so closely watched by his handlers, Miller says -- not because he'll say something stupid, but because he'll overindulge in the language of violence and punishment at which he excels.

"He's a very angry guy, a hostile guy. He's much like Nixon. So they're very, very careful to choreograph every move he makes. They don't want him anywhere near protestors, because he would lose his temper."

Miller, without question, is a man with a mission -- and laughter isn't it.

"I call him the feel bad president, because he's all about punishment and death," he said. "It would be a grave mistake to just play him for laughs."

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/1128-02.htm

Bush isn't a moron, he's a cunning sociopath
By Bev Conover
Online Journal Editor & Publisher

December 5, 2002 — If any of us are to have a future worth having, the world's leaders, the members of Congress, the US corporate media and people of all political persuasions who value freedom and democracy had better start seeing George W. Bush for what he is: a sociopath and a passive serial killer.
Psychiatrists tell us that all serial killers lack the emotions that make us human; that they have to learn to emulate those emotions in order to get by in society. Hence, a charming, well educated fellow like Ted Bundy who is known to have murdered 15 women and may have killed 36 before he was caught.

While Bush is no Bundy, when it comes Bundy's education and acquired charm, and to our knowledge has never personally murdered anyone, it has been evident to us that there is something missing in George W. in terms of his lack of compassion and empathy. As governor of Texas, he set a record in signing death warrants — 154 in five years. He even made fun of the way convicted killer Karla Faye Tucker begged for her life.

If we believe the psychiatrists, a sign of a future serial killer is a child who delights in torturing and killing animals. George W., as a child, did exactly that. In a May 21, 2000, New York Times' puff piece about the values Bush gained growing up in Midland, Texas, Nicholas D. Kristof quoted Bush's childhood friend Terry Throckmorton: "'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.'"

On Sept. 12, 2000, Baltimore Sun reporter Miriam Miedzian wrote, "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."

We're finding out, aren't we? While we, in two articles before the 2000 election — Sept. 21 and Oct. 23 — noted Bush's penchant for blowing up frogs, the corporate media blew it off, just as it had no interest in what he was trying to hide by obtaining a new Texas driver license and his 1976 drunk driving conviction, or the fact he was AWOL from the Texas Air National Guard. Instead, they bought into his nonsensical claim of being a "compassionate conservative" and "a uniter not a divider" who was going to "restore honor and dignity to the White House."

All through the 2000 campaign and up to Sept. 11, 2001, the corporate media depicted Bush as an affable, tongue-tied bumbler — the kind of guy Joe Six-pack would like to have a beer with — turning a blind eye to his dark underside. It mattered not that he stocked his illicit administration with the worst of the worst: John Ashcroft, Donald Rumsfeld, Gale Norton, Paul O'Neill, Harvey Pitt, Thomas White, John Negroponte, Otto Reich and convicted Iran-contra felon Elliot Abrams who received a 1992 Christmas Eve pardon from George W.'s father.

Then, despite his peculiar behavior on Sept. 11, the corporate media and his handlers transformed him into a leader extraordinaire in the mold of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill rolled into one.

And as Bush had Afghanistan bombed back beyond the Stone Age to rid the world of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, then switched to claiming it was the Taliban that had to go, then declared there was an "axis of evil" and it was really Saddam Hussein who was the "mother of all evil" and that war with Iraq was in the offing to get rid of Saddam, the corporate media cheered him on and to this day continues to beat the war drum. They have yet to consider that the passive serial killer needs to feed his lust for blood by sending others to put their lives on the line and do the killing for him.

In his Sept. 12 article, White House insiders say Bush is "out of control," Mike Hersh wrote, "Some among Bush's trusted White House staff fear what they are seeing and where Bush is taking us. His state of mind hauntingly reminds them of Richard Nixon's Final Days. They fear Bush is becoming Nixonesque . . . or worse. Although Bush lacks Nixon's paranoia, he may entertain even more dangerous notions."

But their desperate late night phone calls to trusted reporters has not seen the light of day in the corporate media. Yet, some of us outside the Beltway have long had an inkling of what we are dealing with.

More proof lies in Alexandra Pelosi's documentary, Journeys with George. Pelosi, the daughter of incoming House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, was a producer for NBC when she wangled the assignment to spend 18 months as part of Bush's campaign press corps.

From the surface, Pelosi's "home movie," as she calls it, seems to be nothing more than a love fest as George W. works to charm the pants off her and the rest of the press corps. The striking thing about this George, even though Karen Hughes is often seen hovering at his elbow, is that he isn't tongue-tied when he is pumping up his ego, dishing out digs and being sarcastic and crude.

