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Exclusive: Bush Wanted To Invade Iraq If Elected in 2000

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RamboLiberal Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jun-17-05 11:37 PM
Original message
Exclusive: Bush Wanted To Invade Iraq If Elected in 2000
Edited on Fri Jun-17-05 11:43 PM by RamboLiberal
http://www.gnn.tv/articles/article.php?id=761

Two years before 9/11, candidate Bush was already talking privately about attacking Iraq, according to his former ghost writer

Houston: Two years before the September 11 attacks, presidential candidate George W. Bush was already talking privately about the political benefits of attacking Iraq, according to his former ghost writer, who held many conversations with then-Texas Governor Bush in preparation for a planned autobiography.

“He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999,” said author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz. “It was on his mind. He said to me: ‘One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.’ And he said, ‘My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.’ He said, ‘If I have a chance to invade….if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I’m going to have a successful presidency.”

Herskowitz said that Bush expressed frustration at a lifetime as an underachiever in the shadow of an accomplished father. In aggressive military action, he saw the opportunity to emerge from his father’s shadow. The moment, Herskowitz said, came in the wake of the September 11 attacks. “Suddenly, he’s at 91 percent in the polls, and he’d barely crawled out of the bunker.”

That President Bush and his advisers had Iraq on their minds long before weapons inspectors had finished their work – and long before alleged Iraqi ties with terrorists became a central rationale for war – has been raised elsewhere, including in a book based on recollections of former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill. However, Herskowitz was in a unique position to hear Bush’s unguarded and unfiltered views on Iraq, war and other matters – well before he became president.

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phaseolus Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jun-17-05 11:40 PM
Response to Original message
1. Oh that's just sick.
All those people dead just so he could be bigger than daddy?
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Erika Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jun-17-05 11:41 PM
Response to Reply #1
3. Yeah
He will go down as the worst president in U.S. history, deservedly so.
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driver8 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jun-17-05 11:42 PM
Response to Reply #1
5. That is exactly right! So he could show daddy that he wasn't just
a fuck-up...

No one around to bail you out of this one, georgie.
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Turbineguy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jun-17-05 11:41 PM
Response to Original message
2. I heard
candidate Bush say it. No, I did not take down the quote and the date and time but I know he said it.
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yorkiemommie1 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jun-17-05 11:42 PM
Response to Original message
4. he's a slug
with a sick persistence to get his daddy's and mommy's approval.
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longship Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jun-17-05 11:49 PM
Response to Original message
6. This is old but, in DSM context, very important news.
Read O'Neill's book. It's a gem.
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jaysunb Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jun-17-05 11:56 PM
Response to Reply #6
7. Correct
this is old news to some of us, but now that the scales are falling many others eyes, it will only serve to verify what many of us have known all along.
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dchill Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jun-18-05 12:04 AM
Response to Original message
8. Thanks to Mainstream Media ...
all this is little known fact. America needed to be aware of this before Cowboy Kookus even got his party's nomination. NOBODY in the MSM talked about this. But they knew - if I knew about it, they had to.

Bush was the hand-picked PNAC candidate. But then how many Americans have ever heard of PNAC? Not many, you can bet.

The bottom line is this: Bush & Co. AND many high-profile media types knew going in that impeachable acts would be committed. It's criminal, it's un-American, and it's completely unacceptable.
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Mugsy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jun-18-05 12:33 AM
Response to Original message
9. Old news. He said so on PBS in Feb 2000:
"<...> I'm just as frustrated as many Americans are that Saddam Hussein still lives. I think we ought to keep the pressure on him. I will tell you this: If we catch him developing weapons of mass destruction in any way, shape or form, I'll deal with that in a way that he won't like." - Presidential Candidate GOVERNOR George W. Bush, on PBS NewsMakers, February 16, 2000

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/election/jan-june00/bush_2-16.html
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Karenina Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jun-18-05 08:55 AM
Response to Reply #9
10. Good catch!
:kick:
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LightningFlash Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jun-18-05 09:00 AM
Response to Reply #9
11. EXCELLENT! Start getting all the quotes and sites together...
Let's put them on multiple mirror websites, be the media!!!!

We will bring these lying scum down, we the people!!!!

:patriot:
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blm Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jun-18-05 09:14 AM
Response to Reply #9
12. Explains why Weapons of Mass Destruction became a CATCHPHRASE post 9-11
.
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lawladyprof Donating Member (628 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jun-18-05 09:16 AM
Response to Original message
13. Did PNAC pick Bush because of his instability-family issues?
Because his rivalry with his father would make him especially malleable?
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sundancekid Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jun-18-05 12:42 PM
Response to Reply #13
14. clinically, chimp had the perfect mix:: "unfinished business" meets
"overcompensating inferiority complex" or, in the vernacular it's phrased more like: the fukk-up expresses the ultimate fukk-off.
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