posted May 30, 2004 10:37 PM            

Was he born that way?

Adapted from the introduction to The Deluxe Election-Edition Bushisms, published by Fireside Books/Simon & Schuster. Reprinted with permission; © 2004 Jacob Weisberg.

The question I am most frequently asked about Bushisms is, "Do you really think the president of the United States is dumb?"

The short answer is yes.

The long answer is yes and no.

Quotations collected over the years in Slate may leave the impression that George W. Bush is a dimwit. Let's face it: A man who cannot talk about education without making a humiliating grammatical mistake ("The illiteracy level of our children are appalling"); who cannot keep straight the three branches of government ("It's the executive branch's job to interpret law"); who coins ridiculous words ("Hispanos," "arbolist," "subliminable," "resignate," "transformationed"); who habitually says the opposite of what he intends ("the death tax is good for people from all walks of life!") sounds like a grade-A imbecile.

And if you don't care to pursue the matter any further, that view will suffice. George W. Bush has governed, for the most part, the way any airhead might, undermining the fiscal condition of the nation, squandering the goodwill of the world after Sept. 11, and allowing huge problems (global warming, entitlement spending, AIDS) to metastasize toward catastrophe through a combination of ideology, incomprehension, and indifference. If Bush isn't exactly the moron he sounds, his synaptic misfirings offer a plausible proxy for the idiocy of his presidency.

In reality, however, there's more to it. Bush's assorted malapropisms, solecisms, gaffes, spoonerisms, and truisms tend to imply that his lack of fluency in English is tantamount to an absence of intelligence. But as we all know, the inarticulate can be shrewd, the fluent fatuous. In Bush's case, the symptoms point to a specific malady—some kind of linguistic deficit akin to dyslexia—that does not indicate a lack of mental capacity per se.

Bush also compensates with his non-verbal acumen. As he notes, "Smart comes in all kinds of different ways." The president's way is an aptitude for connecting to people through banter and physicality. He has a powerful memory for names, details, and figures that truly matter to him, such as batting averages from the 1950s. Bush also has a keen political sense, sharpened under the tutelage of Karl Rove.

What's more, calling the president a cretin absolves him of responsibility. Like Reagan, Bush avoids blame for all manner of contradictions, implausible assertions, and outright lies by appearing an amiable dunce. If he knows not what he does, blame goes to the three puppeteers, Cheney, Rove, and Rumsfeld. It also breeds sympathy. We wouldn't laugh at FDR because he couldn't walk. Is it less cruel to laugh at GWB because he can't talk? The soft bigotry of low expectations means Bush is seen to outperform by merely getting by. Finally, elitist condescension, however merited, helps cement Bush's bond to the masses.

But if "numskull" is an imprecise description of the president, it is not altogether inaccurate. Bush may not have been born stupid, but he has achieved stupidity, and now he wears it as a badge of honor. What makes mocking this president fair as well as funny is that Bush is, or at least once was, capable of learning, reading, and thinking. We know he has discipline and can work hard (at least when the goal is reducing his time for a three-mile run). Instead he chose to coast, for most of his life, on name, charm, good looks, and the easy access to capital afforded by family connections.

The most obvious expression of Bush's choice of ignorance is that, at the age of 57, he knows nothing about policy or history. After years of working as his dad's spear-chucker in Washington, he didn't understand the difference between Medicare and Medicaid, the second- and third-largest federal programs. Well into his plans for invading Iraq, Bush still couldn't get down the distinction between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, the key religious divide in a country he was about to occupy. Though he sometimes carries books for show, he either does not read them or doesn't absorb anything from them. Bush's ignorance is so transparent that many of his intimates do not bother to dispute it even in public. Consider the testimony of several who know him well.

Richard Perle, foreign policy adviser: "The first time I met Bush 43 … two things became clear. One, he didn't know very much. The other was that he had the confidence to ask questions that revealed he didn't know very much."

David Frum, former speechwriter: "Bush had a poor memory for facts and figures. … Fire a question at him about the specifics of his administration's policies, and he often appeared uncertain. Nobody would ever enroll him in a quiz show."

Laura Bush, spouse: "George is not an overly introspective person. He has good instincts, and he goes with them. He doesn't need to evaluate and reevaluate a decision. He doesn't try to overthink. He likes action."

Paul O'Neill, former treasury secretary: "The only way I can describe it is that, well, the President is like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people. There is no discernible connection."

A second, more damning aspect of Bush's mind-set is that he doesn't want to know anything in detail, however important. Since college, he has spilled with contempt for knowledge, equating learning with snobbery and making a joke of his own anti-intellectualism. ("[William F. Buckley] wrote a book at Yale; I read one," he quipped at a black-tie event.) By O'Neill's account, Bush could sit through an hourlong presentation about the state of the economy without asking a single question. ("I was bored as hell," the president shot back, ostensibly in jest.)

Closely related to this aggressive ignorance is a third feature of Bush's mentality: laziness. Again, this is a lifelong trait. Bush's college grades were mostly Cs (including a 73 in Introduction to the American Political System). At the start of one term, the star of the Yale football team spotted him in the back row during the shopping period for courses. "Hey! George Bush is in this class!" Calvin Hill shouted to his teammates. "This is the one for us!" As governor of Texas, Bush would take a long break in the middle of his short workday for a run followed by a stretch of video golf or computer solitaire.

A fourth and final quality of Bush's mind is that it does not think. The president can't tolerate debate about issues. Offered an option, he makes up his mind quickly and never reconsiders. At an elementary school, a child once asked him whether it was hard to make decisions as president. "Most of the decisions come pretty easily for me, to be frank with you." By leaping to conclusions based on what he "believes," Bush avoids contemplating even the most obvious basic contradictions: between his policy of tax cuts and reducing the deficit; between his call for a humble foreign policy based on alliances and his unilateral assertion of American power; between his support for in-vitro fertilization (which destroys embryos) and his opposition to fetal stem-cell research (because it destroys embryos).

Why would someone capable of being smart choose to be stupid? To understand, you have to look at W.'s relationship with father. This filial bond involves more tension than meets the eye. Dad was away for much of his oldest son's childhood. Little George grew up closer to his acid-tongued mother and acted out against the absent parent—through adolescent misbehavior, academic failure, dissipation, and basically not accomplishing anything at all until well into his 40s.

Dubya's youthful screw-ups and smart-aleck attitude reflect some combination of protest, plea for attention, and flailing attempt to compete. Until a decade ago, his résumé read like a send-up of his dad's. Bush senior was a star student at Andover and Phi Beta Kappa at Yale, where he was also captain of the baseball team; Junior struggled through with gentleman's C's and, though he loved baseball, couldn't make the college lineup. Père was a bomber pilot in the Pacific; fils sat out 'Nam in the Texas Air National Guard, where he lost flying privileges by not showing up. Dad drove to Texas in 1947 to get rich in the oil business and actually did; Son tried the same in 1975 and drilled dry holes for a decade. Bush the elder got elected to Congress in 1966; Shrub ran in 1978, didn't know what he was talking about, and got clobbered.

Through all this incompetent emulation runs an undercurrent of hostility. In an oft-told anecdote circa 1973, GWB—after getting wasted at a party and driving over a neighbor's trash can in Houston—challenged his dad. "I hear you're lookin' for me," W. told the chairman of the Republican National Committee. "You want to go mano a mano right here?" Some years later at a state dinner, he told the Queen of England he was being seated far away because he was the black sheep of the family.

After half a lifetime of this kind of frustration, Bush decided to straighten up. Nursing a hangover at a 40th-birthday weekend, he gave up Wild Turkey, cold turkey. With the help of Billy Graham, he put himself in the hands of a higher power and began going to church. He became obsessed with punctuality and developed a rigid routine. Thus did Prince Hal molt into an evangelical King Henry. And it worked! Putting together a deal to buy the Texas Rangers, the ne'er-do-well finally tasted success. With success, he grew closer to his father, taking on the role of family avenger. This culminated in his 1994 challenge to Texas Gov. Ann Richards, who had twitted dad at the 1988 Democratic convention*.

Curiously, this late arrival at adulthood did not involve Bush becoming in any way thoughtful. Having chosen stupidity as rebellion, he stuck with it out of conformity. The promise-keeper, reformed-alkie path he chose not only drastically curtailed personal choices he no longer wanted, it also supplied an all-encompassing order, offered guidance on policy, and prevented the need for much actual information. Bush's old answer to hard questions was, "I don't know and, who cares." His new answer was, "Wait a second while I check with Jesus."

A remaining bit of poignancy was his unresolved struggle with his father. "All I ask," he implored a reporter while running for governor in 1994, "is that for once you guys stop seeing me as the son of George Bush." In his campaigns, W. has kept his dad offstage. (In an exceptional appearance on the eve of the 2000 New Hampshire primary, 41 came onstage and called his son "this boy.") While some describe the second Bush presidency as a restoration, it is in at least equal measure a repudiation. The son's harder-edged conservatism explicitly rejects the old man's approach to such issues as abortion, taxes, and relations with Israel.

This Oedipally induced ignorance expresses itself most dangerously in Bush's handling of the war in Iraq. Dubya polished off his old man's greatest enemy, Saddam, but only by lampooning 41's accomplishment of coalition-building in the first Gulf War. Bush led the country to war on false pretenses and neglected to plan the occupation that would inevitably follow. A more knowledgeable and engaged president might have questioned the quality of the evidence about Iraq's supposed weapons programs. One who preferred to be intelligent might have asked about the possibility of an unfriendly reception. Instead, Bush rolled the dice. His budget-busting tax cuts exemplify a similar phenomenon, driven by an alternate set of ideologues.

As the president says, we misunderestimate him. He was not born stupid. He chose stupidity. Bush may look like a well-meaning dolt. On consideration, he's something far more dangerous: a dedicated fool.

Correction, May 7, 2004: This article originally misstated the date of the Democratic convention where Ann Richards twitted President George H.W. Bush. It was 1988 not 1992. Return to the corrected sentence.

--------------------------------------------

Interesting, how so many intelligent people love this man as president and yet he tends to be everything but!

This is a clear cut case on how the shrewd minds of America can set themselves up for an advancement in they're lives, by putting up a joker in the most highest places of the world!

posted May 31, 2004 12:24 AM            

These are the simple facts Ozone. People dislike John Kerry and the more they find out about Kerry, the more they dislike him. Even the dim-ocrats dislike Kerry, let alone the reasonable people. The modern dim-ocrat party is the party of extremists and even the extremists can't stand Kerry.

Even the veterans are abandoning Kerry in droves Ozone.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/5/30/152658.shtml

I know Kerry has made a big deal out of rescuing a shipmate in Vietnam but really Ozone, Kerry did nothing more than any American would be expected to do when he stuck his hand over the bow of that swiftboat and latched on to a sailor in the water. We don't normally give medals for that Ozone, we fully expect any responsible citizen to render whatever aid is necessary to save a fellow human.

If you're ever in trouble Ozone, the kind of trouble where a gang of cutthroats, thieves or robbers is beating the hell out of you, you better hope someone like the President or even me happens along who will do some ass kicking of their own and not someone like you who is willing to look the other way and leave the people of Iraq to the tender mercies of a murderous tyrant like Saddam Hussein.

It's laughable you think going after Carl Rove is going to bring the President down, or Dick Cheney, or Donald Rumsfeld, or Condie Rice.

posted May 31, 2004 12:51 AM            

You know it's kinda interesting that someone like you would mock a journalist only for the reasons that it would be for the fact that he/she is liberal,but when the going gets tough,JW gets going with another artical from the far-right conservative website Newsmax!

I guess the only thing for Americans to look at in the view of reality would be what's under Jwhop's right wing, rather then another way,what so ever!

Sorry JW,but it doesn't take me to post an artical for the world to realize that the president is a moron!

posted May 31, 2004 12:09 PM              

...and I'm also really impressed by GEORGE W BUSH's RESUME...which follows......

RESUME
GEORGE W. BUSH
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington, DC 20520

EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE:

Law Enforcement:

I was arrested in Kennebunkport, Maine, in 1976 for driving under the influence of alcohol. I pled guilty, paid a fine, and had my driver's license suspended for 30 days. My Texas driving record has been "lost" and is not available.

Military:

I joined the Texas Air National Guard and went AWOL. I refused to take a drug test or answer any questions about my drug use. By joining the Texas Air National Guard, I was able to avoid combat duty in Vietnam.

College:

I graduated from Yale University with a low C average. I was a cheerleader.

PAST WORK EXPERIENCE:

I ran for US Congress and lost. I began my career in the oil business in Midland, Texas, in 1975. I bought an oil company, but couldn't find any oil in Texas. The company went bankrupt shortly after I sold all my stock. I bought theTexas Rangers baseball team in a sweetheart deal that took land using taxpayer money.

With the help of my father and our friends in the oil industry (including Enron CEO Ken Lay), I was elected governor of Texas.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS GOVERNOR OF TEXAS:

I changed Texas pollution laws to favor power and oil companies, making Texas the most polluted state in the Union. During my tenure, Houston replaced Los Angeles as the most smog-ridden city in America.

I cut taxes and bankrupted the Texas treasury to the tune of billions in borrowed money.

I set the record for the most executions by any governor in American history.