Mark Crispin Miller, author of The Bush Dyslexicon and professor of media studies at New York University, who also sees the darker Bush, said in a Nov. 28 interview with the Toronto Star, ""Bush is not an imbecile. He's not a puppet. I think that Bush is a sociopathic personality. I think he's incapable of empathy. He has an inordinate sense of his own entitlement, and he's a very skilled manipulator. And in all the snickering about his alleged idiocy, this is what a lot of people miss."

Miller said he did intend The Bush Dyslexicon to be a funny book, but that was before he read all the transcripts, which revealed, according to reporter Murray Whyte, "a disquieting truth about what lurks behind the cock-eyed leer of the leader of the free world. He's not a moron at all on that point, Miller and Prime Minister Jean Chretien agree."

"He has no trouble speaking off the cuff when he's speaking punitively, when he's talking about violence, when he's talking about revenge," Miller told Whyte. "When he struts and thumps his chest, his syntax and grammar are fine. It's only when he leaps into the wild blue yonder of compassion, or idealism, or altruism, that he makes these hilarious mistakes."

In a speech last Sept. in Nashville, trying to strengthen his case against Saddam, Bush's script called for him to say, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." But the words that came out of his mouth were, ""Fool me once, shame . . . shame on . . . you," followed by a long pause, then, "Fool me — can't get fooled again!"

Said Miller, "What's revealing about this is that Bush could not say, 'Shame on me' to save his life. That's a completely alien idea to him. This is a guy who is absolutely proud of his own inflexibility and rectitude."

Another example, Miller said, occurred early in Bush's White House tenure when he said, "I know how hard it is to put food on your family."

According to Miller, "That wasn't because he's so stupid that he doesn't know how to say, 'Put food on your family's table' — it's because he doesn't care about people who can't put food on the table."

Miller told Whyte, "When he tries to talk about what this country stands for, or about democracy, he can't do it."

"This, then, is why he's so closely watched by his handlers, Miller says not because he'll say something stupid, but because he'll overindulge in the language of violence and punishment at which he excels," Whyte wrote.

"I call him the feel bad president, because he's all about punishment and death," Miller told Whyte. "It would be a grave mistake to just play him for laughs."

A grave mistake, indeed.

If all that has happened since Bush was first mentioned as a possible GOP presidential candidate hasn't set off alarms, his naming of war criminal, mass murderer and international fugitive Henry Kissinger last week to head up the 9/11 investigation should have. And this week another alarm should have gone off when Bush promoted Elliot Abrams to lead the National Security Council's office for Near East and North African affairs, which oversees Arab-Israeli relations.

Bush must be stopped now, before he sets the world aflame. And set it aflame is what he intends to do, even if Iraq has no "weapons of mass destruction" or Saddam stands on his head, naked, on the White House lawn.

http://www.georgewalkerbush.net/BushIsACunningSociopath.htm

Bush's Wake-Up Call Was a Snooze Alarm
By Tom Shales

washingtonpost.com

Friday, March 7, 2003; Page C01

George W. Bush kept seeming to lose interest in his own remarks last night as the president did that rarest of rare things -- for him -- and held a prime-time news conference. Televised live on all the major networks from the East Room of the White House, the occasion found Bush declaring this to be "an important moment" for America and the world, yet he spoke with little urgency and no perceptible passion.

Have ever a people been led more listlessly into war? It's tempting to speculate how history would have changed if Winston Churchill or FDR had been as lethargic as Bush about rallying their nations in an hour of crisis. There were times when it appeared his train of thought had jumped the tracks.

Occasionally he would stare blankly into space during lengthy pauses between statements -- pauses that once or twice threatened to be endless. There were times when it seemed every sentence Bush spoke was of the same duration and delivered in the same dour monotone, giving his comments a numbing, soporific aura. Watching him was like counting sheep.

Network commentators by and large tippy-toed around the subject of Bush's curiously subdued performance. But at least Terry Moran of ABC News dared to say that the White House press corps had definitely seen Bush "sharper" than he was last night. Tactfully and gingerly, Moran said Bush seemed to be "trying to keep his mannerisms as cool as possible" as he fielded questions and spoke of ultimatums. The lethargy was contagious; correspondents were almost as logy as Bush was.

Nobody even bothered to ask a question about Osama bin Laden, whose capture was rumored to be imminent yesterday and is still in the public mind a more reprehensible monster than Saddam Hussein.

Bush popped the balloon that bin Laden had been found when he failed to make a dramatic opening statement, instead reiterating for the umpteenth time some of his many charges against Hussein, whose token efforts at disarmament amounted to "a willful charade," Bush said. In one of his more effective moments, Bush said that the tragedy of 9/11 showed what terrorists can do with only four airplanes and so we should imagine what Saddam Hussein could do with his notorious weapons of mass destruction. But there were few effective moments.

