Bush Family Values: War, Wealth, Oil

[Manix]

LA Times
By Kevin Phillips

Four generations have created an unsavory web of links that could prove an election-year Achilles' heel for the president.



<snip>


This four-generation evolution of the Bushes involves multiple links that could become Bush's election-year Achilles' heel — if a clever and tough 2004 Democratic opponent can punch and slice at them. Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry, the clear Democratic front-runner, could be best positioned to do so. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he investigated the Iran-Contra and Bank of Credit and Commerce International scandals, both of which touched George H.W. Bush's Saudi, Iraqi and Middle Eastern arms-deal entanglements.

Washington lawyer Jack Blum, the ace investigator for Kerry's subcommittee back then, is said to be advising him now, which could be meaningful. Ironically, the Bush family's century of involvement in oil, armaments and global intrigue has never been at the center of the national debate since the Bushes starting running for president in 1980.


<snip>


Politically, over four generations the Bush past has been prologue. Despite George W. Bush's new good ol' boy image — cowboy boots and born-again ties to the religious right — his basic tendencies go in the same directions — oil, crony capitalism, top 1% economics and military-industrial-establishment loyalties — that the previous Bush and Walker generations have traveled. The old biases and loyalties seem ineradicable; so, too, for old grudges, like the two-generation fixation on Saddam Hussein.

The presidency is an old Bush ambition. As early as the 1940s, Barbara Bush talked to friends about becoming first lady. The current president's grandfather, Prescott Bush, told his wife before he retired in 1962 that he wished he'd been president. By 1963, George W. Bush, a student at Andover Academy, was talking about his own father's desire to be president.

In short, the word "dynasty" fits the Bushes all too well. They have had plenty of time to sort out their ambitions, loyalties and intentions. They know what they're in politics for — although this year may pose a new problem. The American people are also starting to find out.




LA Times

[Karenina]

1. The American people are also starting to find out.

Now they too, are being KILLED by it.

[H2O Man]

2. petroleum by-product

Oil has actually been the #1 industry in the world for over 150 years. The military-industrial complexe runs on oil. Oil industries' budget dwarfs the US federal governments'. Interestingly, US interests control about 80% of the world's oil, and oil controls 100% of the bush administration.
George W.'s great-grandfathers were among the first industrialists who invested heavily in weapons production. His grandfather Preston was a senator, who ran an oil company that was a Halliburton in its time. We know that George Sr was in oil and the CIA director at a time when the oil-producing areas of the world were becoming "independent" and the USA recognized that propping up the Shah alone wasn't cutting it. Hence the bush family ties to the royal family of Saudi Arabia.
The "president" is a petroleum by-product, who comes from the family with the largest connections to oil & Saudi Arabia of any family in American history. The US government is a secondary position that includes controlling the military, for obvious reasons in Iraq.
They despise democracy: the bush co. rejects Shi'ite cleric Ayatullah Ali al-Sistani's call for "one person - one vote" democratic elections. This is no surprise to us, considering that they oppose black people voting in Florida.

[reprehensor]

3. Excellent summary of the crime family. (n/t)

[teryang]

4. Go Kevin Phillips!

The more exposure he gets, the more votes the commander in thief loses.

[Snappy]

5. Who rules America?

Maybe someone here can tell us?