With the help of my brother, the governor of Florida, and my father's appointments to the Supreme Court, I became President after losing by over 500,000 votes.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS PRESIDENT:

I am the first President in US history to enter office with a criminal record.

I invaded and occupied two countries at a continuing cost of over one billion dollars per week.

I spent the US surplus and effectively bankrupted the US Treasury.

I shattered the record for the largest annual deficit in US history.

I set an economic record for most private bankruptcies filed in any 12-month period.

I set the all-time record for most foreclosures in a 12-month period.

I set the all-time record for the biggest drop in the history of the US stock market.

In my first year in office, over 2 million Americans lost their jobs and that trend continues every month.

I'm proud that the members of my cabinet are the richest of any administration in US history. My "poorest Millionaire," Condoleeza Rice, has a Chevron oil tanker named after her.

I set the record for most campaign fund-raising trips by a US President.

I am the all-time US and world record-holder for receiving the most corporate campaign donations. My largest lifetime campaign contributor, and one of my best friends, Kenneth Lay, presided over the largest corporate bankruptcy fraud in US History, Enron.

My political party used Enron's private jets and corporate attorneys to assure my success with the US Supreme Court during my election decision.

I have protected my friends at Enron and Halliburton against investigation or prosecution. More time and money was spent investigating the Monica Lewinsky affair than has been spent investigating one of the biggest corporate rip-offs in history.

I presided over the biggest energy crisis in US history and refused to intervene when corruption involving the oil industry was revealed.

I presided over the highest gasoline prices in US history.

I changed the US policy to allow convicted criminals to be awarded government contracts.

I appointed more convicted criminals to administration than any President in US history.

I created the Ministry of Homeland Security, the largest bureaucracy in the history of the United States government.

I've broken more international treaties than any President in US history.

I am the first President in US history to have the United Nations remove the US from the Human Rights Commission.

I withdrew the US from the World Court of Law.

I refused to allow inspector's access to US "prisoners of war" detainees and thereby have refused to abide by the Geneva Convention.

I am the first President in history to refuse United Nations election inspectors (during the 2002 US election).
I set the record for fewest numbers of press conferences of any President since the advent of television.

I set the all-time record for most days on vacation in any one-year period.

After taking off the entire month of August, I presided over the worst security failure in US history.

I garnered the most sympathy for the US after the World Trade Center attacks and less than a year later made the US the most hated country in the world, the largest failure of diplomacy in world history.

I have set the all-time record for most people worldwide to simultaneously protest me in public venues (15 million people), shattering the record for protests against any person in the history of mankind.

I am the first President in US history to order an unprovoked, preemptive attack and the military occupation of a sovereign nation. I did so against the will of the United Nations, the majority of US citizens, and the world community.

I have cut health care benefits for war veterans and support a cut in duty benefits for active duty troops and their families in wartime.

I have cut funding for health care for the poor all over the world by permanently denying money to the United Nations Population Fund. The fund helps countries deal with reproductive and sexual health, family planning and population strategy.

With daughters of my own, I will ensure they will not have a choice in their reproductive health care, and they might have to flee the country in order to have an abortion if caught by surprise during one of their wild nights of drinking, by appointing a judge who will overturn Roe v.s. Wade.

In my State of the Union Address, I lied about our reasons for attacking Iraq and then blamed the lies on our British friends.

I am the first President in history to have a majority of Europeans (71%) view my presidency as the biggest threat to world peace and security.

I am supporting development of a nuclear "Tactical Bunker Buster," a WMD.

I have so far failed to fulfill my pledge to bring Osama Bin Laden [sic] to justice.

RECORDS AND REFERENCES:

All records of my tenure as governor of Texas are now in my father's library, sealed and unavailable for public view.

All records of SEC investigations into my insider trading and my bankrupt companies are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.

All records or minutes from meetings that I, or my Vice-president, attended regarding public energy policy are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public review.

PLEASE CONSIDER MY EXPERIENCE WHEN VOTING IN 2004.

OZONE...WITH A RESUME LIKE THIS, WE'RE GONNA HAVE TO VOTE FOR HIM...DON'TCHA THINK?

Love,
Rainbow

posted May 31, 2004 02:01 PM              

#1 Preaching to the choir doesn't get the word out.

#2 I have finally decided NOT to vote for Kerry. He is much like Gore to me. The lesser of the two evils. I do believe I will be voting for Nader again.

Luckily I don't subscribe to any particular political offiliation, else I may be offended by your "dim-ocrat" comment.

I think Bush has proved to all of us that being a Republican doesn't necessarily make you an intelligent person.

posted May 31, 2004 07:42 PM            

LibraSparkle, Nader will never win this election,so why even bother voting,for Bush anyway? More and more, I question your Liberalism.

posted May 31, 2004 08:28 PM              

I will vote for Nader because I believe he is the best candidate. I choose not to live my life in fear. I will vote my consience in the coming election.

I urge you to read the story of Abe Lincoln in Star Signs. When I read that story, I think of Ralph Nader. Just because he probably won't win doesn't mean he couldn't do amazing things for this country.

posted May 31, 2004 10:54 PM            

The only sheer confidence I feel is that tomorrow is not promised to us and we`d best be making the ultimate best of today.

Btw, which party do you place me in .

juniperb

posted May 31, 2004 11:33 PM            

People are always placing me as a Liberal and I'm constantly telling people that it is false,I just have a strong dislike for Bush all together,for the obvious reasons:

--------------------------------------------

George W. Bush
In the past, many of his detractors have dismissed him as a "lightweight." A chump. A joke. Many of them still do. And it's easy to see where they got this impression. Whenever he gives a speech, he invariably comes off sounding like some kind of ignoramus, who experiences difficulty wrapping his lips around the words that scroll across the Teleprompter. And when he has to work off-the-cuff, his folksy demeanor makes him seem more like the store manager of a Radio Shack than the President of the United States.

http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/presidents/george-w-bush/george_w_bush_turkey_shru nk.jpg

But George W. Bush is fully aware of how his enemies perceive him, and this is precisely how he wants them to react. His personality and mannerisms are actually the result of deliberate effort. This is not to say that it's all an act, but he does emphasize these elements of his personality for the benefit of the press and general public. And yet these affectations continue to be astonishingly effective; his act still manages to fool even his political opponents, who really ought to know better. After all, the basis of Bush's phenomenal political career has been people's underestimating him. As his political advisor Karl Rove said in 2002: "I can't explain why they underestimate him, but they do. Whatever the reason, I hope they keep doing it."

Dubya has managed to cultivate the look and feel of a down-home good ol' boy. He acts like your wisecracking neighbor or maybe brother-in-law. This is no small accomplishment for someone who grew up with every possible advantage: born into a family of immense wealth and political influence, attended a prestigious prep school, then Harvard and Yale. George became a millionaire in his own right at a very early age; while he was playing in Little League, the boy personally owned a million shares of his father's oil company. And yet, implausible as it may sound for someone born into such tremendous wealth and privilege, Bush somehow manages to pass for middle class.

http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/presidents/george-w-bush/george_w_bush_akimbo_cro pped.jpg

A major factor in his success is Dubya's apparent mediocrity. The man is at best a lackadaisical administrator, a "big picture" guy who delegates all of the detail work to subordinates and only wants to be bothered with final yes-no decisions. He's a weak public speaker, underprepared for debates and press conferences, clearly uncomfortable citing specific facts, figures, and sometimes even proper names. The man also appears to be congenitally undignified, evidently incapable of going ten minutes without his trademark smirk or a full-blown **** -eating grin, regardless of the situation.

All of which combines to make him seem much dumber than most elected officials. Even many of his most ardent supporters presume that Dubya possesses an I.Q. bordering on 100. But -- counterintuitive as it may seem -- this idea is actually comforting to his political base. These are people who would like nothing more than to believe that the problems of governance are easily solvable, if only we can somehow avoid overthinking them. One of Bush's biographers put it this way:

"There is a group of people who feel that '[the President of the United States should] be smarter than I am on just about every issue I can think of.' But there is also a large group of people who don't feel that way. They want the President, in this modern era, to be something they can relate to. Someone who they don't think is intellectually intimidating. Someone who isn't really lost in the big fog of intellectual ideas and the world of words."
Ultimately, these voters are working from a gut feeling. Their assumption is that all we really need to clean up the mess in Washington is somebody possessing the courage of his convictions, and a healthy appetite for some old-fashioned hard work. And although neither of those criteria actually applies to George W. Bush, he manages to fake them well enough.

As a young man, George discovered that he was perfectly suited to the "good old boy" network. He was funny, outgoing, and enjoyed socializing. He was good at telling jokes, and he had a knack for remembering people's names. So when he got to Yale, Bush joined Delta Kappa Epsilon, an Animal House-style fraternity known for hard partying. In time he became DKE's president. He was also inducted into the secret society Skull and Bones, following in the footsteps of both his father (Yale class of '48) and grandfather (class of '17).

http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/presidents/george-w-bush/george_w_bush_yale.jpg

Bush had been admitted with an SAT score of 1206 (566 verbal, 640 math) which was low for Yale but perfectly respectable anywhere else. This would correlate to an approximate I.Q. of 129. In fact, a 1300 on the SAT would have been sufficient to join MENSA. So 1206 is a far cry from stupid.

Nevertheless, many of Bush's critics have become fixated on his mediocre class ranking at college, since he wound up somewhere below the middle of the pack. They take this as evidence of his low-to-moderate intelligence. In doing so, they fail to recognize that we're talking about Yale here, not some diploma mill. Mediocre at Yale is pretty damn good; it requires brains. More importantly, they're assuming that George was working hard to get on the Dean's List. And that's just not likely.

A Newsweek profile observed that young George "seems to have majored in beer drinking at the Deke House." Whenever he had some free time, Bush was spending it getting drunk and/or laid, when he wasn't busy playing competitive sports, or doing whatever it is they do in those twice-weekly meetings at Skull and Bones.

And besides, George had become acclimated to simply coasting through life. Experience taught him that there was no problem that couldn't be solved with a little money, or a couple of well-placed phone calls from his father George HW Bush. So why should he kill himself to get straight A's? It was just completely unnecessary. The basis for this outlook on life was never illustrated more clearly than when George was confronted with the specter of the Vietnam War.

http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/presidents/george-w-bush/george_w_bush_epaulet_sh runk.jpg

After Yale, Bush successfully dodged the draft by volunteering for a six-year hitch in the Texas Air National Guard. This required some serious string-pulling, but the Bushes had lots of friends in high places. Evidently hoping to avoid winding up in Southeast Asia, on his application George checked the box labeled do not volunteer under the heading "overseas assignment."

Bush was immediately accepted into the Guard, where he got promoted in record time. He was also fast-tracked into the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron, which involved skipping over a waiting list full of qualified applicants. And then for four years he did as little work as possible, just the minimum required to remain in the unit, which was based in Houston.

Then in May 1972, with two years left on his enlistment, George headed off to Alabama and requested reassignment to an inactive postal unit there. This request was a little odd for an Air National Guardsman, seeing that the outfit had no airplanes. Bush's request was denied. But for some reason he decided to stick around Alabama for a few months and didn't return to his Houston post until he was required to receive an annual physical.

Then, for some reason, Bush was grounded by his commander for "his failure to accomplish annual medical examination." Either he never showed up, or he flunked it. We don't know for certain because his military records are sealed, and can only be made public with the subject's assent. Bush has never chosen to make them available.

The most plausible theory is that George ran into a problem with the compulsory drug testing. If he did show up for the physical, maybe he flunked the urinalysis. If he didn't show up, maybe it was out of fear of what the drug test would reveal. Whatever the reason, Bush never flew again. And he still had another two years to go on his enlistment. So he just sat around. In fact it's unclear exactly what, if anything, he did during those two remaining years. The only thing we know for sure: whatever it was involved neither flying planes nor getting shipped off to Vietnam.

The Party Animal
After he just sort of wandered away from military service, Bush's partying lifestyle resumed with a vengeance and it continued to cause him trouble. According to a friend, he and George spent a lot of their free time boozing it up at parties:

"We did drink... we drank what people gave us to drink... And if we went to a party and they were serving liquor, then we would drink it, and we would drink it until it was gone."
Sometime around Christmas in 1972, George drove home drunk with his teenaged brother Marvin and plowed into a neighbor's garbage can. When daddy said he wanted to have a talk, George tried to pick a fight with his old man, challenging him to go a few rounds "mano a mano" outside.

http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/presidents/george-w-bush/gw_bush.jpg

As Bush well knew, there's really no better place for a drinking man than college. So that's where George headed next. In 1973 he enrolled in Harvard Business School and spent the next two years earning his MBA. He spoke fondly of the institution in his 1999 autobiography, declaring: "Harvard gave me the tools and the vocabulary of the business world."

http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/presidents/george-w-bush/george_w_bush_harvard.jpg

In 1974, George spent Superbowl Sunday at a party hosted by Hunter S. Thompson. When asked decades later if he remembered whether Bush had used any drugs at his party, Thompson replied:

"I can't be expected to remember what every drug-addled yuppie hanger-oner who wanted to get close to me during a football game twenty-five years ago digested. There were so many dope fiends milling about, I don't remember what some Yalie named Bush, whose father was a factotum in the Nixon Administration, was doing. But he strikes me as the sort of person I would have thrown out of the room. A rich, beer-drunk yahoo with a big allowance who passes out in your bathtub. ... I don't want to become the Deep Drug Throat. ... I won't do it."
Bush continued his life of hard drinking and was finally arrested for drunk driving in October 1976, this time with his teenaged sister Dorothy in the car. But it would be another decade before he finally realized that alcohol was a problem for him.

