BUSH'S MEMOIR ANECDOTES REVEAL PERHAPS MORE THAN HE INTENDED

by H.N. Burdett

Among the more fascinating books published during the past year was George W. Bush's Decision Points. Presidential memoirs are, of course, opportunities to present the case for the defense before historians, journalists and other assorted experts and upstarts have a chance to sharpen their long knives.

In this instance, there was an element of urgency. Had Nathan Miller lived to revise his book, Star-Spangled Men: America's 10 Worst Presidents, the 43rd President of the United States not only might well have appeared on the list, he might even have been at the very top.

On Bush's watch, pre-emptive war was waged against a nation erroneously believed to have had weapons of mass destruction leading to more than 100,000 verified Iraqi civilians and 3,000 Americans killed, as well as some 20,000 seriously wounded; the federal response was abysmally slow and inefficient to a category 5 hurricane that slammed into the Gulf Coast, wreaking havoc on parts of Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana, killing 1,500 and leaving tens of thousands homeless; and, after four years of record surpluses under the Clinton Administration, the Bush Administration ran annual deficits of more than $300 billion.

By utilizing anecdotes rather than reciting treatises on policy, which various sources allege never much interested Bush, he often reveals perhaps more than he actually intended. Particularly intriguing were Bush's impressions of his closest advisers and aides, including Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his longtime political guru, Karl Rove, whom he refers to as like a "political mad scientist."

After mulling over his short-listed candidates for vice president, Bush "seriously thought about offering the job" to Missouri Senator Jack Danforth, who had "earned my respect with his defense of Clarence Thomas during his Supreme Court confirmation of 1991." But he turned to Dick Cheney, whose "experience was more extensive and diversified than that of anyone else on my list." Besides serving as President Gerald Ford's chief of staff and George H. W. Bush's secretary of defense, Cheney had run a global business and served a decade in Congress without losing an election.

"While Dick knew Washington better than about anyone, he didn't behave like an insider," Bush recalls. "He allowed subordinates to get credit. When he spoke at meetings, his carefully chosen words carried credibility and influence.

"Like me, Dick was a westerner. He enjoyed fishing and spending time outdoors. . . He had a practical mind and a dry sense of humor. He told me once he had started at Yale a few years before me, but the university asked him not to come back. Twice. He said he had once filled out a compatibility test designed to match his personality with the most appropriate career. When the results came in, Dick was told he was best suited to be a funeral director."

Karl Rove opposed Cheney's selection. Bush invited Rove to the governor's mansion to make his case. "I invited one person to listen in," Bush says. "That would be Dick. I believe in airing out disagreements. I also wanted to cement a relationship of trust between Karl and Dick in case they ended up together at the White House."

Rove contended "Cheney's presence on the ticket would add nothing to the electoral map, since Wyoming's three electoral votes were among the most reliably Republican in the country." Cheney's record in Congress was knee-jerk conservative and included some hot-button votes that could have been used against the ticket. And Cheney's heart condition "would raise questions about his fitness to serve." Furthermore, choosing George H. W. Bush's defense secretary "could make people question whether I was my own man." Bush 43 reveals that he did consult his father about the possibility of Cheney as vice president and that Bush 41 gave his former secretary of defense his blessing as a fine choice.

As Bush's first term was winding down, Cheney offered his resignation because, the president felt, a widespread impression persisted that the vice president was actually making all of the key White House decisions and by him leaving that notion would be disproved. While Bush says he appreciated the gesture, he told Cheney he wanted him at his side during a second term.

Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld also offered his resignation after photographs were released showing U.S. soldiers torturing Iraqi detainees. But the resignation was declined because Bush curiously claims he could think of no one to replace Rumsfeld.

Bush had initially wanted Rumsfeld to head the Central Intelligence Agency. But during his interview, Rumsfeld "laid out a captivating vision for transforming the Defense Department. He talked about making our forces lighter, more agile, and more readily deployed. . .Rumsfeld impressed me. He was knowledgeable, articulate and confident. As a former secretary of defense (25 years earlier, under Gerald Ford), he had strength and experience to bring major changes to the Pentagon. He would run the bureaucracy, not let the bureaucracy run him."

