Nice, concise summation of the Bush Family and world problems...

[KansDem]

This email was sent to me today by a friend. Although most of this is known by DUers in various degrees, I thought this would be a nice summation of the Bush Family, and its ties to international terrorism and criminal actions, that could be emailed to those who do not know or understand (yet) why more and more Americans (and world citizens) are turning against the Squatter in the White House.

Sorry for the editing and formatting annoyances. I didn't have the time to make this look "wordly" (besides, my mouse finger hurts today).


>Kevin Phillips: A history of the
>Bushes' ties to the Mideast
>01:00 AM EST on Monday, January 26,
>2004
>
>WASHINGTON
>
>DYNASTIES in American politics are
>dangerous. We saw it with the
>Kennedys, we may well see it with
>the Clintons and we're certainly
>seeing it with the Bushes. Between
>now and the November election, it's
>crucial that Americans come to
>understand how four generations of
>the current president's family have
>embroiled the United States in the
>Mideast through CIA connections,
>arms shipments, rogue banks,
>inherited war policies and personal
>financial links.
>
>As early as 1964, George H.W. Bush,
>running for the U.S. Senate from
>Texas, was labeled by incumbent
>Democrat Ralph Yarborough as a
>hireling of the sheik of Kuwait,
>for whom Bush's company drilled
>offshore oil wells. Over the four
>decades since then, the
>ever-reaching Bushes have emerged
>as the first U.S. political clan to
>thoroughly entangle themselves with
>Mideastern royal families and oil
>money. The family even has links to
>the bin Ladens -- although not to
>family black sheep Osama bin Laden
>-- going back to the 1970s.
>
>How these unusual relationships
>helped bring about 9/11 and then
>distorted the U.S. response to
>Islamic terrorism requires thinking
>of the Bush family as a dynasty.
>The two Bush presidencies are
>inextricably linked by that
>dynasty.
>
>The first family member lured by
>the Mideast's petroleum wealth was
>George W. Bush's great-grandfather
>George H. Walker, a buccaneer who
>was president of Wall Street-based
>W.A. Harriman & Co. In the 1920s,
>Walker and his company participated
>in rebuilding the Baku oil fields!
> only a few hundred miles north of
>current-day Iraq. As senior
>director of Dresser Industries (now
>part of Halliburton), Walker's
>son-in-law Prescott Bush (George W.
>Bush's grandfather) became involved
>with the Mideast in the years after
>World War II.
>
>But it was George H.W. Bush, the
>current president's father, who
>forged the dynasty's strongest ties
>to the region.
>
>George H.W. Bush was the first CIA
>director to come from the oil
>industry. He went on to became the
>first vice president -- and then
>the first president -- to have
>either an oil or a CIA background.
>This helps to explain his
>persistent bent toward the Mideast,
>covert operations and rogue banks
>such as the Abu Dhabi-based Bank of
>Credit and Commerce International,
>or BCCI, which came to be known by
>the nickname "Bank of Crooks and
>Criminals International."
>
>In each of the government offices
>Bush held, he encouraged CIA
>involvement in Iran, Pakistan,
>Afghanistan and other Mideastern
>countries, and he pursued policies
>that helped make the Mideast into
>the world's primary destination for
>arms shipments.
>
>Taking the CIA helm in January
>1976, Bush cemented strong
>relations with the intelligence
>services of both Saudi Arabia and
>the shah of Iran. He worked closely
>with Kamal Adham, the head of Saudi
>intelligence, brother-in-law of
>King Faisal and an early BCCI
>insider. After leaving the CIA, in
>January 1977, Bush became chairman
>of the executive committee of First
>International Bancshares and its
>British subsidiary, where,
>according to journalists Peter
>Truell and Larry Gurwin in their
>1992 book False Profits, Bush
>"traveled on the bank's behalf and
>sometimes marketed to ! internat ional
>banks in London, including several
>Middle Eastern institutions."
>
>Once in the White House, first as
>vice president to Ronald Reagan and
>later as president, George H.W.
>Bush was linked to at least two
>Mideast-centered scandals. It's
>never been entirely clear what
>Bush's connection was to the
>Iran-Contra affair, in which
>clandestine arms shipments to Iran,
>some BCCI-financed, helped
>illegally fund the operations of