Despite episodes like these, Bush continued abusing alcohol for another decade before finally quitting cold turkey in 1986. But even though he acknowledges that he could never seem to stop after just one drink, George has always maintained that his problem was nothing more than simple overindulgence:

"I don't think I was clinically an alcoholic; I didn't have the genuine addiction. I don't know why I drank. I liked to drink, I guess."
Years later, Bush reflected on his substance abuse days for a New York Times reporter:

"The signal we ought to send to our children is that in spite of what happened in the '60s and '70s, we have learned some lessons. And the lessons ought to be: don't be using drugs and alcohol."
Today Bush regrets ever drinking, cannot trust himself with any amount of alcohol, and hoped in vain that his children would avoid it. But don't call him an alcoholic, particularly in front of his kids. Evidently Bush believes that an effective way of discouraging young people from abusing drugs or alcohol is to stonewall whenever the topic comes up. A few years ago he advocated this technique to a Newsweek reporter:

"I wouldn't tell your kids that you smoked pot unless you want 'em to smoke pot. I think it's important for leaders, and parents, not to send mixed signals. I don't want some kid saying, 'Well, Governor Bush tried it.'"
The man certainly practices what he preaches. Bush categorically refuses to answer questions about allegations of past drug abuse, especially persistent rumors about him having used cocaine.

The Brainiac
In 1978, George made a halfhearted stab at politics when he ran for an open Congressional seat. Maybe he didn't know what else to do, other than try to follow in daddy's footsteps. But Bush's heart wasn't really in it. Ultimately, it just didn't matter to him whether he would represent West Texas in the House of Representatives. And although he liked campaigning and showed an aptitude for it, his Democratic opponent mopped the floor with him.
Bush's rookie mistakes didn't help. At a candidate forum early on in the race, Bush told the crowd: "Today is the first time I've been on a real farm." That didn't exactly impress the rural voters. And his decision to show himself jogging around a track in one of his television spots only underscored how out-of-touch he was with the common man. Almost nobody jogged in West Texas.

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And in the debates, Bush tried his best to come off sounding smart and serious. He made references to complicated economic policies. Difficult as it may be to believe now, many voters in the 1978 campaign were turned off by George W. Bush's overt intelligence. They figured him for some kind of brainiac.

George's opponent pegged him immediately as a spoiled rich kid from New England. A faux Texan. A Yankee carpetbagger. In contrast, the Democrat assumed the role of the earnest-but-friendly local boy. He constantly harped on George's elitist upbringing, as evident in this radio ad:

"In 1961, when Kent Hance graduated from Dimmitt High School in the 19th congressional district, his opponent George W. Bush was attending Andover Academy in Massachusetts. In 1965, when Kent Hance graduated from Texas Tech, his opponent was at Yale University. And while Kent Hance graduated from University of Texas Law School, his opponent -- get this, folks -- was attending Harvard."
The Democrat began telling crowds: "Yale and Harvard don't prepare you as well for running for the 19th Congressional district as Texas Tech does." It really got to Bush. He complained to a local newspaper about being pigeonholed as the outsider:

"We've been attacked for where I was born, for who my family is, and where my money has come from. I don't think that's fair."
Although he was gaining on the Democrat near the end, Bush lost the race. But the experience taught him everything he would someday need to mount an effective campaign. He discovered that voters aren't looking the smartest candidate, or the guy with the most experience. They want somebody who makes them comfortable. Somebody who's one of them. A regular guy.

He filed away all of that information in his head, and then turned to business.

George At Work
People like to assume that George got rich from oil speculation. It's a simpler and more inspiring explanation than the truth. He did launch an oil business, Arbusto Energy, in 1978. But it was a financial disaster from the very beginning and never turned a profit. Fortuitously, it got swallowed up in a 1982 merger with another energy company named Spectrum 7. The merger was engineered by a couple of Bush family friends. For some reason they opted to rescue the son of the Vice President of the United States from his own financial catastrophe and make him the CEO of the merged entity.
Four years later, Spectrum 7 was itself floundering underneath $3 million in debt. Which is when Harken Energy, yet another company run by a family friend, came in and bailed out Bush's enterprise a second time. George was given a fat wad of stock options and a $120,000 annual salary, but no actual work to do.

Technically, Bush's official capacity was as a member of the company's audit committee, charged with overseeing the major deals and transactions to ensure that everything was on the up-and-up. But as the son of the U.S. President, Bush's true function was to act as a lure for investment money. His task was schmoozing business contacts and outside investors, interested in converting cash into a friendly acquaintanceship with the President's offspring. And he was good at it. Hi, my name is George Jr. My Daddy lives in the White House. Let me show you around.

This investment capital really helped prop up Harken as it was secretly bleeding money out of every orifice. As a matter of fact, Harken was hiding massive debts through shell companies and byzantine practices masterminded by the now-infamous accounting firm of Arthur Anderson. One such deal was the putative "sale" of Aloha Petroleum to Intercontinental Mining and Resources Ltd in 1989. In actuality, IMR Ltd was just another company owned by three members of Harken's board. And the terms of the sale were extremely sketchy: although IMR agreed to pay an exorbitant $12 million for Aloha Petroleum, they wouldn't be required to make any payments for three years. Nevertheless, Harken immediately booked an $8 million profit.

The technical term for that is fraud. But you can't really blame George for that, can you? It wasn't like he was serving on the corporation's audit committee or anything... oh wait, he was. In fact, Bush signed off on the Aloha Petroleum deal. This deception helped maintain the illusion that Harken was -- what's the word? -- solvent for several months after it had actually run out of money.

A few weeks before the house of cards finally came tumbling down, Bush engaged in a little insider trading and sold off $848,560 in Harken stock. Then he waited eight months to notify the SEC of his sale. After Harken's stock price fell into the toilet, the SEC finally figured out something was wrong and began poking around. At which point, George offered up this lame excuse:

"In the corporate world, sometimes things aren't exactly black and white when it comes to accounting procedures."
But George's daddy was still President of the United States, and the SEC headed by Bush family friends, so they took no action.

Baseball
Sometime during Harken's fraud-ridden implosion, George realized that his true calling wasn't managing the business end of things, but rather being its public face. In April 1989, Bush invested $500,000 of borrowed money in the Texas Rangers. In return, he received an annual salary of approximately $200,000 and the title of Managing General Partner. It meant that he represented the investors, but everybody pretty much treated him as though he were the sole owner.

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Unlike some major-league baseball owners, Bush avoided day-to-day operations. He stayed out of personnel and staffing issues. He didn't make strategy. He didn't handle player trades. All of that stuff was left to other people. He attended the games, arranged for promotional events, even had baseball cards printed up with his own face on them. The team's general manager described Bush's role this way:

"George was the front man. George was the guy that you met when you wanted to be introduced to Ranger baseball. He was the spokesperson. He dealt with the media, he dealt with the fans, and it was obvious to us right from the start that that's what he was made for... George chose to sit right next to the dugout, with the fans, every day... I mean, it's 100 degrees down there. He's there from before the game, half an hour before the game, didn't leave his seat except to go to the bathroom, cheering for the ball club, signing autographs, listening to hecklers, accepting well-wishes from season-ticket customers."
George absolutely loved it. And why not? It was the ultimate dream job, it was business but it was also fun. Then somebody suggested that he run for governor. But Bush was unwilling to give up baseball. In fact, the only ambition he had was to someday become league commissioner. When the presiding commissioner suddenly resigned, George called him to see if he could get his support to assume the post. When the man suggested that Bush pursue politics, George replied: "I think I'd rather be commissioner than governor."

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While he lobbied franchise owners for support, Republican party officials kept trying to convince Bush that he ought to run for office. George talked it over with one of his oldest friends, Roland Betts. When Bush was Yale chapter president of Delta Kappa Epsilon, Betts served as DKE's rush chairman. And they had both been investors in Spectrum 7. Now they were both partners in the Texas Rangers. According to the book Fortunate Son, Bush confided to his friend:

"You know, I could run for governor but I'm basically a media creation. I've never done anything. I've worked for my dad. I worked in the oil business. But that's not the kind of profile you have to have to get elected to public office."
Several months later, it become clear that somebody else was going to become baseball commissioner. So he finally acquiesced to running for governor.

Politics, Again
Bush was determined that this wouldn't be a repeat of his failed Congressional bid. And he believed that he had solved the problems that plagued him in 1978. Even though he was still a wealthy, well-connected, white guy with an Ivy League education, Bush was certain that voters would relate to him the way they couldn't before.

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He was still rich, but now he could pretend to have made his fortune wildcatting for oil. And at least he spent his money like a Texan. He owned a ranch of sorts outside the town of Crawford, although it was actually more weekend getaway than working ranch... nevertheless it fit the image. Whereas before Bush had been typecast as the Rich Foreigner from New England, he now had roots in the community. He would sell himself as a Texas tycoon, a family man with a wife and kids, and coated with a thick patina of working-class sensibilities.

And this time George put into practice the lesson he learned from his 1978 campaign. He knew it was both unnecessary and counterproductive to project an image of extraordinary intelligence. It was all about likeability. So Dubya did just enough homework to hold his own in the debates and otherwise just winged it. His strategy hinged on using his personal charisma to compensate for any intellectual failings.

Bush won, of course, making him the second most powerful elected official in the state of Texas. (Technically, the Lieutenant Governor wields more actual power. The Governor is just the guy whose face is in all the newspapers.) At which point he finally had to quit his job as managing partner of the Texas Rangers. And although he moved into the governor's mansion, his heart remained with the ball club. As one Texas journalist recalled:

"In the governor's office, he had a whole set of cabinets of autographed baseballs. It's kinda hard to find a book in the office, but there was always baseball and that would always make for conversation. And if he came into this office right now, he'd very quickly give you a nickname ... mine was 'Sammy Sosa' -- a player that he actually traded away when he was in Texas."
When his partners finally sold the Rangers in June 1998, George's percentage was worth $14.9 million. Not bad for a $600,000 total investment. When the deal was announced, Dubya boasted to a local newspaper: "I think when it is all said and done, I will have made more money than I ever dreamed I would make." Finally all that pennypinching paid off.

The Road to the White House
He seemed like a longshot. Six years as Governor of Texas. Nobody believed that he would even win his party's nomination. After all, he was up against a slew of distinguished candidates with far more experience. The early money was on Senator John McCain, an actual Vietnam vet who'd spent five and a half years in a Viet Cong POW camp.

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But the polls and the focus groups didn't lie: Dubya was preferred by the Republican party faithful. He was a born-again Christian, pretty much the ideal qualification you need to win the Bible belt. And his relative inexperience turned into an advantage when he started pushing the ridiculous idea that he was a Washington outsider. He tried to exploit that fiction to deflect accusations that he had a low I.Q.:

"I think it comes from a certain sense of elitism in this country that says if you haven't spent your entire adult life in Washington, you can't possibly be smart enough to be President."
The more he got picked on about his intelligence or his brief record of serving in public office, George began comparing himself to the greatest human being of the 20th century (as far as Republicans are concerned):

"I remember what they did to Ronald Reagan. They belittled him and said, 'Oh, he can't possibly be smart enough to be President. He is simply an actor.' The man turned out to be a great President."
But just in case any supporters were still harboring doubts, Bush selected Dick Cheney as running mate after he won the nomination. Cheney had a long career in Washington. He served in the Nixon and Ford administrations, spent the '80s in the House of Representatives, and was Secretary of Defense for Dubya's pop. In fact, the press even dubbed Cheney "Mr. Experience."

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Regardless of Cheney's qualifications, world leaders -- especially the Europeans -- were flabbergasted by the Republican party's nominee for President. George was not exactly what you would call well-traveled. Campaign staffers claimed that he had taken "more than a dozen" trips outside the U.S., although they admitted that the vague figure included "many, many" trips to Mexico and Canada.

Bush made a month-long excursion to China while his father was stationed there, which the New York Times summed up as "trying to date Chinese women (unsuccessfully) during a visit to Beijing in 1975." He had visited Israel and Egypt with the National Governors Association, and also the African country of Gambia. Later on in the campaign, Bush staffers claimed that he has also visited England, Scotland, and Italy, as well as vacationed in France and Bermuda. This was not very impressive to the people of Europe, who have to cross international borders just to take their kids to Legoland.

Which is why Condoleezza Rice was assigned to Bush, to tutor him in the subtleties of foreign relations and world geography. Even so, things continued to get worse on the campaign trail. He referred to the citizens of Greece as "Grecians" and could not name the Prime Minister of India on two nonconsecutive occasions. When a journalist from Slovakia asked what the candidate knew about his country, Dubya replied:

"The only thing I know about Slovakia is what I learned first-hand from your foreign minister, who came to Texas."
Unfortunately, that leader was actually Janez Drnovsek, the prime minister of Slovenia, not Slovakia. Close but no cigar. Later, in a television interview with Boston NBC affiliate WHDH, George got in way over his head when the reporter started needling him on details. He ended up sounding like he hadn't quite finished reading through the whole pile of briefing papers yet:

GOVERNOR BUSH: The new Pakistani General, he's just been elected -- not elected, this guy took over office. It appears this guy is going to bring stability to the country and I think that's good news for the subcontinent.
JOURNALIST: And you can name him?
GOVERNOR BUSH: General... I can name the general.
JOURNALIST: And it's...?
GOVERNOR BUSH: "General."
JOURNALIST: And the Prime Minister of India?
GOVERNOR BUSH: The new Prime Minister of India is... [pause] No.

