The Truth Slowly Drips Out

I've posted information here before about Bush's 1999 "autobiography," A Charge To Keep, which was ghost-written by Karen Hughes. As I've mentioned, this book has some serious accuracy problems, particularly when discussing Bush's life in 1970s, including his National Guard service.

What I didn't know until now was that Hughes wasn't the initial author. That honor goes to Mickey Herskowitz, an author and journalist from Houston. Herskowitz was signed up to write "A Charge to Keep" in 1999 and met with Bush extensively to prepare for writing the book. However, after Herskowitz submitted his initial chapters, he was fired because the material he submitted was too, well, true, and relied on quoting Bush's frank statements verbatim without the requisite polishing that we've seen over the past four years. For example, Herskowitz quoted Bush as saying the businesses he started were "floundering" and Bush's advisors took issue with that. Hughes took over and rewrote the material, which apparently involved making stuff up. Herskowitz still retains somewhat of a favored status among the Bush family, as Bush Sr. asked him to write a book about his grandfather.

A reporter caught up with Herskowitz recently, and talked about his experiences with Bush. The article's got some good tidbits about Bush's plans for invading Iraq pre-9/11 and his view that, without a war, a president couldn't build up enough political capital to get things done.

But the most interesting section is on Bush's National Guard service, or lack thereof. Apparently Bush spoke very frankly about his time in the Guard and about the disputed Alabama service as well:

According to Herskowitz, Bush was reluctant to discuss his time in the Texas Air
National Guard – and inconsistent when he did so. Bush, he said, provided
conflicting explanations of how he came to bypass a waiting list and obtain a
coveted Guard slot as a domestic alternative to being sent to Vietnam.
Herskowitz also said that Bush told him that after transferring from his Texas
Guard unit two-thirds through his six-year military obligation to work on an
Alabama political campaign, he did not attend any Alabama National Guard
drills at all, because he was “excused.”

What a liar. Please, America. End this November 2.

- posted by Joshua @ 3:30 PM (0) comments

 
Someone Give This Man The Correct Talking Points

So, on who's to blame for the looting of explosives in Iraq, which is it?

Bush said this yesterday, in Pennsylvania:

"The senator is denigrating the action of our troops and commanders in the field
without knowing the facts. Unfortunately, that's part of the pattern of saying
anything to get elected."

O.K. So it's wrong to attack our troops on this. Got it. (Kerry of course has said that he's not attacking the troops, but attacking the President's leadership.) So here's Rudy Giuliani this morning on TV (link includes video):

The president was cautious the president was prudent the president did what a
commander in chief should do. No matter how you try to blame it on the president
the actual responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there.
Did they search carefully enough? Didn't they search carefully enough?

I guess Bush will be out on the trail today complaining about how Giuliani is denigrating the action of our troops.

- posted by Joshua @ 11:27 AM (0) comments

 
Did Rehnquist Tip Off Bush?

Considering Rehnquist went in for his surgery on Saturday, it appears likely that Bush must have at least have had some advance notice of the illness. It would have been somewhat negligent of Rehnquist not to give the President a heads up about that. But, surprisingly, the Bush administration said they did not know about it until it was announced on Monday. Somehow, I suspect the Bush Administration may be trying to cover up having advance notice of Rehnquist's condition. In Ron Suskind's revealing article in the New York Times Magazine about George W. Bush, he has this nugget buried at the end of the piece, per Salon.com:

Nearly 7,000 words into that 8,000-word story Suskind reported on a private
luncheon Bush hosted in mid-September for his top donors, during which time he
spoke freely, and confidently, about the campaign. At one point Bush promised
loyalists that soon after his inauguration he would have the opportunity to
appoint a justice to the Supreme Court; just the first of what Bush insisted
would be four during his second term.

Hmmm...

- posted by Joshua @ 7:14 PM (0) comments