>the anti-Sandinista Contra rebels
>in Nicaragua. But in 1992, special
>prosecutor Lawrence E. Walsh
>asserted that Bush, despite his
>protestations, had indeed been "in
>the loop" on multiple illegal acts.
>
>Much clearer was Bush's pivotal
>role, both as vice president and
>president, in "Iraqgate," the
>hidden aid provided by the United
>States, including its military, to
>Saddam Hussein's Iraq in its
>high-stakes war with Iran during
>the 1980s. The United States is
>known to have provided both
>biological cultures that could have
>been used for weapons and nuclear
>know-how to the regime, as well as
>conventional weapons.
>
>As ABC-TV broadcaster Ted Koppel
>put it in a June 1992 Nightline
>program after the 1991 Gulf War:
>"It is becoming increasingly clear
>that George Bush, operating
>largely behind the scenes through
>the 1980s, initiated and supported
>much of the financing, intelligence
>and military help that built
>Saddam's Iraq into the aggressive
>power that the United States
>ultimately had to destroy."
>
>During these years, George H.W.
>Bush's four sons -- George W., Jeb,
>Neil and Marvin -- were following
>in the family footsteps, lining up
>business deals with Saudi, Kuwaiti
>and Bahraini moneymen and cozying
>up to BCCI. The! Mideast was
>becoming a convenient family money
>spigot.
>
>Eldest son George W. Bush made his
>first Mideast connection in the
>late 1970s, with James Bath, a
>Texas businessmen who was the North
>American representative for two
>rich Saudis (and Osama bin Laden
>relatives) -- billionaire Salem bin
>Laden and banker and BCCI insider
>Khalid bin Mahfouz. Bath put
>$50,000 into Bush's 1979 Arbusto
>oil partnership, probably using bin
>Laden-bin Mahfouz funds.
>
>In the late 1980s, after several
>failed oil ventures, the future
>43rd president let the ailing oil
>business in which he was a major
>stockholder and chairman be bought
>out by another foreign-influenced
>operation, Harken Energy. The Wall
>Street Journal commented in 1991,
>"The mosaic of BCCI connections
>surrounding Harken Energy may prove
>nothing more than how ubiquitous
>the rogue bank's ties were. But the
>number of BCCI-connected people who
>had dealings with Harken -- all
>since George W. Bush came on board
>-- likewise raises the question of
>whether they mask an effort to cozy
>up to a presidential son."
>
>Other hints of cronyism came in
>1990 when inexperienced Harken got
>a major contract to drill in the
>Persian Gulf for the government of
>Bahrain. Time magazine reporters
>Jonathan Beaty and S.C. Gwynne, in
>their book The Outlaw Bank,
>concluded "that Mahfouz, or other
>BCCI players, must have had a hand
>in steering the oil-drilling
>contract to the president's son."
>The web entangling the Bush
>presidencies was already being
>spun.
>
>Second son Jeb Bush, now the
>governor of Florida, spent most of
>his time in the early and mid-1980s
>hobnobbing with ex-Cuban
>intelligence officers, Nicaraguan
>Contras ! and othe rs plugged into the
>lucrative orbit of Miami-area front
>groups for the CIA. But he, too,
>had some Mideast connections. Two
>of his business associates,
>Guillermo Hernandez-Cartaya and
>Camilo Padreda, both indicted for
>financial dealings, were longtime
>associates of arms dealer, BCCI
>investor and Iran-Contra figure
>Adnan Khashoggi. Prosecutors
>dropped the case against the two,
>and a federal judge ordered
>Padreda's name expunged from the
>record.
>
>But a few years later, Padreda, a
>former Miami-Dade County GOP
>treasurer, was convicted of fraud
>over a federally insured housing
>development that Jeb Bush had
>helped to facilitate. Jeb Bush also
>socialized with Adbur Sakhia, the
>Miami BCCI branch chief and later
>its top U.S. official.
>
>Neil Bush, most famous for the
>scandal surrounding the corrupt
>practices of Colorado's Silverado
>Savings & Loan, where he was a
>director during the 1980s, also
>picked plums from Persian Gulf
>orchards. In 1993, after his father
>left the White House, Neil went to
>Kuwait with his parents, brother
>Marvin and former Secretary of
>State James A. Baker III. When his
>father left, Neil stayed to lobby
>for business contracts, and after
>returning home evolved a set of
>lucrative relationships with
>Syrian-American businessman Jamal
>Daniel.
>
>One of their ventures, Ignite!, an
>education-software company, also
>included representatives of at