Immediately, you know what Bush is thinking: What the hell is this? Suddenly it's time to regurgitate a bunch of names that nobody's ever heard of? Book knowledge has got nothing to do with real leadership. But when Bush tried to turn the tables on the little smartass, it didn't go well:

GOVERNOR BUSH: Can you name the Foreign Minister of Mexico?
JOURNALIST: No sir, but I would say to that: I'm not running for President.

Many people mistook episodes like this as indications of Dubya's inability to do his homework. Critics charged that he obviously possessed subnormal intelligence and/or a diminutive attention span and/or a crucial misunderstanding of what it takes to be President. Once again, the underlying problem here is the assumption that Bush believed that the Foreign Leaders of the World game was an important factor for voters. And Bush knew it wasn't. So he didn't waste his time trying to memorize a long list of names that nobody really cared about. The average person isn't a policy wonk; they couldn't name the new Prime Minister of India, and they didn't care if George could either.

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Then people started asking themselves whether George's experience in Texas was really sufficient to prepare him for the Oval Office. As governor, Dubya had envisioned the role of the chief executive as being the guy with the final say. Bush didn't propose policies. He didn't research anything. His staff would bring a policy issue to his attention, narrowed down to two competing options. Then they would deliver a five-minute oral argument for each sides and tell the governor which alternative they supported. And then he would make the either-or decision, right on the spot. This is how he ran things.

During one of the debates with Vice President Al Gore, Bush was given a hypothetical situation:

MODERATOR: The stock market could take a tumble. There could be a failure of a major financial institution. What is your general attitude toward government intervention in such events?
GOVERNOR BUSH: Well, it depends, obviously. But what I would do, first and foremost, is I would get in touch with the Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, to find out all the facts and all the circumstances. I would have my Secretary of Treasury be in touch with the financial centers, not only here, but at home. I would make sure that key members of Congress were called in to discuss the gravity of the situation. And I would come up with a game plan to deal with it.
That's what governors end up doing. We end up being problem-solvers. We come up with practical, common-sense solutions for problems that we're confronted with.

And, in this case, in case of a financial crisis, I would gather all the facts before I made the decision as to what the government ought or ought not to do.

This concept of the chief executive being the guy who gathers the brain trust whenever something goes haywire is illustrative of Bush's philosophy of government. It should be reactive, not active. Your typical liberal might respond with something like, "I intend to hold daily meetings on the state of the economy, where we track exactly this kind of thing and take measures the minute they're needed." But Bush believes that government should do as little as possible. It's supposed to handle major crises but otherwise stay out of everyone's hair.

That was pretty easy to do as governor. Running Texas isn't really a full-time job. When Bush kept bringing up his legislative successes as governor, we were supposed to be impressed. It's kind of anticlimactic when you learn that the Texas legislature only meets for 140 days, and even then they only hold a session every other year. Otherwise they're on hiatus. That really tends to lighten the workload. Governor Bush's typical workday included a two-hour afternoon break for napping, exercise, or playing video games.

The Election
In October, George's brother Jeb started making public declarations. Coincidentally enough, Jeb also happened to be governor of a southern state. And he began making predictions that would later fuel many a conspiracy theory. Jeb's exact words were: "I told my brother we are going to take Florida." And take it they did.
Florida ****** things up for everybody. There the vote margin between Bush and Gore was much smaller than the inherent margin of error, making it impossible to say definitively who had actually "won" the state. But the election laws had made no provision for such a situation, so the final outcome was left in the hands of Republican party apparatchiks. And since Bush was ahead of Gore by a pussy hair, the election officials appointed by brother Jeb made every effort to declare the contest over before the Democrats could do anything to change it.

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Since Bush had already been declared the winner, even if only provisionally, there was no way in hell that the Republicans were willing to roll the dice again. There was just no possible upside, only downside. In contrast, the Democrats had no possible downside in another roll of the dice, so they insisted on recounts. Legal battles raged for weeks. The Florida state Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Democrats, but the U.S. Supreme Court overruled them in a 5-4 decision. Thus the recounts were halted, Gore conceded, and Bush was declared the winner.

In the final tally, Bush won by garnering 50.5% of the Electoral College votes. That's pretty slim. And the popular vote spread was, uh, even slimmer. He beat Gore by a measly -0.51%, meaning that 540,520 more voters actually chose Gore over Bush. This negative margin of victory has only one precedent: the 1876 election of Rutherford B. Hayes, who received 200,000 votes fewer than his opponent. When a congressional commission selected Hayes, voters gave him the nickname "Rutherfraud."

During the transition, Dubya delegated the job of Cabinet interviews and selections to Cheney and headed back to his ranch in Crawford. There he had more important things to attend to, such as... well, it's actually kind of hard to imagine something more important than selecting your Cabinet. But let's just ignore that.

Maybe the Democrats were expecting too much. During the campaign, Bush had pledged to restore civility and meaningful bipartisanship to the governance of the nation. So they probably figured that it would only be fitting for Dubya to acknowledge his razor-thin mandate by selecting at least a handful of Democrats to serve in high-ranking Cabinet positions. Instead, he appointed exactly one -- Norman Mineta, former Commerce secretary under Clinton, now the Secretary of Transportation. Very inspiring.

Bush also nominated some diehard conservatives to other important posts, including John Ashcroft for Attorney General. Ashcroft was no friend to liberal causes. The man was a born-again Christian who held extremely puritanical views toward most everything: pornography, abortion, the drug war... Plus, he was just nuts. Evidently he believes that calico cats are in league with the Devil. And he thinks it's worthwhile to cover up Greco-Roman statuary in the Justice Department building so that he doesn't have to look at a naked breast on his way to work.

When asked about his pathetic nod toward bipartisanship, especially given the circumstances of the election, Bush seemed to indicate that appointing the lone Democrat was a truly magnanimous gesture:

"I believe the reason I'm standing here is because of the agenda I articulated during the course of the campaign, and I intend to take that agenda, that I tried to spell out as clearly as I could to the American people, to the halls of Congress."
Yeah, it could have been that, or maybe he was standing there as a result of the electoral equivalent of a coin toss. It was one of those.

Dubya's close friend, Kenny Boy
One of the very first things the administration did was convene a series of meetings with a bunch of high-level industry representatives to get their input on a new national energy policy. One key participant was Enron Corporation, a company with very long ties to George W. Bush and extremely well-represented in his administration. The Texas energy company's CEO, Ken Lay, had actually taken part in the transition process, helping to select members for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the government oversight board which regulates the energy industry. Also, several Enron officers wound up with cabinet-level positions, as well as appointments to less visible posts in his administration.

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Bush and Enron and Ken Lay go way back. In addition to $113,800 for his Presidential campaign, the company and its CEO contributed a total of $146,500 to Bush's 1994 gubernatorial campaign. Covering their bases, they also gave a piddling $19,500 to the incumbent, Democrat Ann Richards. After the Enron scandal hit the fan, Bush attempted to mislead people into believing that he never had any particularly close relationship with Lay. The way Dubya explained it, Kenny Boy "was a supporter of Ann Richards in my run in 1994" who he barely even remembered meeting. Later somebody dug up a special birthday greeting that Governor Bush had mailed to Kenny Boy in 1997:

Dear Ken:
One of the sad things about old friends is that they seem to be getting older -- just like you!

55 years old. Wow! That is really old.

Thank goodness you have such a young, beautiful wife.

Laura and I value our friendship with you. Best wishes to Linda, your family, and friends.

Your younger friend,

George W. Bush

So when George claimed to have nothing but hazy recollections of Mr. Lay, he wasn't exactly being forthright. Or loyal, for that matter. But that's just what happens when one of your closest friends turns out to be a crook.

War on Terror
Heading into August 2001, Bush spent less than two-thirds of his days actually working. Then the White House staff announced that he was about to head off to Crawford for a 31-day vacation. It would have been the single longest holiday in Presidential history, but after the news media started sharing this fact with the public, Dubya's people scaled it back by a week so he wouldn't take the record from President Richard Nixon (30 consecutive days).
It was on August 6, 2001 that Bush received a top-secret briefing memo describing various attempts by al Qaeda to bring their jihad to America. The paper was titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." Which is good. At least they were thinking about it. One month later, the World Trade Center attacks caused an immediate shuffling of national priorities. What had been a back-burner problem in August was now America's exclusive focus.

After the U.S. bombed the **** out of Afghanistan and routed the Taliban, the White House started making noises about the need to clean house in the Middle East.

War with Iraq
Dubya had actually been planning to go after Saddam Hussein for years. As a matter of fact, almost two years before the Pentagon/WTC attacks, George gave an interview to the BBC in November 1999 which laid out his plans for his father's antagonist during the Gulf War:

REPORTER: Would Saddam Hussein outlive a second President Bush?
GOVERNOR BUSH: [Laughs] Very good question. Uh, I think the interesting thing -- [laughs] -- um, uh -- Saddam Hussein, uh -- really did last longer than anybody envisioned. He did.
REPORTER: Including your father.
GOVERNOR BUSH: Including my father, absolutely right. [...] No one envisioned Saddam, at least at that point in history, no one envisioned him still standing. It's time to finish the task.

Aside from providing a convenient pretext, the invasion had little or nothing to do with the 9-11 attacks. Bush's motive was strictly personal. Saddam Hussein had attempted to assassinate his father. Or, as he put it: "After all, this is the guy that tried to kill my dad at one time."

at present
Now that Iraq has been conquered and everybody's forgotten about the administration's ties to the Enron scandal, life in Washington has returned to normal. Bush is spending more and more time on his ranch in Crawford while Vice President Cheney and others manage day-to-day operations.
And although Dubya is gearing up for the 2004 campaign cycle, you can bet he's spending more and more time thinking about how he's going to snag the commissioner's post in major league baseball. Now there's a job a guy could really sink his teeth into.

