- HOUSTON - Two years before
the September 11 attacks, presidential candidate George W. Bush was already
talking privately about the political benefits of attacking Iraq, according
to his former ghost writer, who held many conversations with then-Texas
Governor Bush in preparation for a planned autobiography.
-
- "He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999,"
said author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz. "It was on his mind.
He said to me: 'One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be
seen as a commander-in-chief.' And he said, 'My father had all this political
capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.'
He said, 'If I have a chance to invade.if I had that much capital, I'm
not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to
get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency."
-
- Herskowitz said that Bush expressed frustration at a
lifetime as an underachiever in the shadow of an accomplished father. In
aggressive military action, he saw the opportunity to emerge from his father's
shadow. The moment, Herskowitz said, came in the wake of the September
11 attacks. "Suddenly, he's at 91 percent in the polls, and he'd barely
crawled out of the bunker."
-
- That President Bush and his advisers had Iraq on their
minds long before weapons inspectors had finished their work - and long
before alleged Iraqi ties with terrorists became a central rationale for
war - has been raised elsewhere, including in a book based on recollections
of former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill. However, Herskowitz was in a
unique position to hear Bush's unguarded and unfiltered views on Iraq,
war and other matters - well before he became president.
- In 1999, Herskowitz struck a deal with the campaign of
George W. Bush about a ghost-written autobiography, which was ultimately
titled A Charge to Keep : My Journey to the White House, and he and Bush
signed a contract in which the two would split the proceeds. The publisher
was William Morrow. Herskowitz was given unimpeded access to Bush, and
the two met approximately 20 times so Bush could share his thoughts. Herskowitz
began working on the book in May, 1999, and says that within two months
he had completed and submitted some 10 chapters, with a remaining 4-6 chapters
still on his computer. Herskowitz was replaced as Bush's ghostwriter after
Bush's handlers concluded that the candidate's views and life experiences
were not being cast in a sufficiently positive light.
-
- According to Herskowitz, who has authored more than 30
books, many of them jointly written autobiographies of famous Americans
in politics, sports and media (including that of Reagan adviser Michael
Deaver), Bush and his advisers were sold on the idea that it was difficult
for a president to accomplish an electoral agenda without the record-high
approval numbers that accompany successful if modest wars.
-
- The revelations on Bush's attitude toward Iraq emerged
recently during two taped interviews of Herskowitz, which included a discussion
of a variety of matters, including his continued closeness with the Bush
family, indicated by his subsequent selection to pen an authorized biography
of Bush's grandfather, written and published last year with the assistance
and blessing of the Bush family.
-
- Herskowitz also revealed the following:
- -In 2003, Bush's father indicated to him that he disagreed
with his son's invasion of Iraq.
- -Bush admitted that he failed to fulfill his Vietnam-era
domestic National Guard service obligation, but claimed that he had been
"excused."
- - Bush revealed that after he left his Texas National
Guard unit in 1972 under murky circumstances, he never piloted a plane
again. That casts doubt on the carefully-choreographed moment of Bush emerging
in pilot's garb from a jet on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln
in 2003 to celebrate "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq. The image,
instantly telegraphed around the globe, and subsequent hazy White House
statements about his capacity in the cockpit, created the impression that
a heroic Bush had played a role in landing the craft.
- -Bush described his own business ventures as "floundering"
before campaign officials insisted on recasting them in a positive light.
-
- Throughout the interviews for this article and in subsequent
conversations, Herskowitz indicated he was conflicted over revealing information
provided by a family with which he has longtime connections, and by how
his candor could comport with the undefined operating principles of the
as-told-to genre. Well after the interviews -- in which he expressed consternation
that Bush's true views, experience and basic essence had eluded the American
people -- Herskowitz communicated growing concern about the consequences
for himself of the publication of his remarks, and said that he had been
under the impression he would not be quoted by name. However, when conversations
began, it was made clear to him that the material was intended for publication
and attribution. A tape recorder was present and visible at all times.
-
- Several people who know Herskowitz well addressed his
character and the veracity of his recollections. "I don't know anybody
that's ever said a bad word about Mickey," said Barry Silverman, a
well-known Houston executive and civic figure who worked with him on another
book project. An informal survey of Texas journalists turned up uniform
confidence that Herskowitz's account as contained in this article could
be considered accurate.
-
- One noted Texas journalist who spoke with Herskowitz
about the book in 1999 recalls how the author mentioned to him at the time
that Bush had revealed things the campaign found embarrassing and did not
want in print. He requested anonymity because of the political climate
in the state. "I can't go near this," he said.
-
- According to Herskowitz, George W. Bush's beliefs on
Iraq were based in part on a notion dating back to the Reagan White House
- ascribed in part to now-vice president Dick Cheney, Chairman of the House
Republican Policy Committee under Reagan. "Start a small war. Pick
a country where there is justification you can jump on, go ahead and invade."
-
- Bush's circle of pre-election advisers had a fixation
on the political capital that British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
collected from the Falklands War. Said Herskowitz: "They were just
absolutely blown away, just enthralled by the scenes of the troops coming
back, of the boats, people throwing flowers at [Thatcher] and her getting
these standing ovations in Parliament and making these magnificent speeches."
- Republicans, Herskowitz said, felt that Jimmy Carter's
political downfall could be attributed largely to his failure to wage a
war. He noted that President Reagan and President Bush's father himself
had (besides the narrowly-focused Gulf War I) successfully waged limited
wars against tiny opponents - Grenada and Panama - and gained politically.
But there were successful small wars, and then there were quagmires, and
apparently George H.W. Bush and his son did not see eye to eye.
-
- "I know [Bush senior] would not admit this now,
but he was opposed to it. I asked him if he had talked to W about invading
Iraq. "He said, 'No I haven't, and I won't, but Brent [Scowcroft]
has.' Brent would not have talked to him without the old man's okaying
it." Scowcroft, national security adviser in the elder Bush's administration,
penned a highly publicized warning to George W. Bush about the perils of
an invasion.
-
- Herskowitz's revelations are not the sole indicator of
Bush's pre-election thinking on Iraq. In December 1999, some six months
after his talks with Herskowitz, Bush surprised veteran political chroniclers,
including the Boston Globe's David Nyhan, with his blunt pronouncements
about Saddam at a six-way New Hampshire primary event that got little notice:
"It was a gaffe-free evening for the rookie front-runner, till he
was asked about Saddam's weapons stash," wrote Nyhan. 'I'd take 'em
out,' [Bush] grinned cavalierly, 'take out the weapons of mass destructionI'm
surprised he's still there," said Bush of the despot who remains in
power after losing the Gulf War to Bush Jr.'s fatherIt remains to be seen
if that offhand declaration of war was just Texas talk, a sort of locker
room braggadocio, or whether it was Bush's first big clinker. "
-
- The notion that President Bush held unrealistic or naïve
views about the consequences of war was further advanced recently by a
Bush supporter, the evangelist Pat Robertson, who revealed that Bush had
told him the Iraq invasion would yield no casualties. In addition, in recent
days, high-ranking US military officials have complained that the White
House did not provide them with adequate resources for the task at hand.
-
- Herskowitz considers himself a friend of the Bush family,
and has been a guest at the family vacation home in Kennebunkport. In the
late 1960s, Herskowitz, a longtime Houston Chronicle sports columnist designated
President Bush's father, then-Congressman George HW Bush, to replace him
as a guest columnist, and the two have remained close since then. (Herskowitz
was suspended briefly in April without pay for reusing material from one
of his own columns, about legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden.)
- In 1999, when Herskowitz turned in his chapters for Charge
to Keep, Bush's staff expressed displeasure -- often over Herskowitz's
use of language provided by Bush himself. In a chapter on the oil business,
Herskowitz included Bush's own words to describe the Texan's unprofitable
business ventures, writing: "the companies were floundering".
"I got a call from one of the campaign lawyers, he was kind of angry,
and he said, 'You've got some wrong information.' I didn't bother to say,
'Well you know where it came from.' [The lawyer] said, 'We do not consider
that the governor struggled or floundered in the oil business. We consider
him a successful oilman who started up at least two new businesses.' "
-
- In the end, campaign officials decided not to go with
Herskowitz's account, and, moreover, demanded everything back. "The
lawyer called me and said, 'Delete it. Shred it. Just do it.' "
-
- "They took it and [communications director] Karen
[Hughes] rewrote it," he said. A campaign official arrived at his
home at seven a.m. on a Monday morning and took his notes and computer
files. However, Herskowitz, who is known for his memory of anecdotes from
his long history in journalism and book publishing, says he is confident
about his recollections.
-
- 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."
This directly contradicts his public statements that he participated in
obligatory training with the Alabama National Guard. Bush's claim to have
fulfilled his military duty has been subject to intense scrutiny; he has
insisted in the past that he did show up for monthly drills in Alabama
- though commanding officers say they never saw him, and no Guardsmen have
come forward to accept substantial "rewards" for anyone who can
claim to have seen Bush on base.
-
- Herskowitz said he asked Bush if he ever flew a plane
again after leaving the Texas Air National Guard in 1972 - which was two
years prior to his contractual obligation to fly jets was due to expire.
He said Bush told him he never flew any plane - military or civilian -
again. That would contradict published accounts in which Bush talks about
his days in 1973 working with inner-city children, when he claimed to have
taken some of the children up in a plane.
-
- In 2002, three years after he had been pulled off the
George W. Bush biography, Herskowitz was asked by Bush's father to write
a book about the current president's grandfather, Prescott Bush, after
getting a message that the senior Bush wanted to see him. "Former
President Bush just handed it to me. We were sitting there one day, and
I was visiting him there in his officeHe said, 'I wish somebody would do
a book about my dad.' "
-
- "He said to me, 'I know this has been a disappointing
time for you, but it's amazing how many times something good will come
out of it.' I passed it on to my agent, he jumped all over it. I asked
[Bush senior], 'Would you support it and would you give me access to the
rest of family?' He said yes."
-
- That book, "Duty, Honor, Country: The Life and Legacy
of Prescott Bush," was published in 2003 by Routledge. If anything,
the book has been criticized for its over-reliance on the Bush family's
perspective and rosy interpretation of events. Herskowitz himself is considered
the ultimate "as-told-to" author, lending credibility to his
account of what George W. Bush told him. Herskowitz's other books run the
gamut of public figures, and include the memoirs of Reagan aide Deaver,
former Texas Governor and Nixon Treasury Secretary John Connally, newsman
Dan Rather, astronaut Walter Cunningham, and baseball greats Mickey Mantle
and Nolan Ryan.
-
- After Herskowitz was pulled from the Bush book project,
the biographer learned that a scenario was being prepared to explain his
departure. "I got a phone call from someone in the Bush campaign,
confidentially, saying 'Watch your back.' "
-
- Reporters covering Bush say that when they inquired as
to why Herskowitz was no longer on the project, Hughes intimated that Herskowitz
had personal habits that interfered with his writing - a claim Herskowitz
said is unfounded. Later, the campaign put out the word that Herskowitz
had been removed for missing a deadline. Hughes subsequently finished the
book herself - it received largely critical reviews for its self-serving
qualities and lack of spontaneity or introspection.
-
- So, said Herskowitz, the best material was left on the
cutting room floor, including Bush's true feelings.
-
- "He told me that as a leader, you can never admit
to a mistake," Herskowitz said. "That was one of the keys to
being a leader."
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