>least three ruling Persian Gulf
>families.
>
>The Bush family's Mideastern
>commercial focus is further
>exemplified by Marvin, the youngest
>brother of the current president.
>From 1993 to 2000, he was a major
>shareholder, along with Mishal
>Youssef Saud al Sabah, a member of
&g! t;the Ku waiti royal family, in the
>Kuwait-American Corp., which had
>holdings in several U.S. defense,
>aviation and industrial security
>companies.
>
>George H.W. Bush's own Persian Gulf
>relationships kept expanding. While
>serving in the Reagan White House
>during the 1980s, he was known in
>the Mideast as "the Saudi vice
>president," and a New Yorker
>article last year described the
>Saudi ambassador to the United
>States as "almost a member of the
> family." Indeed, many saw
>the 1991 Gulf War to expel Iraq
>from Kuwait as an outgrowth of
>Bush's close ties to the oil
>industry and to Gulf royal
>families, who felt threatened by
>Saddam's expansionism.
>
>After losing his bid for a second
>term as president, Bush joined up
>in 1993 with the Washington-based
>Carlyle Group. Under the leadership
>of ex-officials such as Baker and
>former Defense Secretary Frank C.
>Carlucci, Carlyle developed a
>specialty in buying defense
>companies and doubling or
>quadrupling their value. The
>ex-president not only became an
>investor in Carlyle, but a member
>of the company's Asia Advisory
>Board and a rainmaker who drummed
>up investors.
>
>Twelve rich Saudi families,
>including the bin Ladens, were
>among them. In 2002, The Washington
>Post reported, "Saudis close to
>Prince Sultan, the Saudi defense
>minister . . . were encouraged to
>put money into Carlyle as a favor
>to the elder Bush." Bush retired
>from the company last October, and
>Baker, who lobbied U.S. allies last
>month to forgive Iraq's debt,
>remains a Carlyle senior counselor.
>
>If the 1991 war with Iraq and its
>aftermath cemented the Bush ties
>with oil elites and royalty in the
>Mideast, it angered Islamic true
>bel! ievers a nd radicals. By the late
>1990s, many of the Islamic
>insurgents who had been mobilized
>by the CIA and others to chase the
>Soviets out of Afghanistan were
>becoming increasingly
>anti-American. They found a kinship
>with Osama bin Laden, the renegade
>of his billionaire Saudi family,
>who was outraged at the U.S.
>presence in Saudi Arabia.
>
>When the United States launched a
>second war against Iraq, in 2003,
>but failed to find weapons of mass
>destruction that Saddam was
>purported to have, international
>polls, especially those by the
>Washington-based Pew Center,
>charted a massive growth in
>anti-Bush and anti-American
>sentiment in Muslim parts of the
>world -- an obvious boon to
>terrorist recruitment. Even before
>the war, some cynics had argued
>that Iraq was targeted to divert
>attention from the administration's
>failure to catch Osama bin Laden
>and stop al-Qaida terrorism.
>
>Bolder critics hinted that George
>W. Bush had sought to shift
>attention away from how his
>family's ties to the bin Ladens and
>to rogue elements in the Mideast
>had crippled U.S. investigations in
>the months leading up to 9/11. Sen.
>Charles E. Schumer (D.-N.Y.)
>complained that even when Congress
>released the mid-2003 intelligence
>reports on the origins of the 9/11
>attack, the Bush administration
>heavily redacted a 28-page section
>dealing with the Saudis and other
>foreign governments, leading him to
>conclude, "There seems to be a
>systematic strategy of coddling and
>cover-up when it comes to the
>Saudis."
>
>There is no evidence to suggest
>that the events of Sept. 11 could
>have been prevented or discovered
>ahead of time had someone other
>than a Bush been president. But
>there ! is enoug h to suggest that the
>Bush dynasty's many decades of
>entanglement and money-hunting in
>the Mideast have created a major
>conflict of interest that deserves
>to be part of the 2004 political
>debate. No previous presidency has
>had anything remotely similar. Not
>one.
>
>Kevin Phillips, once the Republican
>Party's leading political
>strategist, is a journalist and
>historian. He is now an
>independent. His latest book is
>American Dynasty: Aristocracy,
>Fortune and the Politics of Deceit
>in the House of Bush.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. Maybe 911 would have happened

and then maybe it wouldn't. Looking over the dealings the Bush family has had with oil princes, I wonder.