Timeline
6 Jul 1946 George W Bush born, New Haven CT.
1968 Initiated into Skull and Bones.
1968 B.A. History, Yale University.
1975 MBA, Business Administration, Harvard.
4 Sep 1976 George W Bush is arrested in Kennebunkport, Maine for driving with a blood-alcohol level of 0.10 percent. He pays the $150 fine and has his driving privileges suspended for two years. A Bush spokesman acknowledges this is Bush's third arrest, but does not elaborate further. However, a two year suspension of driving privileges indicates a previous DUI arrest, particularly as early as 1976 when drunk driving did not have great stigma it does now (and when even now, a first-arrest for DUI would only garner a 90 day driving suspension.) Years later, during Bush's 2000 campaign for President, a WPXT-TV reporter from Portland, Maine uncovers this arrest record just one week prior to election day. It is also revealed that Bush's V.P. candidate, Dick Cheney, had arrests for drunken driving in 1962 and 1963.
26 Jul 1977 Noelle Lucila Bush born, to Jeb and Columba Bush. She is the niece of George W Bush.
5 Nov 1977 George W. Bush and librarian Laura Welch marry, Midland TX.
25 Nov 1981 Twins, Barbara and Jenna, born.
6 Jul 1986 George W Bush gives up alcohol on his 40th birthday. As he explains it later to friends, Laura had given him an ultimatum: "It's me or the bottle."
2 Dec 1999 During a debate in New Hampshire, presidential candidate George W Bush declares: "If I found in any way, shape or form that he (Saddam Hussein) was developing weapons of mass destruction, I'd take 'em out. I'm surprised he's still there." Asked if that meant he would overthrow Saddam, Bush clarified: "The weapons of mass destruction."
11 Jan 2000 George W Bush, making an indisputable statement of fact: "Rarely is the question asked: 'Is our children learning?'"
12 Mar 2000 George W Bush and his wife Laura are photographed with Sami Al-Arian, during a campaign stop at the Florida Strawberry Festival.
31 May 2000 An introspective George W Bush: "When I'm talking about -- when I'm talking about myself, and when he's talking about myself, all of us are talking about me."
Aug 2000 George W Bush: "I don't know whether I'm going to win or not. I think I am. I do know I'm ready for the job. And, if not, that's just the way it goes."
4 Sep 2000 During a campaign stop in Naperville, Illinois, Presidential candidate George W Bush turns to running mate Dick Cheney and says, "There's Adam Clymer, major league ******* from the New York Times." Cheney responds, "Oh yeah, he is, big-time." Unbeknownst to the men, their comments are transmitted clearly to the television news feed. Rather than offer a mea culpa to Clymer, Bush later issues this non-apology: "I regret that a private comment I made to the vice-presidential candidate made it onto the public airwaves. I regret everybody heard what I said."
29 Sep 2000 George W Bush: "I know the human being and the fish can coexist peacefully."
3 Oct 2000 George W Bush: "There's a huge trust. I see it all the time when people come up to me and say, 'I don't want you to let me down again.'"
4 Oct 2000 George W Bush: "I think if you know what you believe, it makes it a lot easier to answer questions. I can't answer your question."
18 Oct 2000 George W Bush: "Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream."
2 Nov 2000 "There's a report out tonight that 24-years ago I was apprehended in Kennebunkport, Maine, for a DUI. That's an accurate story. I'm not proud of that. I oftentimes said that years ago I made some mistakes. I occasionally drank too much and I did on that night. I was pulled over. I admitted to the policeman that I had been drinking. I paid a fine. And I regret that it happened. But it did. I've learned my lesson." Note that Bush, as Governor of Texas, subsequently signed zero tolerance drunk driving legislation, effectively prohibiting others from "learning their lesson" as he did.
Dec 2000 thefirsttwins.com launched.
18 Dec 2000 George W Bush, still waiting on the Florida recount: "If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier... just so long as I'm the dictator."
22 Feb 2001 During his first press conference, President George W Bush declares: "The Secretary of State is going to go listen to our allies as to how best to effect a policy, the primary goal of which will be to say to Saddam Hussein: we won't tolerate you developing weapons of mass destruction and we expect you to leave your neighbors alone."
17 Jun 2001 Japanese Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka returns to German Town High School in Philadelphia, where she studied for two years as a high school student. During a conversation with her former classmates, Tanaka gives her concise assessment of President George W Bush: "He is totally an ******* ."
7 Aug 2001 President George W Bush declares: "He's (Saddam Hussein) been a menace forever, and we will do -- he needs to open his country up for inspection, so we can see whether or not he's developing weapons of mass destruction."
13 Jan 2002 While watching a football game on TV, President George W Bush chokes on a pretzel and briefly loses consciousness in his White House bedroom.
19 May 2002 "Do you have blacks too?" Question posed by Bush to Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso. Der Spiegel, also quoted in The New Republic on June 10.
Aug 2002 During an interview with journalist-author Bob Woodard, President George W Bush declares: "I loathe Kim Jong Il. I've got a visceral reaction to this guy, because he is starving his people. And I have seen intelligence of these prison camps -- they're huge -- that he uses to break up families and to torture people. It appalls me."
17 Sep 2002 George W Bush: "There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee -- that says, fool me once, shame on... shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again."
26 Sep 2002 President George W Bush explains to a Texas audience that although Saddam Hussein poses a threat to many countries, America has first dibs. "There's no doubt his hatred is mainly directed at us. There's no doubt he can't stand us. After all, this is the guy that tried to kill my dad at one time."
7 Oct 2002 "We need an energy bill that encourages consumption." The New Republic
7 Oct 2002 During a speech in Cincinnati, President George W Bush declares: "Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists."
14 Oct 2002 During a speech in Dearborn, Michigan, President George W Bush declares that Saddam Hussein maintains active ties to al Qaeda: "This is a man that we know has had connections with al Qaeda. This is a man who, in my judgment, would like to use al Qaeda as a forward army."
7 Nov 2002 During a press conference, President George W Bush declares: "Some people say, 'Oh, we must leave Saddam alone, otherwise, if we did something against him, he might attack us.' Well, if we don't do something he might attack us, and he might attack us with a more serious weapon. The man is a threat... He's a threat because he is dealing with al Qaeda... And we're going to deal with him."
27 Nov 2002 President George W Bush appoints Henry Kissinger to head the national commission investigating the World Trade Center attacks of 9-11. Kissinger is later forced to withdraw once it is realized exactly how much conflict of interest he has accumulated in the last several years of consultation work.
8 Feb 2003 During a radio address, President George W Bush declares: "We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons - the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have."
6 Mar 2003 During his second press conference in two years, President George W Bush declares: "Saddam Hussein and his weapons are a direct threat to this country, to our people, and to all free people.... I will not leave the American people at the mercy of the Iraqi dictator and his weapons."
17 Mar 2003 During an address to the nation, President George W Bush declares: "We cannot live under the threat of blackmail. The terrorist threat to America and the world will be diminished the moment that Saddam Hussein is disarmed."
17 Mar 2003 During an address to the nation, President George W Bush declares: "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."
19 Mar 2003 During an address to the nation, President George W Bush declares: "The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder."
10 Apr 2003 In a message to the Iraqi people, President George W Bush declares: "The goals of our coalition are clear and limited. We will end a brutal regime, whose aggression and weapons of mass destruction make it a unique threat to the world."
24 Apr 2003 President George W Bush declares: "We are learning more as we interrogate or have discussions with Iraqi scientists and people within the Iraqi structure, that perhaps he destroyed some, perhaps he dispersed some. And so we will find them."
30 May 2003 President George W Bush remarks on Polish TV: "We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories... we’ve so far discovered two. And we’ll find more weapons as time goes on. But for those who say we haven’t found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they’re wrong, we found them."
17 Sep 2003 President George W Bush: "No, we've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th."
7 Oct 2003 President George W Bush, regarding the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity to Robert Novak: "I don't know if we're going to find out the senior administration official. I don't have any idea."
9 Oct 2003 G. Gordon Liddy on President George W Bush's attitude toward the Valerie Plame scandal: "I don't think he wants to find out who did the leaking."
14 Oct 2003 According to a story in the Philadelphia Inquirer quoting an unnamed senior administration official, President George W Bush tells his senior aides that he "didn't want to see any stories" quoting unnamed administration officials.
26 Oct 2003 George W Bush proclaims today the start of National Protection from Pornography Week.
24 Mar 2004 At the annual Radio and Television News Correspondents Association dinner, President George W Bush shows slides of himself searching clumsily behind furniture in the Oval Office, joking: "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere ... nope, no weapons over there ... maybe under here?"
13 Apr 2004 During his third press conference in three years, President George W Bush flounders when asked whether he has made any mistakes in office. "I wish you'd have given me this written question ahead of time so I can plan for it. Uh... [...] You know, I just, uh... I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with answer, but it hadn't yet. I, uh... [...] I just haven't -- you just put me under the spot here, and -- maybe I'm not quick, as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one."

--------------------------------------------

posted May 31, 2004 11:56 PM            

Perhaps life is cyclic, Karmic and the U.S. and all all of the world are right where we need to be to play out our parts on a larger scale?

Maybe something more spiritual than mental? Could this be possable?

Could something be looming larger than we can mentally imagine? If you, for one second, can glimpse this concept, would your fervor and aggression lessen? Would you reach deep within and seek truths that arn`t media related? Or related to mind/physical stimulus in any way?

What if....

posted June 01, 2004 12:59 AM            

The thing that really bothers me and this is the all time kicker of it all...

I hear in this forum that we should help the terrorists reach this goal onto the fact that we should send them to those 92,000,000 virgins and Allah,right?

Then I hear that the ones that think that doing a massive scale war will bring us closer to God,for we are doing his work and we are setting things right.

We are also strolling through the last days,but I say that it doesn't have to be that way.

How ironic...

If all the fundamentalist think that we are coming closer to our Gods by commiting death and destruction and despair,if we are to see Jesus again,by us completing our sins and will pass through the gates of Heaven by bringing hELL on this Earth,then Karma must be the true, ultimate and tragic joke!

They say that the Devil's greatist trick,was to convince man that he doesn't exist,but I say that's wrong,I say that the Devil's greatist trick is that he professed to God that man will wage war against him and everyday we are proving that the Devil is right!

...and then I can confess to those who really care, we are in the middle of a holy war and in turn, we are reaching for the Apocalypse! Did we soon forget that this was supposed to be done by God him/herself,or are we beyond that now?

I think it is time for us to tremble,when we witness these as such days and yet we continue to rebuke God when such things are only done by our own hands and not by his!

Start to be afraid when the day comes that maybe one man's opinion of it all,brings forth such truth,unfortunatly:

"Fate is what we make,Karma is just getting there and it is fate that truely rules us,NOT NO GOD!"

-Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus: The third Roman Caesar

posted June 01, 2004 07:14 AM            

Why fight for a flag when you can buy one for a nickel.

~ Ezra Pound

I grow weary of national holidays that have been converted into public relations opportunities for the celebration of the war system. In my childhood, Decoration Day was an opportunity to honor the dead by decorating graves, and I recall numerous trips to the cemetery to lay flowers at the headstones of my grandparents and aunts and uncles, including an uncle who died in World War II. While this holiday began as a way of remembering Civil War dead, its purpose, in my youth, was not so confined. It was eventually renamed Memorial Day, and its focus was narrowed to what it is today: the state-serving remembrance of military veterans. That this Memorial Day weekend was seized upon as an opportunity to open the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., illustrates the point. For those who still don’t get the message, television stations give us a steady diet of pro-war movies.

Memorial Day weekend will soon be followed by the Fourth of July. This day – honoring the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a writing of a decidedly anti-statist nature – has likewise been co-opted by the war-lovers. Additional rounds of movies celebrating warfare will be made available to television viewers. The 1942 Bing Crosby musical, Holiday Inn, includes a July Fourth segment with a montage of bombers, naval ships, tanks, and other weaponry – with lyrics straight out of FDR’s "New Deal" – to remind audiences that what began as a day to celebrate freedom from the state was now to be understood as a day to glorify statism in its most repressive and destructive form.

November 11th was referred to as Armistice Day in my youth, a day set aside to celebrate the end of World War I; a day, in other words, to honor a return to peace in the world. By 1954, this day, too, had been hijacked by the war system, renamed Veterans Day, and once again used by the statists to remind Americans of the virtues of going off to foreign lands to kill others and to get killed or wounded themselves. And, of course, another round of pro-war films will saturate television screens. The heirs of John Wayne and Randolph Scott must receive handsome residual payments from the showing of such movies during the holiday seasons.

I have wondered how far the war establishment might go in taking over other holidays. Will Thanksgiving Day become a time to be "thankful" for all the military hardware – including some ten thousand hydrogen bombs – bestowed upon America? When, two Christmases ago, I saw a Christmas card with Santa Claus decked out in a red-white-and-blue suit, I knew the complete militarization of the culture was upon us.

These holiday celebrations of warfare are rendered even more distasteful by the nearly endless parade of speakers who praise war veterans who "fought for freedom." I have long been disinclined to criticize soldiers themselves, not because they are free from personal responsibility for their participation in institutionalized butchery, but because I prefer to focus my energies on the systemic thinking that produces such insane practices. Soldiers – most of whom were teenagers when they entered the military – are more victims of statist indoctrination in the "glory" and "heroism" of warfare than they are culprits. But just as the state found it useful to exploit their lives in wartime, it capitalizes on their deaths and sufferings in peacetime as a way of getting us to recommit ourselves to the perpetuation of the war system. To be for peace is to denigrate the memories of those who "sacrificed" for our "freedom."

The idea of soldiers "fighting for freedom" is an Orwellian-like concept riddled with self-contradictions. To begin with, wars have always reduced individual liberty, not only during but after the wars. The American Civil War was conducted not to free slaves, but to aggrandize state power, thus restricting liberties. Lincoln has earned the disrespect of those who value liberty for having laid the foundations of the present Leviathan state. The Spanish-American War, World Wars I and II, the Korean and Vietnamese Wars, escalated the powers of the nation-state over the lives of Americans. In case these earlier episodes of organized barbarity are too distant for you, recall how quickly and easily the Bush administration was able to greatly expand the American police-state with such measures as the Patriot Act, the creation of a Department of Homeland Security, and the arbitrary holding – without trial or contact with family or attorneys – of virtually anyone the state wishes held.

How can it be seriously entertained that soldiers "fight for freedom?" They were unable to secure even their own freedom from the state. To allow one’s life to be taken over, regimented, directed, and even destroyed by the state, hardly qualifies as a working definition of "freedom." Slavery is a word more befitting such a subjugated condition.

Furthermore, how can a person be said to be "free" when his or her life is embroiled in conflict? How can one be free when fighting others? Is a life fired by anger and hatred of others, along with a willingness to torture, maim, or kill anyone designated by state officials as your "enemy," consistent with a life of freedom?

Memorial Day speeches are filled with the prayer that "these dead shall not have died in vain." But the truth is that the victims of warfare have always died in vain, and will continue to die pointlessly, for war is its own reason for being. "War is the health of the state," Randolph Bourne reminded us decades ago, a health that, like the human body, is dependent upon regular exercise.

I was ten years old when World War II ended, and I recall the sense of relief in the anticipation that peace was to return to the world. This was not unlike the attitude that surfaced, briefly, with the end of the Cold War. But the state cannot endure peace. We should have picked up the warning when, shortly after World War II, the government changed the name of the "War Department" to the "Defense Department." Such was the signal, had we paid attention, that war had become a permanent system for advancing corporate-state interests by the subjugation of the American people.

If the state is to maintain power over us, it must have an endless supply of enemies with which to excite our fears. The Soviet Union served this purpose well for nearly half a century, but with its collapse, the American state went in search of a new foe. Islamic "terrorism" became the new adversary. With an expansive military presence throughout the world, the American state had assured itself of an enemy that is not likely to vanish. When the Bush administration announced that the war on terror would be an endless one, it was confirming the truth of Bourne’s observation.

As dangerous as terrorism is, we must acknowledge its origins and the energies that sustain it. Humanity continues to be held hostage to the deeper terrorist threat of which polite company refuses to speak, namely, the political organization of society. As we continue to recycle the destructive energies of the war system that is the state, the time may soon be upon us when even the most patriotic flag-waver will have to stand and say "enough!" As politicians and other participants in the war racket continue to preach of our "responsibilities" to keep this slaughterhouse stocked with sacrificial victims, we may find ourselves called to a higher responsibility. Learning how to renounce and walk away from this obscene system may be the act of responsibility each of us must take as our share of being human.

