Bush "Deception Points" -- Factual Rebuttal

Bush "Deception Points" -- Factual Rebuttal

By Russ Baker
The Huffington Post
November 9, 2010

In George W. Bush's book Decision Points, the former President tells a story of his presidency based on his own say-so. In my book Family of Secrets, based on five years of research, hundreds of interviews and thousands of documents, I reveal a very different one.

BUSH: Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld pushed him to invade Iraq. He portrays himself as a reluctant warrior who had qualms about resort to force.

BAKER: Bush was already looking forward to invading Iraq years earlier. Bush told his own contracted ghostwriter, back in 1999, when he was not yet even the GOP nominee, that if elected president he would invade Iraq. The reason? Score political points and secure high poll numbers. Bush confided his belief that successful presidents needed to win a war, and he thought Iraq would be an easy one.

BUSH: A religious conversion changed his life.

BAKER: In a way, yes; but not as Bush's account implies. Bush's "conversion" came after a key Bush family political adviser warned that it was impossible to win the presidency without embracing the sentiments of America's huge bloc of fundamentalist Christians.

BUSH: He was mortified by the disaster that resulted from Hurricane Katrina (and takes some responsibility for the slow response)

BAKER: The incompetence of the federal government was the result of willful neglect of FEMA, the agency in charge of response. Bush and his team were interested in weakening and defunding agencies like FEMA, and outsourcing their functions and budgets to friends and supporters.

BUSH: His father did not have much influence with him, beyond being generally supportive offstage.

BAKER: Father and son were joined in the family enterprise from the start. Their respective ventures in the oil business were connected to covert intelligence operations. Most of the key figures in bringing Bush to power and keeping him there were associates of his father.

Those are just a few of the problems with the Bush narrative. But the principal failing of Decision Points is that it skips over so much that is crucial to understanding the man and his presidency. It is not accidental that, like his father, George W. chose not to write a full-bore memoir that would have brought this broader focus into play.

Continued. . .