NYT: Elder Bush Says His Son Was Served Badly by Aides

[seafan]

People, this is a MUST READ. They are all turning on each other like a pack of rabid jackals.

Their Empire is melting.


Elder Bush Says His Son Was Served Badly by Aides, NYT, November 4, 2015

WASHINGTON — After years of holding back, former President George Bush has finally broken his public silence about some of the key figures in his son’s administration, issuing scathing critiques of Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

In interviews with his biographer, Mr. Bush said that Mr. Cheney had built “his own empire” and asserted too much “hard-line” influence within George W. Bush’s White House in pushing for the use of force around the world. Mr. Rumsfeld, the elder Mr. Bush said, was an “arrogant fellow” who could not see how others thought and “served the president badly.”

Mr. Bush’s sharp assessments, contained in a biography by Jon Meacham to be published by Random House next week, gave voice to sentiments that many long suspected he had harbored but kept private until now. While he continued to praise his son, he did tell Mr. Meacham that the younger Mr. Bush was responsible for empowering Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld and was at times too bellicose in his language.

.....

Asked for specifics, Mr. Bush cited his son’s State of the Union address in 2002, when he described an “axis of evil” that included Iraq, Iran and North Korea. “You go back to the ‘axis of evil’ and these things and I think that might be historically proved to be not benefiting anything,” he said.

The biography, “Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush,” is coming out as the country is focused once again on the Bush family and its place in the American firmament. With Jeb Bush, Mr. Bush’s second son, struggling in his campaign for the White House, the family that has held the White House the longest in the modern age now faces the possibility that its time has passed.

.....

Get the Safe Rooms ready.

[tk2kewl]

1. His Son Was Served Badly by Aides...

all of which were Poppy's disciples

[Skittles]

2. it's never their fault is it?

[Major Nikon]

13. When 41 lost his reelection bid the Bushies blamed it on the media

[Warpy]

3. Oh, FFS. Translation: "Everybody but the American people knew my boy was stupid"

"He just got himself surrounded by a bunch of sharp dealers who took advantage of him"

Some defense.

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

4. This is all to excuse Jeb! as much as Dumbya

Fuck all of them.

[Solly Mack]

5. What a crock of shit.

Mr. Bush’s sharp assessments

"Sharp" my ass.


Convenient and indicative of how they operate. Everyone's fault but their own.

[lpbk2713]

6. Yeah but their job wasn't easy ...

having to compensate for all that stupid.

[Boomerproud]

7. Poppy got it half-wrong. WE were badly served by both his spawn AND the brain trust he surrounded

himself with. Of course, we knew it on Selection Night didn't we?

[spanone]

8. he had eight years to fire them...

come on poppy, you gave cheney the medal of freedom

[Johonny]

9. No one doubts this, but it is also true the aids played the president because he could be played

They were telling him things he wanted to hear. They knew the president put loyalty above all else and rewarded basically those that told him what he wanted to hear, when he wanted to hear it. Thus it's not as if W didn't get the presidency he wanted. The war, the torture, the lies, the collapsed economy... they were all due to things he wanted. His son's presidency sucked because modern conservatism sucks.

[seafan]

10. "If I have a chance to invade... if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it."

Russ Baker, October 28, 2004

HOUSTON -- Two years before the September 11 attacks, presidential candidate George W. Bush was already talking privately about the political benefits of attacking Iraq, according to his former ghost writer, who held many conversations with then-Texas Governor Bush in preparation for a planned autobiography.

"He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999," said author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz. "It was on his mind. He said to me: 'One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.' And he said, 'My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.' He said, 'If I have a chance to invade...if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency." Herskowitz said that Bush expressed frustration at a lifetime as an underachiever in the shadow of an accomplished father. In aggressive military action, he saw the opportunity to emerge from his father's shadow. The moment, Herskowitz said, came in the wake of the September 11 attacks. "Suddenly, he's at 91 percent in the polls, and he'd barely crawled out of the bunker."

That President Bush and his advisers had Iraq on their minds long before weapons inspectors had finished their work - and long before alleged Iraqi ties with terrorists became a central rationale for war - has been raised elsewhere, including in a book based on recollections of former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill. However, Herskowitz was in a unique position to hear Bush's unguarded and unfiltered views on Iraq, war and other matters - well before he became president.

In 1999, Herskowitz struck a deal with the campaign of George W. Bush about a ghost-written autobiography, which was ultimately titled A Charge to Keep : My Journey to the White House, and he and Bush signed a contract in which the two would split the proceeds. The publisher was William Morrow. Herskowitz was given unimpeded access to Bush, and the two met approximately 20 times so Bush could share his thoughts. Herskowitz began working on the book in May, 1999, and says that within two months he had completed and submitted some 10 chapters, with a remaining 4-6 chapters still on his computer. Herskowitz was replaced as Bush's ghostwriter after Bush's handlers concluded that the candidate's views and life experiences were not being cast in a sufficiently positive light.

According to Herskowitz, George W. Bush's beliefs on Iraq were based in part on a notion dating back to the Reagan White House - ascribed in part to now-vice president Dick Cheney, Chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee under Reagan. "Start a small war. Pick a country where there is justification you can jump on, go ahead and invade."

Bush's circle of pre-election advisers had a fixation on the political capital that British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher collected from the Falklands War. Said Herskowitz: "They were just absolutely blown away, just enthralled by the scenes of the troops coming back, of the boats, people throwing flowers at (Thatcher) and her getting these standing ovations in Parliament and making these magnificent speeches."

Republicans, Herskowitz said, felt that Jimmy Carter's political downfall could be attributed largely to his failure to wage a war. He noted that President Reagan and President Bush's father himself had (besides the narrowly-focused Gulf War I) successfully waged limited wars against tiny opponents - Grenada and Panama - and gained politically. But there were successful small wars, and then there were quagmires, and apparently George H.W. Bush and his son did not see eye to eye.

"I know (Bush senior) would not admit this now, but he was opposed to it. I asked him if he had talked to W about invading Iraq. "He said, 'No I haven't, and I won't, but Brent (Scowcroft) has.' Brent would not have talked to him without the old man's okaying it." Scowcroft, national security adviser in the elder Bush's administration, penned a highly publicized warning to George W. Bush about the perils of an invasion.

Poppy cannot put the blame on others for George W. Bush's screwups.


Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz et.al., methodically advantaged themselves because of the vacuum of leadership at the top.


Poppy has his own sins to atone for, and he knows it.

George Herbert Walker Bush also has to face the stunning failures of both of his sons before he leaves this earth.


It is a very dark time in America when we all must face the repercussions of the grievous harm inflicted on the world by this one family.

[Grammy23]

11. I think there is a word that pretty much sums up the Bush Family Thanksgiving gathering this year

Awkward.

[roamer65]

12. A family of war criminals turning on other war criminals.

They all should be sent to The Hague.