As decent and compassionate human beings, let us remember the dead and wounded of war – as well as their families – as the victims of a kind of thinking that must be transcended if humanity is to survive. But let us stop glorifying butchery with parades, medals, gaseous speeches, and the erection of war memorials. Let us have no more Tom Brokaw patronizing drivel that equates the "greatness" of people with their willingness to join in lemming-like suicidal marches. Let us stop investing the lives and souls of our sons and daughters as our commitment to this vicious enterprise. Let us learn to love our children more than we do the state that sees them as nothing more than fungible resources for the mass production of casualties.

I recall, years ago, news stories about the last Civil War or Spanish-American War veteran to die. Perhaps we shall one day have occasion to celebrate Memorial Day by remembering the final victim of the war system itself.

posted June 01, 2004 07:16 AM            

Martin died at a nursing home in Enterprise of complications from a heart attack she suffered May 7, said her caretaker, Dr. Kenneth Chancey. She died nearly 140 years after the Civil War ended.

Her May-December marriage in the 1920s to Civil War veteran William Jasper Martin and her longevity made her a celebrated final link to the old Confederacy.

After living in obscurity and poverty for most of her life, in her final years the Sons of Confederate Veterans took her to conventions and rallies, often with a small Confederate battle flag waving in her hand and her clothes the colors of the rebel banner.

"I don't see nothing wrong with the flag flying," she said frequently.

Chancey said she loved the attention. "It's like being matriarch of a large family," he said.

"She was a link to the past," Chancey said Monday. "People would get emotional, holding her hand, crying and thinking about their family that suffered greatly in the past."

Wayne Flynt, a Southern history expert at Auburn University, said the historical distinctiveness of the South, which is so tied to the Civil War, has been disappearing, but Martin provided people with one last chance to see that history in real life.

"She became a symbol like the Confederate battle flag," he said.

The last widow of a Union veteran from the Civil War, Gertrude Janeway, died in January 2003 at her home in Tennessee. She was 93 and had married veteran John Janeway when she was 18.

In 1997, Martin and Daisy Anderson, whose husband was a slave who ran away and joined the Union Army, were recognized at a ceremony at Gettysburg, Pa. Anderson, who lived in Denver, died in 1998 at age 97. Janeway wasn't invited to the Gettysburg event because, at the time, no one outside her family knew her whereabouts.

Alberta Stewart Martin was not from the "Gone With the Wind" South of white-columned mansions and hoop skirts. She was born Alberta Stewart to sharecroppers on Dec. 4, 1906, in Danley's Crossroads, a tiny settlement built around a sawmill 70 miles south of Montgomery.

Her mother died when she was 11. At 18, she met a cab driver named Howard Farrow, and they had a son before Farrow died in a car accident in 1926.

Stewart, her father and her son moved to Opp. Just up the road lived William Jasper Martin, a widower born in Georgia in 1845 who had a $50-a-month Confederate veteran's pension.

The 81-year-old man struck up a few conversations with the 21-year-old neighbor and a marriage of convenience was born.

"I had this little boy and I needed some help to raise him," Alberta Martin recalled in a 1998 interview.

They were married on Dec. 10, 1927, and 10 months later had a son, William.

She said her husband never talked much about the war, except the harsh times at Petersburg, Va.

"He'd say it was rough, how the trenches were full of water. They were so hungry in Virginia that during the time they were fighting, they had to grab food as they went along. They came across a potato patch and made up some mashed potatoes," she said.

Asked if she loved her husband, Martin said: "That's a hard question to answer. I cared enough about him to live with him. You know the difference between a young man and an old man."

William Jasper Martin died on July 8, 1931. Two months later, Alberta Martin married her late husband's grandson, Charlie Martin. He died in 1983.

"She was a link to the past."
-Dr. Kenneth Chancey

She became the focus of a dustup over the depiction of her and her late Confederate husband in the 1998 book "Confederates in the Attic." Among other things, the book by Tony Horwitz described William Jasper Martin as a deserter.

A group that defends Southern heritage disagreed, contending there were at least two William Martins who served in Company K of the 4th Alabama Infantry Regiment and that Horwitz got the wrong one. Horwitz said his research was carefully checked and the book was accurate.

The state government considered Martin's record clean enough to award him a Confederate pension in 1921 and to give Alberta Martin Confederate widow's benefits in 1996.

Martin's older son, Harold Farrow of North Little Rock, Ark., died last June. Her younger son, Willie Martin, lives in Elba.

Alberta Martin is to be interred at New Ebenezer Baptist Church six miles west of Elba, in an 1860s-style ceremony following her funeral June 12.

05/31/04 15:23 EDT

posted June 01, 2004 07:29 AM            

Dear Dr. Laura,

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's law. I have learned a great deal from you, and I try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind him that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate.
I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some of the specific laws and how to best follow them.
When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord (Lev. 1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. How should I deal with this?
I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as it suggests in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?
I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness (Lev. 15:19-24). The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.
Lev. 25:44 states that I may buy slaves from the nations that are around us. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans but not Canadians. Can you clarify?
I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?
A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Lev. 10:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this?
Lev. 20:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here? I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am
confident you can help.
Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging.

--------------------------------------------

I guess this is the way some people feel the laws in America should be.

I can only think of a couple of groups that would feel so strongly!

posted June 02, 2004 08:43 AM            

ELECTION 2004
Kerry honored at communist museum
Photograph hangs in section devoted to war protesters
Posted: June 1, 2004
12:14 p.m. Eastern

A Ho Chi Minh City museum that honors Vietnam war protesters features a photograph of Sen. John Kerry being greeted by the general secretary of the Communist Party, Comrade Do Muoi. A snapshot of the display in the Vietnamese Communist War Remnants Museum – formerly known as the "War Crimes Museum" – was acquired over the weekend by Jeffrey M. Epstein of Vietnam Vets for the Truth, a group opposing Kerry's campaign for the presidency.

Vietnam veteran Bill Lupetti took this photograph of a display at a Ho Chi Minh City museum honoring war protesters.

A spokesman with Kerry's national campaign did not return a call from WND seeking comment. The snapshot of the display, which depicts a July 1993 meeting, was forwarded to Epstein by Bob Shirley, one of more than 200 members of Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth who signed an open letter questioning Kerry's fitness to serve as commander in chief.

Epstein said the picture of the display was taken by Bill Lupetti, a Swift Boat Veteran who currently is visiting Vietnam. Epstein said the display photograph's "unquestionable significance lies in its placement in the American protesters' section of the War Crimes Museum" in Ho Chi Minh City, the former Saigon.

"The Vietnamese communists clearly recognize John Kerry's contributions to their victory," he said. "This find can be compared to the discovery of a painting of Neville Chamberlain hanging in a place of honor in Hitler's Eagle's Nest in 1945."

Below the display photograph are explanatory placards in English, French, Vietnamese and Chinese. The English placard reads: "Mr. Do Muoi, Secretary General of the Vietnamese Communist Party met with Congressman and Veterans Delegation in Vietnam (July 15-18, 1993)."

Epstein's group says the exhibit refutes Kerry's insistence his anti-war protests did not render support to the enemy in time of war. "The Vietnamese communists clearly feel that the American anti-war protesters were a very important force in undermining support in the United States for American war efforts, a force that contributed materially to ultimate communist victory in 1975," the group said in a statement. Vietnam Vets for the Truth says it was established to organize a rally publicizing "Kerry's lies" during the "Winter Soldier" hearings in the U.S. Senate in 1971. The rally, called "Kerry Lied," will be held on Capitol Hill Sept. 12.

The Swift Boat Veterans also have called on Kerry to stop unauthorized use of their images in national campaign advertising.The group says only two of the 20 officers in one photo support him and 11 have signed the letter condemning the candidate.

posted June 02, 2004 08:53 AM            

Using the battle cry "Kerry lied while good men died," the organization Vietnam Vets for Truth is planning a September rally in the nation's capital to combat what it considers untruths the Democratic presidential candidate has spread about those who fought in the Vietnam War. The new organization will host what they expect to be a "giant rally" of veterans and their families at the west side of the Capitol on Sept. 12.

In a statement announcing the event, organizers said those who assume Vietnam vets are behind Kerry's candidacy are "dead wrong."

Terry Garlock of Peachtree City, Ga., and Larry Bailey of Alexandria, Va, lead the organization, Garlock as CEO and Bailey as president. Garlock, an Army Cobra helicopter pilot in Vietnam, proposed the idea, and Bailey, one of the first to sign up for the effort, is a retired U.S. Navy SEAL captain with service in Vietnam.

"More than any other person, John Kerry is responsible for the false image of Vietnam veterans as dysfunctional misfits," Bailey said in a statement. "Kerry betrayed all of us when he returned from Vietnam. "A lot of good people opposed the war, but some, like John Kerry, went too far.

He joined the radical left wing of the anti-war movement and shared the microphone with Jane Fonda and other radicals. He promoted himself by telling unforgivable lies about Vietnam servicemen and women, and he did this under oath."

Kerry testified before U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee 1971, making horrific claims about alleged atrocities committed by American service members. What about Kerry's claim he helped end the war? Responded Bailey: "What unmitigated chutzpah! The truth is that the actions he took gave aid and comfort to those who were killing America's sons and daughters.

He encouraged our enemies to rebuild and hang on when they were near defeat, as they were after the Tet Offensive in 1968.

Did you know our POWs had John Kerry's words quoted to them by their interrogators?" Bailey says Kerry helped to spread a "negative stereotype" of Vietnam veterans that was exploited in movies and on TV. "The truth long ago was that we fought with honor and courage, and we won every significant battle," Bailey said.

"The truth now is that we are doctors, lawyers, factory workers, nurses, small-business owners, corporate executives, carpenters and pretty much your neighbor or your friend at church, and very patriotic. We are not and never have been the crazed killers we have been portrayed to be for so many years in movies and on TV, in part, because of Kerry's lies."

Bailey says the event is not partisan and that all Vietnam vets are welcome: "We just want the country to know that America's sons and daughters served honorably and well in Vietnam, and the bad things John Kerry said about them have never been true."

As WorldNetDaily reported, earlier this month a group of Kerry's colleagues from the war gathered to denounce his fitness for the land's highest office, saying that during the war he was a "loose cannon."

The group represented the organization Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. "The Swift Boat guys are challenging Kerry's fitness for office based on his lies and his Vietnam service," commented Garlock, "and they are qualified to do that since they served with him.

Our new VVT organization is not challenging Kerry's Vietnam service. We are going to tell the good news stories about Vietnam vets at our rally and how America should have welcomed them home with pride and gratitude. We will contrast that truth with the lies told about them by John Kerry."

In an open letter to Kerry, the new group tells the candidate: "You should have been our brother, Sen. Kerry, but when you returned from Vietnam you betrayed us. America does not yet understand the depth of that betrayal. We believe that before voters in this country have the opportunity to elect you to the office of commander in chief, they deserve to know the truth, and they deserve to hear some answers from you."

posted June 02, 2004 09:02 AM            

Posted: May 4, 2004
4:15 p.m. Eastern

During his time in the Vietnam war, John Kerry was seen by colleagues as a self-serving, "loose cannon" who came only to launch a political career, said the commander over his swift boat division, who spoke at a press conference in Washington with 17 other veterans.

Retired Rear Adm. Roy Hoffman, who headed Coastal Division 11, is one of more than 200 veterans who have signed a letter asking Kerry to authorize the Department of the Navy to release all of his military records, including health documents.

Hoffman said Kerry "arrived in country with a strong anti-Vietnam War bias and a self-serving determination to build a foundation for his political future."

"He was aggressive, but vain and prone to impulsive judgment, often with disregard to specific tactical assignments," Hoffman said. "He was a loose cannon."

The press conference and letter was organized by the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which contends the Massachusetts senator and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee is unfit to be commander in chief.

The group's spokesman, John O'Neill, who took over as commander of Kerry's swift boat not long after the senator was given an early dismissal, told reporters Kerry recently had been on the phone with Hoffman for 45 minutes, trying to discourage the group from going forward.

O'Neill wrote in a Wall Street Journal editorial today that he could not remain silent as Kerry sought the nation's highest office.

Kerry served about four months of a 12-month tour of duty in Vietnam, winning the Silver Star and Bronze Star. After receiving three Purple Hearts, he requested and received reassignment to the United States, which is allowed under Navy regulations.

But O'Neill said in an interview on the Tony Snow radio show today, he and his colleagues were perplexed at the time by Kerry's early departure.

"No one could actually figure out why he left," O'Neill told Snow. "He went through swift boat school before me. No one had any idea why he left."

O'Neill's group said it includes the entire chain of command above Kerry: Lt. Cmdr. Grant Hibbard, Lt. Cmdr. Elliott, Capt. Charles Plumly, Ret. Capt. Adrian Lonsdale USCG and Hoffman.

The veterans group said it also includes enlisted men, officers, men who served with Kerry, men who served in the same group of swift boats and "men intimately familiar with the operations and conduct of swift boat operations during the war." Among them are Marine Lt. Col. James Zumwalt, representing his late father, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, and late brother, Lt. Elmo Zumwalt III.

