Bush Wanted To Invade Iraq If Elected in 2000 - Shrub's ghost writer

[TacticalPeek]

Exclusive: Bush Wanted To Invade Iraq If Elected in 2000

By Russ Baker


Two years before 9/11, candidate Bush was already talking privately about attacking Iraq, according to his former ghost writer

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."

...

Research support for this article was provided by the Investigative Fund of The Nation Institute.

Russ Baker is an award-winning independent journalist who has been published in The New York Times, The Nation, Washington Post, The Telegraph (UK), Sydney Morning-Herald, and Der Spiegel, among many others.


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http://www.guerrillanews.com/articles/article.php?id=761

[ClintonTyree]

1. There was a very good reason..................

why his father didn't "finish" the first Gulf War. It is painfully obvious now what those reasons were. The only difference between the two Bush's is the fact that 41 would listen to his advisers, both military and civilian. 43 on the other hand marginalized the military and only listened to the neo-con civilians that had no practical military experience at all. History will be the ultimate judge of who prosecuted their respective Gulf War better. I believe it's fairly straight forward to concede that 41 prosecuted his war in a much better fashion than 43. 43 has made a mess of not only Iraq, but our own country as well. He broke Iraq, now he owns it. He has to fix it. Or we could transfer that onus to John Kerry who I believe is far more capable of a proffering a solution that does the least damage to both countries.

[Malva Zebrina]

2. It is no wonder that he performed so poorly in the debates

He has been entirely manufactured. I believe he was wearing a wire and it failed for some reason in that first debate, ergo we saw the real stupid little Dauphine Bush. Hughes and the crew tried to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. That is why he does not do press conferences or allowed to say anything ad lib. He has been a manufactured image without a single damn bit of reality to back it up and he does not have the memory or the smarts to play the role without screwing it up. There have just been too many lies told about him and they keep building up. The heck with the "he is not dumb" bit--he is just plain stupid. He is an egomaniacal, delusional Oedipal driven idiot.

Cheney is just plain rotted to the core evil.

[yardwork]

5. Remember when Kerry patted shrubbo on the back when they shook hands?

I've wondered if Kerry knocked the wires in the transmitter loose at the beginning of the first debate.

I'm certain that the Kerry campaign is well-aware of more than we can even imagine regarding shrubco's dirty tricks.

At the time, we thought Kerry had patted shrubbo on the back to reinforce the message that Kerry was taller, older, and wiser than the little fellow.

There might have been another reason as well. I noticed that shrubby tried to keep his distance when they shook hands at the second two debates.

[movie_girl99]

3. why do we not hear about this stuff

in the papers or in the news. This is huge and proves it was never about liberating Iraq.

[robbedvoter]

4. Before corronation, Condi was spewing all Iraq lines at the

Council of Foreign relations. She gave an interesting little speech (sampled by Air America) where she ridiculed Clinton's obsession with Osama and explained why Iraq is the thing.
And, btw, that makes a piece of trash of Woodward's book + all similar scripts describing a "decision process".
It was their agenda, part of why they needed to come to power.

[yardwork]

6. Richard Clarke said that Condi was constantly ridiculing talk of OBL

and al Quada.

I wish that the media were still interviewing Clarke. His book is amazing.

[Nordic]

14. probably the same reason the press doesn't tell us about this:

http://www.ericblumrich.com/thanks.html

Check it out if you haven't already seen it.

Why every American doesn't know about this is a mystery to me.

[notadmblnd]

7. All this over a pissing contest with his father?

snip: "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."

This is so fucking pitiful. Bush is responsible for the death of 10's of thousands of people because he wants to proove he's a better man than his dad. Burning in hell for eternity would be too good for this discusting piece of shit of a leader.

[kysrsoze]

8. Tell us something we didn't already know

When it looked like asshole was going to win Florida after all, my friend and I both looked at each other and said, "We're going to Iraq again."

[highplainsdem]

9. This is a really important story.

I posted about it in the Latest Breaking News forum but the topic there was locked because this apparently isn't considered LBN.

I think this should be seen by Democrats who might be scanning headlines on Democratic/liberal websites but not checking boards for discussions, so I sent the link to Buzzflash.com and Democrats.com.

[Serenades]

10. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Honestly, I never needed any outside proof to know this -- to me, it seems pretty obvious and anyone conservative or liberal or independant could have drawn this conclusion only by using their heads.

[highplainsdem]

11. But this story is confirmation from a journalist close to the Bushes,

who had their approval and assistance with an authorized biography of W's grandfather that was published last year. This isn't speculation (no matter how expert) or unsourced gossip. Baker taped his interviews with Herskowitz.

[Javaman]

12. * has a small....

weenie. So sad.

[punpirate]

13. What confuses me about this...

... is that the work was funded by the Nation Institute, but didn't appear in The Nation. Was it because Herskowitz tried to back out due to "on the record/off the record" disagreements?

After all, Baker is not a hack, and has done excellent work here, and in the past. After all, the idea of going to Bush's ghost writer is a minor stroke of genius, and then getting him to talk was very persuasive.

So, why is this an exclusive to GNN? ???