At times during the hour, Bush almost appeared to be backing off the previously immutable notion that Hussein's intransigence makes war virtually inevitable. "We don't have to go to war," he said at one point. "I'm hopeful that he does disarm," Bush said of Hussein. "It may require force" to get him to do it, but "I hope it can be done peacefully," he said in separate remarks. While at another point he seemed to say, contrary to previous statements, that he was "optimistic" about "diplomacy" doing the job so that U.S. troops won't have to, he also said, with respect to disarming Hussein: "Diplomacy hasn't worked. We've tried diplomacy for 12 years."

He also said the "use of force" remains "my last choice" as a means to disarm the Iraqi leader.

"I recognize there are people who don't like war. I don't like war," Bush said. But as in the past, he referred to Hussein at various points as a cancer, a murderer, a master of deception and just generally an inhuman fiend who must be destroyed or exiled. The statements did not come across as particularly cogent or consistent. Then again, perhaps Bush was just offering a summary of everything that's been said on the issue over the past few months.

The contrast between the foggy Bush of last night and the gung-ho Bush who delivered a persuasive State of the Union message to Congress not so long ago was considerable. Maybe Bush thought he was, indeed, coming across as cool and temperate instead of bored and enervated, and this was simply a rhetorical miscalculation. On the other hand, it hardly seems out of order to speculate that, given the particularly heavy burden of being president in this new age of terrorism -- a time in which America has, as Bush said, become a "battlefield" -- the president may have been ever so slightly medicated.

He would hardly be the first president ever to take a pill.

There were brief interludes during the news conference -- especially the long languid pauses -- when some viewers might have flashed back to the presidency of Richard Nixon. That is, the Nixon Years at their most tumultuous and Twilight Zoney, when the old Trickster would come on TV and you'd sit there not just fascinated but a trifle terrified of what he might say, who he'd accuse of persecuting him, and whether he might come completely unglued or just melt into a hideous puddle right before your horrified eyes.

Obviously Bush was not likely to inspire anything approaching that kind of fear last night, even in the most paranoid of viewers. But by his tone and his demeanor, he certainly didn't inspire a great burst of hopeful confidence, either. It was as if he didn't quite realize he was on national television and being watched closely by millions of people who were hanging on his every word and on his every expression and gesture, too.

And that we might be a nation at war in a matter of days. Or . . . might we?

Bush's Data Dump
The administration is hiding bad economic news. Here's how.
By Russ Baker, Slate
Posted Friday, July 11, 2003, at 12:56 PM PT

The Bush administration is finally facing tough questions about its selective use of intelligence in selling war with Iraq. But Americans shouldn't just be skeptical of what the president says about WMD. They should be skeptical of what he says about GDP. In economic policy even more than in war policy, the Bushies have successfully suppressed, manipulated, and withheld evidence to serve their policy purposes.

Of course every administration likes to trumpet its good news and hide its bad, but what's remarkable about the Bush team is its willingness to stifle data that had been widely released and to politicize data that used to be nonpartisan.

The administration muzzles routine economic information that's unfavorable. Last year, for example, the administration stopped issuing a monthly Bureau of Labor Statistics report, known as the Mass Layoff Statistics program, that tracked factory closings throughout the country. The cancellation was made known on Christmas Eve in a footnote to the department's final report—a document that revealed 2,150 mass layoffs in November, cashiering nearly a quarter-million workers. The administration claimed the report was a victim of budget cuts. After the Washington Post happened to catch this bit of data suppression, the BLS report was reinstated. (Interestingly, President George H.W. Bush buried these same statistics in '92, also during a period of job losses. They were revived by President Clinton.)

The Bush economic team has snuffed its own reports when they reach conclusions that don't match the administration's rosy scenarios. The administration deep-sixed a study commissioned by then Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill that predicts huge budget deficits well into the future. As noted by the Financial Times in late May, this survey, which asserted that the baby-boom generation's future health care and retirement costs would swamp U.S. coffers, was dropped from a 2004 budget summary published in February 2003—at the same time the White House was campaigning for a tax-cut package that critics warned would greatly expand future deficits. "The study's [analysis of future deficits] dwarfs previous estimates of the financial challenge facing Washington," wrote the FT. According to the FT, a Bush official said the study was merely a thought exercise.

The administration also muffled a customary report whose findings would have forced key corporate supporters to pay more to their employees. The annual Adverse Effect Wage Rate establishes the minimum wage that can be paid each year to about 50,000 agricultural "guest workers" in the H2A Program. From AEWR's 1987 inception until 2000, the Department of Labor released the report in February. But in 2001, DOL withheld the wage figure until August, and only published it after the Farmworker Justice Fund threatened a lawsuit. In 2002, the DOL held up the report until May, again releasing it only after the prospect of legal action. The delays helped big agricultural firms, largely in the tobacco states and the South, by allowing them to pay their field workers last year's lower wages, saving the employers millions of dollars. Among those benefiting politically were Labor Secretary Elaine Chao's husband, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, whose state relies on several thousand guest workers in its tobacco fields and who receives large contributions from agricultural interests.