Zumwalt who criticized Kerry for concocting "falsehoods" in his congressional testimony about fellow veterans, said the senator "has a personality disorder.”

O'Neill, now a Houston lawyer, appeared in 1971 on "The Dick Cavett Show" in a debate with Kerry, who then was national spokesman for the group Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

The key issue then, as now, O'Neill said, is Kerry's claim American troops were committing war crimes in Vietnam "on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."

"Despite our shared experience," O'Neill wrote, "I still believe what I believed 33 years ago – that John Kerry slandered America's military by inventing or repeating grossly exaggerated claims of atrocities and war crimes in order to advance his own political career as an antiwar activist."

"His misrepresentations played a significant role in creating the negative and false image of Vietnam vets that has persisted for over three decades," he said.

O'Neill asserted, "Neither I, nor any man I served with, ever committed any atrocity or war crime in Vietnam. The opposite was the truth. Rather than use excessive force, we suffered casualty after casualty because we chose to refrain from firing rather than risk injuring civilians."

More than once, he said, "I saw friends die in areas we entered with loudspeakers rather than guns."

"John Kerry's accusations then and now were an injustice that struck at the soul of anyone who served there," O'Neill declared.

'Bugged out of Vietnam'

At the press conference today, Hoffman said Kerry, in his "abbreviated tour" of four months and 12 days, "and with his specious medals secure … bugged out of Vietnam and began his infamous betrayal of all United States forces in the Vietnam War."

Kerry's campaign responded to the allegations with a press conference of its own, featuring four veterans.

Spokesman, Michael Meehan insisted the U.S. Navy has released Kerry's entire record, at the senator's request, which now is posted at JohnKerry.com.

However, retired Lt. Cmdr. Grant Hibbard told reporters today at least one of the three Purple Hearts awarded to Kerry did not appear warranted.

"He showed me a scratch on his arm and a piece of shrapnel in his hand that appeared to be from one of our own M-79s," Hibbard said. "He later received a Purple Heart for that scratch, and I have no information as to how or whom."

Kerry's behavior was sharply criticized by a commanding officer who supervised him in several naval operations.

"Kerry would be described as devious, self-absorbing, manipulative, disdain for authority, disruptive," said retired Capt. Charley Plumly, "but the most common phrase you would hear [was] 'requires constant supervision.'"

O'Neill noted that during his 1971 televised debate with Kerry, he accused him of lying and urged him to come forward with affidavits from the soldiers who claimed to have committed or witnessed atrocities.

"To date no such affidavits have been filed," O'Neill said, noting Kerry recently "has attempted to reframe his comments as youthful or 'over the top.'"

"Yet always there has been a calculated coolness to the way he has sought to destroy the record of our honorable service in the interest of promoting his political ambitions of the moment," O'Neill said.

O'Neill said what happened in Vietnam more than 30 years ago matters because loyalty in the military is "indispensable."

"How can a man be commander in chief who for over 30 years has accused his 'Band of Brothers,' as well as himself, of being war criminals?" he asked. "On a practical basis, John Kerry's breach of loyalty is a prescription of disaster for our armed forces."

Pointing out he has refused since 1971 many offers by Kerry's political opponents to speak out, he claimed his "reluctance to become involved once again in politics is outweighed now by my profound conviction that John Kerry is simply not fit to be America's commander in chief."

posted June 02, 2004 09:19 AM            

Posted: March 6, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern

Editor's note: WorldNetDaily is pleased to have a content-sharing agreement with Insight magazine, the bold Washington publication not afraid to ruffle establishment feathers.

By J. Michael Waller

Since quitting the Navy six months early at age 27 so he could run for Congress on an antiwar platform, John Kerry has built a political career on his service in Vietnam.

His unsuccessful 1970 congressional bid lasted only a month, during which it proved impossible for even he to get to the left of the winner, Robert Drinan, but it forged a conflicting political persona – one hammered out between his combat medals earned in the Mekong delta and the common cause he made with the enemy upon his return home.

Now, at age 60, the junior Democratic senator from Massachusetts is milking his veteran status once again in an effort to show he's tougher and more patriotic than the man he seeks to replace, President Bush. And, as unrepentant as ever for his pro-Hanoi activism, he is just as conflicted in 2004 as he was in the 1960s.

If there is any consistency in Kerry's political career, it is his in-your-face use of that four-month stint in Vietnam. He enlisted like many other young men of privilege, trying to serve without going to the front lines. When in 1966 it looked like his draft number was coming up during his senior year at Yale University, and already having spoken out in public against the war, Kerry signed up with the Navy under the conscious inspiration of his hero, the late President John F. Kennedy.

As a lieutenant junior grade, Kerry skippered a CTF-115 swift boat, a light, aluminum patrol vessel that bore a passing resemblance to PT-109. He thought he'd arranged to avoid combat.

"I didn't really want to get involved in the war," he later would tell the Boston Globe. "When I signed up for the swift boats, they had very little to do with the war. They were engaged in coastal patrolling, and that's what I thought I was going to do."

Soon, however, Kerry was reassigned to patrol the Mekong River in South Vietnam, a formative experience for his political odyssey. The official record shows that he rose to the occasion. It was along the Mekong where he first killed a man, aggressively fighting the enemy Viet Cong and reportedly saving the lives of his own men, earning a Bronze Star, a Silver Star for valor and three Purple Hearts in the process.

Kerry opted for reassignment to New York City, where – as a uniformed, active-duty officer – he reportedly began acting out the antiwar feelings he had expressed before enlisting. Press reports from the time say that he marched in the October 1969 Moratorium protests – a mass demonstration by a quarter-million people that had been orchestrated the previous summer by North Vietnamese officials and American antiwar leaders in Cuba.

Kerry had found his purpose in life. The New York Times reported April 23, 1971, that at about the time of the Moratorium march, Lt. Kerry had "asked for, and was given, an early release from the Navy so he could run for Congress on an antiwar platform from his home district in Waltham, Mass."

For Kerry, politicizing the nation's war effort for partisan purposes was the right thing to do, in contrast to the violent revolutionary designs of colleagues who were out to destroy the system. Kerry didn't want to take down the establishment. He wanted to take it over.

His aborted, monthlong 1970 congressional campaign was a victory for him politically, as it landed him on television's popular Dick Cavett Show, where he came to the attention of some of the central organizers of the antiwar/pro-Hanoi group known as Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

VVAW was a numerically small part of the protest movement, but it was extremely influential through skillful political theater, the novelty of uniformed combat veterans joining the Vietniks, and a ruthless coalition-building strategy that forged partnerships with the Communist Party USA, its Trotskyite rival, the Socialist Workers Party, and a broad front that ranged from pacifists to supporters of the Black Panthers and other domestic terrorist groups.

Kerry signed on as a full-time organizer and member of the VVAW's six-member executive committee. By early 1971 he had become one of the antiwar movement's principal figureheads, lending a moderate face to a movement that championed, and was championed by, imprisoned murder conspirator Angela Davis and actress Jane Fonda.

The young former and future political candidate acted as one of the main leaders of a massive, five-day April protest in Washington and other cities. Kerry's partner, Jan Crumb, read a list of 15 demands. According to the Communist Party USA paper Daily World, the VVAW demands were, "Immediate, unilateral, unconditional withdrawal of all U.S. armed forces and Central Intelligence Agency personnel from Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand," plus "full amnesty" to all "war resisters" and draft dodgers, and "withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Latin America, Africa, Asia and elsewhere in the world."

Kerry was the star of the political theater that historic week, angry that the law forbade political protests at veterans' graves in Arlington National Cemetery and angrier that President Nixon enforced the law and that the Supreme Court upheld it.

He led an illegal encampment of veterans and people who dressed as veterans on the Mall in downtown Washington and used the services of Ramsey Clark – a former Johnson administration attorney general who by that time openly was supporting the enemy in Hanoi – to fight a federal order to disperse.

According to the Daily World, which published a page-one photo of Kerry passing Clark a note during the march, the protesters converged on the White House chanting, "One, Two, Three, Four – We Don't Want Your F- - - - - - War."

Kerry's establishment model was working where the home-baked revolutionaries were failing. The activist bumped into William Fulbright, then chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, at a party and landed himself in the spotlight as a witness in a hearing held the last day of the weeklong march.

There, he made his infamous exaggerated and untruthful allegations that his fellow servicemen, not merely the commanders, deliberately were committing widespread atrocities against innocent Vietnamese civilians.

Afterward, he joined a dramatic political-theater display at the Capitol steps, where hundreds of vets took a microphone and, one by one, stated their name, identified their combat medals and flung them over a police fence on the steps. Kerry renounced his Bronze Star, his Silver Star and his three Purple Hearts. (Later, as a politician, he would give ever-changing versions of the story.)

He seemed to want it both ways in the protest movement. While claiming to "hate" the communists, he decried any attempt to marginalize them within the movement. Once, when questioned about his political alliance with supporters of the enemy, Kerry said that any attempts to push out Hanoi supporters might result "in seriously dividing and weakening the movement, and making it less effective."

That didn't sit well with some VVAW members beyond the Washington Beltway. Back in Massachusetts, VVAW state coordinator Walker "Monty" Montgomery, a Tennessee native, publicly differed with Kerry. The Boston Herald-Traveler reported Montgomery "was considerably more candid than Kerry about the problems posed by revolutionary communists inside an antiwar organization."

"You can quote me," said Montgomery, "as one who believes that the revolutionary communists in our organization are detrimental to the organization."

Kerry had trouble discerning the line between legitimate dissent and collaboration with the enemy. In the summer of 1971, he spoke at a VVAW news conference in Washington, assailing President Nixon for not accepting an enemy propaganda initiative – a Viet Cong statement in Paris that Hanoi would guarantee the release of American prisoners of war once the last U.S. troops left Vietnam.

Featuring a photo of Kerry in the July 24 Daily World, the Communist Party USA said Kerry "asked President Nixon to accept [a] seven-point peace proposal of Vietnamese patriots."

Kerry traveled the country that fall, trying to breathe new life into a sagging college antiwar movement. The protest spirit was coming alive, he said.

"It isn't withering," he told a reporter at Fort Hays State University in Kansas. "The feeling is there. I do seriously believe there's beginning to be a turning away from the tear-it-down mentality. The movement is turning toward electoral politics again."

Covering his antiwar campaign, the National Observer reported at the time, "He wants the Vietnam Veterans [Against the War] to move quickly and strongly into grass-roots electoral politics."

He sought to organize like-minded veterans to become delegates at the upcoming 1972 presidential conventions.

"Though the veterans are, for the record, nonpartisan," the Observer said, "what this really means is whether the [George] McGovern Commission reforms for the Democratic Convention are implemented and enforced. Most antiwar veterans laugh at the idea of getting anything started in the Republican Convention."

Yet for all his want of the spotlight, Kerry avoided public debates with other veterans. On seven occasions, by July 1971, he had refused to allow other veterans to challenge him publicly on television, even when CBS and NBC offered to host formal debates. He relented only when Dick Cavett, who had made him a national figure not long before, agreed to terms Kerry found advantageous. Even then, with Kerry holding all the advantages, Boston Globe political columnist David Nyhan observed, his "scrappy little" opponent, John O'Neill, "was all over Kerry like a terrier, keeping the star of the Foreign Relations Committee hearings ... off balance."

Kerry couldn't hope to take over the political establishment without the political organization skills, mobilization abilities and support networks of those radical groups that supported the enemy against U.S. troops. He needed to latch on to those in the establishment who funded them.

The New York Times reported on a millionaire's gathering in East Hampton, Long Island, in August 1971. Many of the attendees had participated in "fund-raising affairs for the Black Panthers" and other extremist causes. With fellow VVAW leader Al Hubbard, Kerry sought a less radical position, but he showed parts of a full-length film containing testimony of 125 alleged veterans who said they had witnessed U.S. atrocities in Vietnam, "before a request for funds sent everyone scrambling for pens and checkbooks."

As with Kerry's Senate testimony, which contained wild and unsubstantiated allegations of deliberate U.S. atrocities throughout the ranks, many of them disproved, the mission outweighed the truth. His VVAW sidekick Hubbard identified himself as an Air Force captain, a pilot, when in reality he was an ex-sergeant who had never served in Vietnam.

Kerry was content to stand by VVAW's claims that it had 12,000 members in 1971. Massachusetts VVAW coordinator Montgomery was more open about the figures. He said that only 50 to 75 members in the entire state were really active and that the official statewide membership of 1,500 Vietnam vets was just a "paper membership."

The angry young veteran's political ambition shone through his public earnestness. The 1970 congressional race that had propelled him into national politics also undercut his credibility, exacerbated by his drive to run for office again. Many saw him as exploiting the war for political gain.

"Angry wives of American prisoners of war [POWs] lashed out yesterday at peace advocate John Kerry of Waltham, Mass., accusing him of using the POW issue as a springboard to political office," the Associated Press reported July 22, 1971. "One of the women accused Kerry of 'constantly using their own suffering and grief' for purely political reasons."

Patricia Hardy of Los Angeles, whose husband had been killed in 1967, told reporters, "I think he couldn't care less about these men or these families."

