Bush Meets Privately With Think Tank Promoting Military Strike On Iran

[RedEarth]

This tidbit about President Bush’s schedule was buried in today’s Washington Post:

Bush traveled Friday night to Stanford University, where he met privately with members of the libertarian Hoover Institution to discuss the war. He concluded the day with a private dinner held by George P. Shultz, a Hoover fellow and former secretary of state.

Why is this significant? The Hoover Institution is a think tank that has been aggressively promoting the viability of a preemptive military strike in Iran. Here’s just a couple of recent examples —

Thomas Sowell, a senior fellow at Hoover:

will be able to think of all sorts of nicer alternatives to taking out Iran’s nuclear development sites. They will be able to come up with all sorts of abstract arguments and moral equivalence, such as: Other countries have nuclear weapons. Why not Iran? Debating abstract questions is much easier than confronting concrete and often brutal alternatives. The big question is whether we are serious or suicidal.

more......

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/04/22/bush-hoover-iran/

[JohnyCanuck]

1. Of course, it's not considered polite to mention he meets with PNAC

just about every day of the week.

[Imagevision]

2. I believe the nuke talk is when all else fails we'll talk up nuke plan

Would Bush tell Iran, drop the nukelar plans or we'll nuclear bomb you? -- Like Iraq, will Bush have it "televised" for your viewing pleasure?

[C_U_L8R]

3. I love how the so-called "institutes"

try to wrap themselves in an aura of academia
or refer to themselves in the oh-so-modest term "think tank".
when they are just bunch of fat old racist duffers and cronies
overly-impressed with themselves and their circle-jerk of hate.
Wank-tank seems a much more fitting title for these bloviators.

[tanyev]

4. I hope they gave him a paper placemat and some crayons

so he wouldn't be too bored and cause a scene.

[Rex]

5. Wonder if he asked Shultz about the 2 Texas bechtel workers caught

fleeing a nuclear power plant with 500,000 dollars? Shultz was the MAN for this corporation back in the day with Rummy.

http://www.publicintegrity.org/wow/bio.aspx?act=pro&ddlC=6

"By far the most influential hire, however, was George P. Shultz. After leaving the Nixon administration in 1974, where he served as Treasury secretary, Shultz joined Bechtel as its executive vice president. Shultz suspended his association with Bechtel when appointed secretary of state by President Ronald Reagan in 1982. In 1983, Shultz dispatched diplomatic envoy Donald Rumsfeld to meet with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to advocate for construction of a pipeline running from Iraqi oilfields to Jordan's port of Aqaba. According to documents recently obtained by the Institute for Policy Studies, Hussein was afraid Israel would bomb the pipeline, so an investor in the project—whom Bechtel claimed was not on its payroll—reportedly tried to arrange a deal through the U.S. Attorney General's office by which Israel would receive some $70 million per year not to bomb the pipeline. Critics accused Shultz of intervening on behalf of Bechtel, which he denied. Shultz rejoined Bechtel in 1989 as a member of its board of directors after retiring from the State Department. Upon returning, he learned that the company had assumed a $2 billion contract for project management of an Iraqi petrochemicals complex that manufactured ethylene oxide, a chemical used in the production of plastics. U.S. chemical experts pointed out, however, that the chemical was also a precursor to mustard gas. On Shultz's recommendation, Bechtel pulled out of the project. Shultz currently serves as a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University."

Strange coincidence? I think not.

[remfan]

6. More to it than you realize

http://csmonitor.com/cgi-bin/durableRedirect.pl?/durable/1999/07/02/p2s1.htm

PALO ALTO, CALIF. - George W. Bush may have gotten his drawl from Texas and his pedigree from Washington, but many of his ideas are coming from California.

Though the GOP presidential front-runner made his first trip this week as a candidate to this state, he's had a year-long running engagement with the Stanford University-based Hoover Institution, a collection of battle-toughened conservatives who have emerged as the early core of Mr. Bush's brain trust.

There are many interesting aspects of this relationship, not least of which is the juxtaposition of the think tank's staunchly conservative heritage and the candidates moderate political persona. But whatever the attraction, the relationship has blossomed fully, with no end in sight.

It started cozily enough in April 1998 in the home of George Schultz, former secretary of State to President Reagan and now a Hoover fellow. Mr. Schultz's home on the Stanford campus was host to three hours of wide-ranging policy discussions involving half a dozen Hoover fellows, all built on the premise that Bush would eventually run.

Note the date of the article is 1999