Another administration trick is playing with the length of its economic forecast periods, which puts the best possible face on bad news while exaggerating the projected benefits of its own initiatives. For example, to heighten the impression that Social Security is running out of money (thereby strengthening the case for allowing workers to divert money from the system into private retirement accounts), the administration has predicted shortfalls far in the future by relying on preposterously long forecast periods. In a superb analysis of the budget in the June Harper's, Thomas Frank noted that in 2002 the administration declared an $18 trillion shortfall in Social Security and Medicare—about five times the current national debt. Frank notes that in order to arrive at the $18 trillion figure—since Social Security is currently in surplus—the administration used a "cumulative seventy-five-year estimate [Frank's itals] based on extreme long-term projections ... ." Meanwhile, even as it relies on 75-year projections for Social Security, the same document replaces traditional 10-year budget projections with five-year ones, claiming the longer-term numbers were unreliable.

President Bush also politicized the Council of Economic Advisers, which is supposed to produce straight analysis, not administration spin. CEA staffers complained that top Bush economic adviser Larry Lindsey, not even a member of the council, encouraged them to produce data supporting the president's controversial tax cut initiatives. CEA chairman Glen Hubbard also pushed staffers to find literature supporting the questionable argument that tax cuts created job growth.

On other occasions, the administration has punished economic officials who didn't follow the company line. Treasury Secretary O'Neill left the administration after, among other fits of candor, he expressed skepticism about economic figures the White House had released and suggested that the tax cut could be better used to buttress Social Security. And before Lindsey was made to take a dive, he predicted that the war in Iraq could cost upwards of $200 billion, a figure that infuriated the White House, which was selling the anti-Saddam campaign as a comparatively cheap victory.

Important economic data that casts a bad light on administration policies has been expunged from government Web sites. The Department of Labor removed a report showing the real value of the minimum wage over time, claiming it was "outdated." With no minimum wage hike since 1997, the Web site would have shown minimum-wage workers faring increasingly poorly under the Bush administration, while their real income went up under Clinton. (Some subheadings from the report: "Real Value of the Minimum Wage Continues Decline"; "Minimum Wage Falls Relative to Average Hourly Earnings"; "Minimum Wage Falls Below 2-Person Family Poverty Threshold.")

Earlier this year, a study predicting mediocre job growth from Bush's proposed $674 billion economic stimulus plan disappeared from the Council of Economic Advisers' Web site. The study forecast an average increase of only 170,000 jobs—0.1 percent of the workforce—every year through 2007. The study was pulled just after a major Jan. 7 Bush budget speech to the Economic Club of Chicago. "In the out years, by their own estimate, their plan is a job and growth killer," says Jared Bernstein, economist at the Economic Policy Institute. "Instead of doing what serious analysts would do and going to the drawing board to re-evaluate, they just took the offending document off the Web site."

Certainly, each one of these Bush team moves can be explained: administrative concerns, government paperwork reduction, outdated material, etc. Cumulatively, however, they certainly look suspect. We've seen the future, and it's been deleted.

Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2085481/

Bush's Iraq WMDs joke backfires

Published: 2004/03/26 13:15:03 GMT

US President George W Bush has sparked a political row by making a joke about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
At a black-tie dinner for journalists, Mr Bush narrated a slide show poking fun at himself and other members of his administration.

One pictured Mr Bush looking under a piece of furniture in the Oval Office, at which the president remarked: "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be here somewhere."

After another one, showing him scouring the corner of a room, Mr Bush said: "No, no weapons over there," he said.

And as a third picture, this time showing him leaning over, appeared on the screen the president was heard to say: "Maybe under here?"

The audience at Wednesday's 60th annual dinner of the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association obviously thought the quips hilarious - there were laughs all round - but the next morning, in the cold light of day, things looked far less amusing.
The joke about the fruitless search for Iraqi WMDs so far, Washington's prime justification for the US-led invasion, has been branded as tasteless and ill-judged.

'Undermining' sacrifices

Mr Bush's election challenger Senator John Kerry described the president's attitude as "stunningly cavalier".

"If George Bush thinks his deceptive rationale for going to war is a laughing matter, then he's even more out of touch than we thought," he said in a written statement.

"Unfortunately for the president, this is not a joke."

Mr Kerry's statement also included a comment from Iraq war veteran Brad Owens, who said: "War is the single most serious event that a president or government can carry its people into.

"This cheapens the sacrifice that American soldiers and their families are dealing with every single day."

More than 500 US soldiers have died in the war and thousands more have been injured.

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was asked what he thought of this incident at a press conference on Friday, but he dodged the issue, saying that he couldn't comment as he hadn't been at the event.