Cathi and Janice Ray, whose stepbrother was a POW, accompanied her. (Official records show only one U.S. serviceman named Hardy was killed in the war, Marine Lance Cpl. Frank Earle Hardy, whose platoon was ambushed in Quang Tri on May 29, 1967. His name appears on panel 21E, row D14, of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington.)

The wife of Air Force Col. Arthur Mearns, a pilot missing since he was shot down in 1966, protested Kerry with them. Her husband later was declared killed in action. His name appears on panel 12E, row 055, of the wall.

"Mr. Kerry, when asked if he planned to run again for political office, said only that he was committed to political change and that he would use whatever forum seemed best at the time," according to AP. "He did not rule out mounting another political campaign."

At the time, "I was totally consumed with the notion of going to Congress," Kerry later told the Washington Post. AP hinted that Kerry already held presidential ambitions. A Boston newspaper agreed: "The gentle cloak of idealism and dignity which Kerry had worn during his televised testimony in Washington now appeared to be stitched together with threads of personal ambition and political expediency. Was this to be the payoff for one of the finest and most moving chapters of the counterculture antiwar movement? Just another slick Ivy League phrasemaker ego-freak political hustler with a hunger to see his name on campaign posters and his face on national television?"

By 1972, Massachusetts' third congressional seat was firmly held by radical Robert Drinan. Kerry, now 28, left Waltham and bought a house in Worcester, anticipating a run for Congress from the 4th District. But when President Nixon picked the congressman representing the 5th District for an ambassador's post, Kerry leased out his house and moved to the dying old mill city of Lowell to run for the soon-to-be-vacated seat there. The Boston Phoenix, an alternative newspaper whose reporter traveled with Kerry on the 1972 campaign, profiled the candidate in a story headlined, "Cruising with a Carpetbagger."

"Kerry, media superstar, suddenly found himself having to deny that he had political plans lest he be accused of ripping off the veterans by using them as a bow for the arrow of his ambition," the Phoenix reported. "John Kerry is burning with desire to be a congressman, but he has to keep paying off that loan from the Vietnam Veterans [VVAW] by seeming to be cool and indifferent to personal gain, and this underlying dilemma produces an uncomfortable tension around him."

The candidate had trouble balancing himself between Kerry the patriot and Kerry the minion of Hanoi's agitprop apparatus. He tried to distance himself from his brand-new book, The New Soldier. According to a major newspaper in the district, the Lowell Sun, the book cover "carried a picture of three or four bearded youths of the hippie type carrying the American flag in a photo resembling remarkably the immortal photo by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal of U.S. Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima after its capture from the Japanese during World War II. The big difference between the two pictures, however, is that the photo on John Kerry's book shows the flag being carried upside down in a gesture of contempt."

The book was hard to come by at the time, according to the newspaper, but a rival in the Democratic primary found one in Greenwich Village and tried to publish the cover as an advertisement in the Sun. Kerry tried to cover it up.

"Things began to get hot as the old pressure went on to prevent publication of the advertisement showing the cover of the book," the Sun's editors wrote on Oct. 18, 1972. "Permission from the publisher of the book, Macmillan Co. of New York, to reproduce the cover, granted by Macmillan in a telegram on the day publication of the ad was scheduled, was quickly withdrawn hours later by Macmillan with the explanation that the approval of the author, John Kerry, would be required before the cover could be reproduced in a political advertisement. So that killed the ad."

Kerry said it wasn't he who blocked publication. According to the Sun, "Subsequently, efforts were made to obtain Mr. Kerry's okay to reproduce the famous book cover, but Mr. Kerry now says he doesn't have the right to give this permission because the copyright on the book cover belongs to a coeditor of the book, one George Butler." The Sun couldn't locate Butler.

When the book had come out the year before, Macmillan sent a review copy to Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., requesting an endorsement. Byrd wrote back, "I say most respectfully to you, I threw it in the wastebasket after leafing through it."

Having lost the primary in humiliation – his brother had been caught trying to wiretap an opponent's office – Kerry went to Boston College Law School. Later, he was appointed assistant district attorney, then was elected lieutenant governor under Mike Dukakis in 1982.

Two years later, he ran for the U.S. Senate – dusting off his veteran's credentials by standing in front of the black Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington to shoot a TV campaign ad, defying regulations that the memorial not be used for political purposes.

The ad "was filmed illegally against the wishes of the National Park Service," according to the Boston Globe. Kerry authorized its broadcast anyway.

Kerry's campaign only stirred up long-smoldering embers from the war. Retired Maj. Gen. George S. Patton III, who had commanded combat troops in Vietnam, said that, medals or no medals, by the nature of his wartime protests Kerry gave "aid and comfort to the enemy" in the style of Ramsey Clark and Jane Fonda.

"Mr. Kerry probably caused some of my guys to get killed," Patton said, even as he self-deprecatingly acknowledged shortcomings of his own as a commander. "And I don't like that. There is no soap ever invented that can wash that blood off his hands."

Responding to controversy over his remarks, Patton wrote in the Worcester Evening Gazette, "The dissent against our efforts in that unhappy war, as exemplified by Mr. Kerry, and of course others, made the soldier's duties even more difficult. ... These incidents caused our opponent, already highly motivated, to fight harder against us and our Vietnamese allies. Hence the comment made by me which included the provision of 'aid and comfort to the enemy' by Mr. Kerry."

Under relentless attack from the pro-Kerry Boston press, Patton received strong veteran support. Robert Hagopian, past commander of the Massachusetts division of the Disabled American Veterans, spoke for many about the general's views, telling reporters, "I agree with everything he said."

The Lowell Sun ran a cartoon of Kerry trying fruitlessly to wash his blood-covered hands. An accompanying editorial said, "During his antiwar years, John Kerry was about the closest thing to a male Jane Fonda in the U.S. anybody could find – and Ms. Fonda came as close to treason to her country as anybody ever could without being convicted of it."

posted June 02, 2004 09:37 AM            

Posted: May 14, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern

Sen. John Kerry was told to leave Vietnam by three colleagues upset with his behavior and attitudes, according to a fellow swift-boat officer during the war.

Thomas Wright says the misbehavior of the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate got to the point where he no longer wanted him in his boat group. So, at Wright's request, his divisional commander assigned Kerry to another group.

Then Wright and like-minded boat officers took matters into their own hands, according to John B. Dwyer, a Vietnam veteran and military historian writing in the online magazine American Thinker.

"When he got his third Purple Heart, three of us told him to leave," Wright said, according to Dwyer. "We knew how the system worked and we didn't want him in Coastal Division 11.

"Kerry didn't manipulate the system," he continued, "we did."

Wright, who at times was officer-in-charge over Kerry, said he had occasion to observe Kerry's behavior and attitudes, and the circumstances surrounding his early departure from the war zone.

Wright noted Kerry's chosen moniker for radio communications between the boats was "Boston Strangler."

The officer said he and most other swift-boat officers had two commandments: 1. Protect the crews. 2. Win.

But working with "Boston Strangler" became problematical, he said, according to Dwyer.

"I had a lot of trouble getting him to follow orders," Wright recalled. "He had a different view of leadership and operations. Those of us with direct experience working with Kerry found him difficult and oriented toward his personal, rather than unit goals and objectives."

Wright said he "believed that overall responsibility rested squarely on the shoulders of the OIC or OTC [Officer-in-Tactical Command] in a free-fire zone. You had to be right [before opening fire]."

However, he continued, "Kerry seemed to believe there were no rules in a free-fire zone, and you were supposed to kill anyone. I didn't see it that way."

The rules were vital, Wright emphasized, because it was important the enemy "understood that swift boats were a competent, effective force that could dominate his location."

"You couldn't achieve that by indiscriminate use of weapons in free-fire zones," he said.

Wright referred to the three Purple Hearts awarded to Kerry, which allowed him to leave Vietnam for the U.S.

"No one wanted a Purple Heart because it meant we had made a mistake," he said. "We made sure our crews were recognized, but no one took pride in a Purple Heart."

More than a dozen of Kerry's superior officers and colleagues during the war held a press conference May 4 in Washington to tell Americans the senator is unfit to be commander-in-chief of the United States.

Retired Rear Adm. Roy Hoffman, who headed Coastal Division 11, said Kerry was seen by colleagues as a self-serving, "loose cannon" who came only to launch a political career.

Hoffman said Kerry "arrived in country with a strong anti-Vietnam War bias and a self-serving determination to build a foundation for his political future."

"He was aggressive, but vain and prone to impulsive judgment, often with disregard to specific tactical assignments," Hoffman said. "He was a loose cannon."

Hoffman and his colleagues with the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are among more than 200 veterans who have signed a letter asking Kerry to authorize the Department of the Navy to release all of his military records, including health documents.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=38483

posted June 04, 2004 12:10 PM            

At various points around the city, groups of people blocked traffic, set dustbins alight, lit flares and daubed slogans against Bush on walls. One group carried a U.S. flag defaced with a swastika.

The protesters were kept away from Bush, whose motorcade of around 20 vehicles swept past lines of riot police manning cordons.

During a three-day trip to Italy and France, Bush will seek international support for his Iraq mission and commemorate the June 1944 liberation of Rome and D-Day invasion of Normandy.

The pope, who strongly opposed the U.S.-led war in Iraq, spoke of his concern about the ''grave unrest'' in the Middle East, and called for the ''speedy return of Iraq's sovereignty.''

''It is the evident desire of everyone that this situation now be normalized as quickly as possible with the active participation of the international community and, in particular, the United Nations organization,'' the pope said.

Bush responded by telling the pontiff he would work for ''human liberty and human dignity.'' He made no direct mention of Iraq or the prison abuse scandal that angered the Vatican.

Bush's visit was timed to commemorate the liberation of Rome by Allied forces 60 years ago, but it is the actions of a new generation of U.S. soldiers in Iraq that has raised passions.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a staunch Bush ally, has warned of violent protests. Fears of a repeat of the mayhem that marred a G8 summit in Genoa in July 2001 led Italy to bolster security massively until Bush leaves on Saturday.

Most Italians opposed last year's invasion of Iraq and many want Rome to withdraw its 2,700 troops stationed there, a move Berlusconi's government has rejected.

TIGHT SECURITY

Masked police snipers manned roofs surrounding the U.S. ambassador's residence where Bush stayed the night as numerous rainbow-colored peace flags hung from nearby balconies.

As helicopters buzzed overhead, riot police with shields formed a human wall outside Rome's Termini station where groups from as far afield as Palermo and Milan arrived by train.

''I'm here to show my revulsion of our Fuhrer George Bush and his servant Berlusconi,'' said Giorgio Faleri, a 25-year-old student from Pisa who was carrying an Iraqi flag.

One chant -- swiftly condemned by politicians of all parties -- seemed to invite new car bomb attacks on occupying troops in Iraq like the one that killed 19 Italians in Nassiriya in November. ''May there be 10, 100, 1,000 Nassiriyas'' yelled the crowd.

Authorities said they would allow peaceful protests, but they deployed some 10,000 police who were out in force around rail and metro stations and in piazzas.

Demonstrators gathering for a protest march across the city massed behind a large banner reading ''No War - No Bush.''

Bush presented the pope with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest U.S. civilian award, at their first meeting since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2001.

The pictures beamed back home could help Bush with Christians in general, and Catholic voters in particular, in his November re-election bid.

Bush later laid a wreath at the Ardeatine Caves, site of one of the worst World War II massacres in Italy, bowing his head as he stood alongside Berlusconi at the memorial.

Bush's biggest goal on his weekend trip -- which takes him away from a political storm in Washington after the resignation of the head of the CIA -- will be to try to overcome differences on a new U.N. resolution endorsing Iraq's caretaker government and establishing a U.S.-led multinational force.

On Saturday Bush meets French President Jacques Chirac, hoping to warm relations strained over Iraq, before attending D-Day anniversary ceremonies in Normandy on Sunday.

06-04-04 10:57 EDT

posted June 04, 2004 12:14 PM            

(June 4) -- Here is the text of President Bush presenting the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Pope John Paul II at the Vatican. The text was provided by the White House.

President Bush: Your Holiness, thank you very much for receiving Laura and me, and our delegation. I bring greetings from our country, where you are respected, admired and greatly loved.

I also bring a message from my government that says to you, sir, we will work for human liberty and human dignity, in order to spread peace and compassion; that we appreciate the strong symbol of freedom that you have stood for, and we recognize the power of freedom to change societies and to change the world.

And so, sir, we're honored to be here. Perhaps the best way I can express my country's gratitude to you, and our respect to you, is to present to you the Medal of Freedom from America. And if you might allow, I'd like to read the citation attached to that honor:

"A devoted servant of God, His Holiness Pope John Paul II has championed the cause of the poor, the weak, the hungry, and the outcast. He has defended the unique dignity of every life, and the goodness of all life. Through his faith and moral conviction, he has given courage to others to be not afraid in overcoming injustice and oppression. His principled stand for peace and freedom has inspired millions and helped to topple communism and tyranny. The United States honors this son of Poland who became the Bishop of Rome and a hero of our time."

And so, on behalf of the American people, Your Holiness, I would be honored if you would accept our Medal of Freedom.

(The Medal of Freedom is presented.)

Pope John Paul II: I am very grateful, Mr. President, for this thoughtful gesture. May the desire for freedom, peace, a more humane world symbolized by this medal inspire men and women of goodwill in every time and place.

God bless America.

06/04/04 08:59 EDT