W. comes clean-on his dad, Condi's farts and the time Dick waterboarded the house boy-By MATT TAIBBI

[kpete]

Bush Apologizes: The Farewell Interview We Wish He'd Give
W. comes clean - on his dad, Condi's farts and the time Dick waterboarded the house boy

By MATT TAIBBI
posted Jan 22, 2009 11:45 PM

Despite a financial crisis for the ages, the catastrophic collapse of a Republican Party crippled by his political legacy, and the highest presidential disapproval rating in the history of American polling, outgoing commander in chief George W. Bush has not completely lost his sense of fun. When Rolling Stone caught up with him at the White House shortly after the holidays for what would turn out to be his final extended sit-down interview as president, the graying but still quite fit Texan had just finished his morning exercycle session in an eagle-emblazoned sweatsuit and was fiddling with a new toy.

"They call it a Wii, or a Mee, or something," Bush tells me, smiling as he waves a wandlike plastic device in front of a 54-inch plasma TV in the Treaty Room, a large, brightly lit chamber on the second floor of the Executive Residence that traditionally functions as the president's private study. The president is playing a friendly game of Major League Baseball — the Boston Red Sox against his cherished Texas Rangers — and a computer-rendered Daisuke Matsuzaka drills a hard slider right past him, down and in.

"Huh," says the president. "Might have to choke up a little."

....................

Well, the memo was titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack in U.S."
W: It was?

Yes, sir.
W: Well, nobody told me that.

But they wrote it to you.
W: But nobody told me that they wrote it to me.

Who's "they"?
W: I don't know. Whoever is in the room. Vice President Cheney. Don Rumsfeld. Rove. Sometimes there's some other guys. It kind of rotates.

Do you decide who "they" is?
W: No, they usually decide who they is. Or at least one of they does. Usually Cheney.

Interesting. What did they tell you they wrote to you about why America needed to invade Iraq?
W: Sometime in the fall of 2001, pretty soon after 9/11, Rumsfeld and Cheney handed me a piece of paper. I asked them what was in it. Rumsfeld says, "Mr. President, we've just written you a memo explaining that we need to invade Iraq." And I said, "OK. Why?" And Dick says to me, "Because of 9/11, Mr. President."

Is that the whole story?
W: Yeah. Why?


much more at:
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/25329027/