"He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999."

[BurtWorm]

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050620/why_george_went_to_war.php


Why George Went To War
Russ Baker
June 20, 2005

...

Despite such mounting evidence, Bush resolutely maintains total denial. In fact, when a British reporter asked the president recently about the Downing Street documents, Bush painted himself as a reluctant warrior. "Both of us didn't want to use our military," he said, answering for himself and British Prime Minister Blair. "Nobody wants to commit military into combat. It's the last option."

Yet there's evidence that Bush not only deliberately relied on false intelligence to justify an attack, but that he would have willingly used any excuse at all to invade Iraq. And that he was obsessed with the notion well before 9/11—indeed, even before he became president in early 2001.

In interviews I conducted last fall, a well-known journalist, biographer and Bush family friend who worked for a time with Bush on a ghostwritten memoir said that an Iraq war was always on Bush's brain.

"He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999," said author and Houston Chronicle journalist Mickey Herskowitz. "It was on his mind. He said, '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 went on, '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.'"

[Desertrose]

1. Heard this before but it bears repeating....

Little Georgie had BIG plans....

[BurtWorm]

3. This is corroboration. And look at this:

"Bush apparently accepted a view that Herskowitz, with his long experience of writing books with top Republicans, says was a common sentiment: that no president could be considered truly successful without one military "win" under his belt. Leading Republicans had long been enthralled by the effect of the minuscule Falklands War on British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's popularity, and ridiculed Democrats such as Jimmy Carter who were reluctant to use American force. Indeed, both Reagan and Bush's father successfully prosecuted limited invasions (Grenada, Panama and the Gulf War) without miring the United States in endless conflicts.

"Herskowitz's revelations illuminate Bush's personal motivation for invading Iraq and, more importantly, his general inclination to use war to advance his domestic political ends. Furthermore, they establish that this thinking predated 9/11, predated his election to the presidency and predated his appointment of leading neoconservatives who had their own, separate, more complex geopolitical rationale for supporting an invasion."

[mctrotter5]

2. No such thing as responsiblity, that is for others.

[Carla in Ca]

4. There was a consensus not long ago

that is was absolutely planned and that Iraq was the reason he ran for president, remember? Didn't he want to avenge daddy's credibility?
I thought then, and I think now that it is the truth.

[mopaul]

5. he probably started plotting it all through the Clinton years

or the smart nazis did anyway.

[Johonny]

6. And yet he did

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


Well so far it sure seems like a waste. He has a destroyed country. Suck in an unpopular war with no clear motive or goals. A spiraling national debt. And an out of control constituency that spends its time talking about homosexuality like it was 1500 AD.

[BurtWorm]

9. He has a funny idea about "capital" of all kinds.

He never has much himself, but he's always ready to spend it on colossal wastes, and always has to be dug out by more serious, more responsible people.

Story of li'l Georgie's life.

[Patty Diana]

7. In 1999 bush told his ghostwriter he was going to invade Iraq

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1028-01.htm

[BurtWorm]

10. "admitted that he failed to fulfill his .... National Guard service..."

In 2003, Bush's father indicated to him that he disagreed with his son's invasion of Iraq.

Bush admitted that he failed to fulfill his Vietnam-era domestic National Guard service obligation, but claimed that he had been "excused."

Bush revealed that after he left his Texas National Guard unit in 1972 under murky circumstances, he never piloted a plane again. That casts doubt on the carefully-choreographed moment of Bush emerging in pilot's garb from a jet on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in 2003 to celebrate "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq. The image, instantly telegraphed around the globe, and subsequent hazy White House statements about his capacity in the cockpit, created the impression that a heroic Bush had played a role in landing the craft.

Bush described his own business ventures as "floundering" before campaign officials insisted on recasting them in a positive light.

[Emendator]

11. Very interesting

That is extremely interesting. It basically comes down to GW Bush, aware that he is an empty shell of an individual who never did anything on his own, using politics and war to make a name for himself in the history books. He's not the first not will he be the last such person.

But he's wrong to think wars will make him great. It is said "Blessed be the peacemakers". It is also wrong to compare him to Reagan, who will be looked kindly upon by history, because, bottom line, he was a peacemaker. Grenada and the bombing of Tripoli are mere blips. And although he shouldn't have gone in, at least he had the sense to get out of Lebanon, something the neocons like Norman Podheretz really resent him for.

Bush will go down in history as a reckless fool who seriously messed up the world. Who knows what problems are coming down the road in the next 30-50 years thanks to this president.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

8. The PNACers were pressing the case for attacking Iraq as early as 1997....

INVADING IRAQ NOT A NEW IDEA FOR BUSH CLIQUE
4 YEARS BEFORE 9/11, PLAN WAS SET
<http://www.scc.losrios.edu/~bodleyd/PNAC.html>

QUOTE:

But in reality, Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, and a small band of conservative ideologues had begun making the case for an American invasion of Iraq as early as 1997 - nearly four years before the Sept. 11 attacks and three years before President Bush took office.

An obscure, ominous-sounding right-wing policy group called Project for the New American Century, or PNAC - affiliated with Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rumsfeld's top deputy Paul Wolfowitz and Bush's brother Jeb - even urged then-President Clinton to invade Iraq back in January 1998.

"We urge you to... enunciate a new strategy that would secure the
interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies around the world,"
stated the letter to Clinton, signed by Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and
others. "That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam
Hussein's regime from power." (For full text of the letter, see
www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm)