Two Years Before 9/11, Candidate Bush was Already Talking Privately About Attack

[Guest guest]

T

Thu, 16 Jun 2005 14:51:43 -0700 (PDT)

Two Years Before 9/11, Candidate Bush was

Already Talking Privately About Attacking Iraq

 

http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/headlines04/1028-01.htm

 

Published on Thursday, October 28, 2004 by GNN.tv

 

Two Years Before 9/11, Candidate Bush was Already Talking Privately

About Attacking Iraq, According to His Former Ghost Writer

by Russ Baker

 

 

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, who has authored more than 30 books, many of

them jointly written autobiographies of famous Americans in politics,

sports and media (including that of Reagan adviser Michael Deaver),

Bush and his advisers were sold on the idea that it was difficult for

a president to accomplish an electoral agenda without the record-high

approval numbers that accompany successful if modest wars.

 

The revelations on Bush's attitude toward Iraq emerged recently during

two taped interviews of Herskowitz, which included a discussion of a

variety of matters, including his continued closeness with the Bush

family, indicated by his subsequent selection to pen an authorized

biography of Bush's grandfather, written and published last year with

the assistance and blessing of the Bush family.

 

Herskowitz also revealed the following:

 

* 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.

 

Throughout the interviews for this article and in subsequent

conversations, Herskowitz indicated he was conflicted over revealing

information provided by a family with which he has longtime

connections, and by how his candor could comport with the undefined

operating principles of the as-told-to genre. Well after the

interviews-in which he expressed consternation that Bush's true views,

experience and basic essence had eluded the American people

-Herskowitz communicated growing concern about the consequences for

himself of the publication of his remarks, and said that he had been

under the impression he would not be quoted by name. However, when

conversations began, it was made clear to him that the material was

intended for publication and attribution. A tape recorder was present

and visible at all times.

 

Several people who know Herskowitz well addressed his character and

the veracity of his recollections. " I don't know anybody that's ever

said a bad word about Mickey, " said Barry Silverman, a well-known

Houston executive and civic figure who worked with him on another book

project. An informal survey of Texas journalists turned up uniform

confidence that Herskowitz's account as contained in this article

could be considered accurate.

 

One noted Texas journalist who spoke with Herskowitz about the book in

1999 recalls how the author mentioned to him at the time that Bush had

revealed things the campaign found embarrassing and did not want in

print. He requested anonymity because of the political climate in the

state. " I can't go near this, " he said.

 

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.

 

Herskowitz's revelations are not the sole indicator of Bush's

pre-election thinking on Iraq. In December 1999, some six months after

his talks with Herskowitz, Bush surprised veteran political

chroniclers, including the Boston Globe 's David Nyhan, with his blunt

pronouncements about Saddam at a six-way New Hampshire primary event

that got little notice: " It was a gaffe-free evening for the rookie

front-runner, till he was asked about Saddam's weapons stash, " wrote

Nyhan. 'I'd take 'em out,' [bush] grinned cavalierly, 'take out the

weapons of mass destruction·I'm surprised he's still there, " said Bush

of the despot who remains in power after losing the Gulf War to Bush

Jr.'s father·It remains to be seen if that offhand declaration of war

was just Texas talk, a sort of locker room braggadocio, or whether it

was Bush's first big clinker. "

 

The notion that President Bush held unrealistic or naïve views about

the consequences of war was further advanced recently by a Bush

supporter, the evangelist Pat Robertson, who revealed that Bush had

told him the Iraq invasion would yield no casualties. In addition, in

recent days, high-ranking US military officials have complained that

the White House did not provide them with adequate resources for the

task at hand.

 

Herskowitz considers himself a friend of the Bush family, and has been

a guest at the family vacation home in Kennebunkport. In the late

1960s, Herskowitz, a longtime Houston Chronicle sports columnist

designated President Bush's father, then-Congressman George HW Bush,

to replace him as a guest columnist, and the two have remained close

since then. (Herskowitz was suspended briefly in April without pay for

reusing material from one of his own columns, about legendary UCLA

basketball coach John Wooden.)

 

In 1999, when Herskowitz turned in his chapters for Charge to Keep,

Bush's staff expressed displeasure -often over Herskowitz's use of

language provided by Bush himself. In a chapter on the oil business,

Herskowitz included Bush's own words to describe the Texan's

unprofitable business ventures, writing: " the companies were

floundering " . " I got a call from one of the campaign lawyers, he was

kind of angry, and he said, 'You've got some wrong information.' I

didn't bother to say, 'Well you know where it came from.' [The lawyer]

said, 'We do not consider that the governor struggled or floundered in

the oil business. We consider him a successful oilman who started up

at least two new businesses.' "

 

In the end, campaign officials decided not to go with Herskowitz's

account, and, moreover, demanded everything back. " The lawyer called

me and said, 'Delete it. Shred it. Just do it.' "

 

" They took it and [communications director] Karen [Hughes] rewrote

it, " he said. A campaign official arrived at his home at seven a.m. on

a Monday morning and took his notes and computer files. However,

Herskowitz, who is known for his memory of anecdotes from his long

history in journalism and book publishing, says he is confident about

his recollections.

 

According to Herskowitz, Bush was reluctant to discuss his time in the

Texas Air National Guard - and inconsistent when he did so. Bush, he

said, provided conflicting explanations of how he came to bypass a

waiting list and obtain a coveted Guard slot as a domestic alternative

to being sent to Vietnam. Herskowitz also said that Bush told him that

after transferring from his Texas Guard unit two-thirds through his

six-year military obligation to work on an Alabama political campaign,

he did not attend any Alabama National Guard drills at all, because he

was " excused. " This directly contradicts his public statements that he

participated in obligatory training with the Alabama National Guard.

Bush's claim to have fulfilled his military duty has been subject to

intense scrutiny; he has insisted in the past that he did show up for

monthly drills in Alabama - though commanding officers say they never

saw him, and no Guardsmen have come forward to accept substantial

" rewards " for anyone who can claim to have seen Bush on base.

 

Herskowitz said he asked Bush if he ever flew a plane again after

leaving the Texas Air National Guard in 1972 - which was two years

prior to his contractual obligation to fly jets was due to expire. He

said Bush told him he never flew any plane - military or civilian -

again. That would contradict published accounts in which Bush talks

about his days in 1973 working with inner-city children, when he

claimed to have taken some of the children up in a plane.

 

In 2002, three years after he had been pulled off the George W. Bush

biography, Herskowitz was asked by Bush's father to write a book about

the current president's grandfather, Prescott Bush, after getting a

message that the senior Bush wanted to see him. " Former President Bush

just handed it to me. We were sitting there one day, and I was

visiting him there in his office·He said, 'I wish somebody would do a

book about my dad.' "

 

" He said to me, 'I know this has been a disappointing time for you,

but it's amazing how many times something good will come out of it.' I

passed it on to my agent, he jumped all over it. I asked [bush

senior], 'Would you support it and would you give me access to the

rest of family?' He said yes. "

 

That book, Duty, Honor, Country: The Life and Legacy of Prescott Bush

, was published in 2003 by Routledge. If anything, the book has been

criticized for its over-reliance on the Bush family's perspective and

rosy interpretation of events. Herskowitz himself is considered the

ultimate " as-told-to " author, lending credibility to his account of

what George W. Bush told him. Herskowitz's other books run the gamut

of public figures, and include the memoirs of Reagan aide Deaver,

former Texas Governor and Nixon Treasury Secretary John Connally,

newsman Dan Rather, astronaut Walter Cunningham, and baseball greats

Mickey Mantle and Nolan Ryan.

 

After Herskowitz was pulled from the Bush book project, the biographer

learned that a scenario was being prepared to explain his departure.

" I got a phone call from someone in the Bush campaign, confidentially,

saying 'Watch your back.' "

 

Reporters covering Bush say that when they inquired as to why

Herskowitz was no longer on the project, Hughes intimated that

Herskowitz had personal habits that interfered with his writing - a

claim Herskowitz said is unfounded. Later, the campaign put out the

word that Herskowitz had been removed for missing a deadline. Hughes

subsequently finished the book herself - it received largely critical

reviews for its self-serving qualities and lack of spontaneity or

introspection.

 

So, said Herskowitz, the best material was left on the cutting room

floor, including Bush's true feelings.

 

" He told me that as a leader, you can never admit to a mistake, "

Herskowitz said. " That was one of the keys to being a leader. "

 

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.

 

http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/headlines04/1028-01.htm

 

Not written but forwarded by Tammy