Bush says his first cabinet selection was an "easy" call: "Colin Powell would be my secretary of state." The two first met at Camp David in 1989 when Powell was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Powell and Cheney were there to brief Bush's father on the surrender of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega.

"Colin was wearing his Army uniform," Bush recalls. "In contrast to the formality of his dress, he was good-natured and friendly. He spoke to everyone in the room, even bystanders like the president's children."

Bush was further impressed that Powell was admired both at home and abroad and could "credibly defend American interests and values, from a stronger NATO to freer trade. I believed Colin could be the second coming of George Marshall, a soldier turned statesman."

But there came a time when Bush had serious second thoughts about Secretary of State Powell.

In March 2001, a White House meeting was held on North Korea policy. The previous administration had offered concessions to North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il in return for his pledge to abandon that country's nuclear weapons programs. Bush maintains that the Clinton policy was a failure and he was determined that from then on, North Korea would have to change its behavior before America made concessions.

Early the next morning, he read an article in the Washington Post that began: "The Bush administration intends to pick up where the Clinton administration left off in negotiations with North Korea over its missile programs, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said yesterday."

Bush was stunned. He figured the reporter must have misquoted Powell "because the story was the exact opposite of what we had discussed at the meeting." He phoned Condoleezza Rice and told her, "By the time Colin gets to the White House for the meeting, this had better be fixed."

"I had given Condi a daunting assignment," Bush writes. "She had to instruct the secretary of state, a world-famous former general, a generation older than she, to correct his quote. Later that morning, Colin came bounding into the Oval Office and said, 'Mr. President, don't worry. It's all been cleared up.'"

Bush also recounts how CIA director George Tenet recruited David Kay, the United Nations' chief inspector in Iraq in 1996, to lead a new inspection team to search for weapons of mass destruction in that country.

Following the inspection, Kay told Congress in October 2003 that Iraq's WMD programs spanned more than two decades, involved thousands of people, billions of dollars, and were elaborately shielded by security and deception operations that continued even beyond the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

"The left trotted out the mantra: 'Bush Lied, People Died,'" he says. "The charge was illogical. If I wanted to mislead the country into war, why would I pick an allegation that was certain to be disproven publicly shortly after we invaded the country? The charge was also dishonest. Members of the previous Washington administration, John Kerry and John Edwards, and the vast majority of Congress had also read the same intelligence that I had and concluded that Iraq had WMD. So had the intelligence agencies around the world. Nobody was lying. We were all wrong. The absence of WMD stockpiles did not change the fact that Saddam was a threat. In January 2004, David Kay said, 'It was reasonable to conclude that Iraq posed an imminent threat. . .What we learned during the inspection made Iraq a more dangerous place potentially than in fact we thought it was even before the war.'

"Still I knew the failure to find WMD would transform public perception of the war. While the world was undoubtedly safer with Saddam gone, the reality was that I had sent American troops into combat based in large part on intelligence that proved to be false. That was a massive blow to our credibility - my credibility - that would shake the confidence of the American people.

"No one was more shocked or angry than I was when we didn't find the weapons," Bush writes. "I had a sickening feeling every time I thought about it. I still do."

Bush, in fact, was so sickened that after it became apparent there were no WMD, he posed for photographs in which he turned one of the more horrific misuses of power by a United States commander-in-chief into the sickest of sick jokes. The cameras caught him mugging like a clueless chimpanzee, looking under White House furniture for weapons of mass destruction. Families of 3,000 young men and women who did not come home from Bush's pre-emptive war were not amused.

If a fair system of international justice existed, George W. Bush would not be living a life of ease at his Crawford, Texas ranch. He would be in the dock at The Hague responding to allegations of war crimes, along with Cheney, Rumsfeld and a few others who incessantly beat the drums for punishing two countries who had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. Meanwhile Osama bin Laden, who ordered the suicide assault on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, continues to illude our forces while hooked up to his dialysis machine.



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