Please don't be misled into thinking that Bush was misled

[Poiuyt]

All the talk on TV makes it seem like it was only Cheney and his cohorts were behind the push to invade Iraq. Don't believe for one second that Bush didn't want to invade Iraq as badly as anyone else in Washington.

Remember how Bush confronted Richard Clark on 9/11, how Bush kept pointing at him saying, "What about Iraq? What about Iraq?"

And don't forget what Bush's biographer said in 1999:

"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."

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


Did you catch that? "If I have a chance to invade..." That war monger was actually looking forward to it like a little boy making out his Christmas list.

If Fitzgerald doesn't implicate Bush for lying us into war, I'm going to be seriously disappointed.

[Benhurst]

1. recommended NT

[NV Whino]

2. Umm... it's Fitzgerald

But I catch your drift.

[the_spectator]

6. Isn't it also "misled?"

[Poiuyt]

7. Whoops...sorry

corrected

[the_spectator]

10. OK. Just a warning this time. But don't let it happen again!

[kiki]

12. Ironically...

...the use of the comma between the phrases "this is agent jenkins of the grammar police" and "we've been watching what you've posted..." is pretty bad grammar. :)

[the_spectator]

14. Hey, I just stole the happy little cartoon off the internet!

Don't blame me!
More seriously, it's from www.toothpastefordinner.com. I've seen another one of those little cartoons on DU before. They're cute!

[Larissa238]

3. Recommended

[newyawker99]

21. Hi Larissa238!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Larissa238]

24. Thanks!

:toast:

[tuvor]

4. If bush was misled, he's horribly incompetent.

Either way, he deserves to be tossed out.

[in_cog_ni_to]

5. That's why he didn't testify under oath. His ass is grass too. He's just

too stupid to know it.

[LunaC]

8. Nice!

Bookmarked and recommended.

"A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there's no question about it," – George W. Bush - July 30, 2001

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/jul2001/nf20010730_347.htm

[Scout1071]

9. Agreed! I was just thinking that the buzz is all Cheney when it should

be Bush. What did the President know and when did he know it? We The People want know.

[Scout1071]

11. It's also why he hired a criminal attorney right off the bat. n/t

[kiki]

13. He just loves that phrase, doesn't he?

"Political capital".

It's obvious what that means to him: get a few more votes than the other guy = license to fuck the planet and everyone on it as you see fit.

I guess that's what you'd call a "back to basics" view of politics.

[Leftist_Warrior]

15. Bush was drawing up plans

The first day in the whitehouse. He wanted to settle a score with Saddam since the supposed plot to assassinate Bush 41.

I wouldn't be surprised if this isn't why he ran for the whitehouse in the first place.

I so miss Clinton. God, this has been a hellish 5 years. I could puke every morning when I wake up and turn on the television. Our country needs to turn around, like yesterday.

[driver8]

19. I cannot stand to look at shrub or listen to him. His voice makes

my skin crawl. That fake accent he uses is like nails on a chalkboard for me.

[ginnyinWI]

16. from that quote, I'd put *'s emotional age at about seven

I can hear a small boy's voice when I read it. :(

[driver8]

18. I can hear a small penised man when I read it...

What an effin' imbecile.

[ginnyinWI]

23. Al Franken was talking about the oedipal thing yesterday

How * is always trying to be better than his dad, the Fly-boy war hero, successful businessman, CIA head, and president. The harder he tries, the worse he fails.

[WFF]

17. Both Bush and Cheney were leading the charge to invade Iraq

I'm not sure who wanted it more, but there's no way that Bush was an innocent bystander.

[BlueEyedSon]

20. Don't forget Paul Oneill....

[ProfessorPlum]

22. And, as Digby points out

at http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_10_16_digbysblog_archive.html#112974108650214157,

This sort of "revenge" play against a disloyal person (Wilson) is exactly the kind of thing that Bush did so much of when his father was president.

quote

In 1990, he told writer Ann Grimes, "I was the enforcer when I thought things were going wrong. I had the ability to go and lay down some behavioral modification."

<...>

As one might expect, much of Bush's work for his father's presidential campaigns was done behind the scenes. Yet it's clear he was steeped in political minutiae and imposed few limits on what he was willing to do to get the job done.In 1986, veteran reporter Al Hunt predicted that Jack Kemp would receive the 1988 Republican presidential nomination instead of George H.W. Bush. When George W. saw Hunt dining with his wife and 4-year-old son at a Mexican restaurant in Dallas, he went up to their table and said, "You fucking son of bitch. I won't forget what you said and you're going to pay a fucking price for it." Bush didn't apologize until 13 years later, when the incident resurfaced in the context of his own presidential campaign.

<...>

After his father was elected president in 1988, Bush was placed in charge of a group called the Silent Committee (aka the "scrub group"), which was made up of "about fifteen blood-oath Bushies," according to the Texas Monthly. The purpose of the group was "to 'scrub' potential appointees for their loyalty and past service to Bush." The Washington Post noted at the time that George W. had a "somewhat more developed sense of political loyalty than even his father."


Although Bush left Washington after the campaign concluded, his role as loyalty enforcer remained largely unchanged. In November 1991, for example, then White House chief of staff John Sununu told a reporter the president had "ad-libbed" an ill-advised line during a speech about credit card interest rates. The younger Bush was infuriated that Sununu didn't defend his father. George W. told another White House staffer, "We have a saying in our family: If a grenade is rolling by the Man, you dive on it first. The guy violated the cardinal rule."

George W. was dispatched to Washington to deal with the Sununu situation. He met with Sununu and told him he should resign. On Dec. 3, 1991, Sununu -- also facing criticism for his misuse of government vehicles -- stepped down. Asked about the confrontation, George W. would only say, "The conversations between me and Mr. Sununu are going to be private. I talked to him, and then he and Dad reached an agreement."

endquote

The guy, like his Mom, is totally into the cult of loyalty and revenge. Outing Wilson's wife was probably Bush's idea.

[ComerPerro]

25. Suddenly Bush goes from bold, take charge, rugged leader

to pitiful, simple, trusting dupe who was out of the loop...

And people are ok with that contradiction?