Reverend Moon: A Bush Family Album - great read

[WhiteTara]

http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/9/14/22322/6980
During the 2004 race for president, Kevin Phillips, the Nixon staffer promoting his book American Dynasty, pitched the Democrats an easy one. "Why don't they spend a little time talking about all the people George W. Bush associates with in religion-like towers?" said Phillips on PBS's "NOW."

He pointed to Sun Myung Moon, the wealthy friend of the Bush family and publisher of the Washington Times, who'd just made the news for wearing a crown and robes on Capitol Hill and informing a gathering of House of Representatives members he was the Second Coming. Phillips also mentioned an incident in which Doug Wead, the Bush family point man on religion, lured Southern Baptists to a 2001 inaugural prayer lunch hosted by Moon. As it turned out, the, luncheon welcomed Bush to the White House but also celebrated the teachings of Moon, who calls Jesus a failure in contrast to his own splendor. "And then you turn around and go to the Sun Belt and pretend that you're the hero of every fundamentalist and evangelical," Phillips said of such Republicans.
snip
Here's a Reuters story about Bush, Sr. touring in 1996 with the good Reverend. In Buenos Aires, Bush proclaimed Moon "the man with the vision" whose Washington Times "restores sanity to Washington." In Japan in 1995, Bush had also spoken for Moon, despite pleas from Japanese who were pursuing claims against Moon for defrauding little old ladies, and American mothers like Cynthia Lilley, who told the Washington Post that the Moon sect used pictures of Moon and Bush "to reassure parents that it's okay that their children are on the streets selling flowers 18 hours a day" (the famous fundraising method of the tireless Moon Children.)

Bush took a fee in the seven figures for the trip, according to several reports, and defended his participation, telling the Washington Post through a spokesman that he "strongly believes in the mission" of the church, citing its emphasis on the family. (Here he is at one event, that of Moon's FFWPU, or Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, one of many confusingly-named arms of the Unification Church.)