''Does this picture make me look guilty?''

[Octafish]

U.S. Army 1st Lt. Melissa Stockwell (Ret.), the first female American soldier to lose a limb in the war in Iraq, recites the Pledge of Allegiance as former President George W. Bush looks on during the opening ceremony of the George W. Bush Presidential Center on April 25, 2013. Photographer: Alex Wong/Getty Images.

[Gothmog]

1. W is guilty as heck

[Octafish]

7. ''Money trumps peace.'' -- George Walker Bush

Last edited Fri Jun 3, 2016, 07:41 PM - Edit history (1)

"Commercial interests are very powerful interests," said George W Bush on Feb. 14, 2007 White House press conference in which he added, "Let me put it this way, ah, sometimes, ah, money trumps peace." And then he giggled and not a single member of the callow, cowed and corrupt press corpse saw fit to ask a follow-up.

Gold Star mom Cindy Sheehan tried to bring it to our nation's attention back in 2007. I don't recall even one reporter from the national corporate owned news seeing it fit to comment. Certainly not many have commented on how three generations of Bush men -- Senator Prescott Sheldon Bush, President George Herbert Walker Bush and pretzeldent George Walker Bush all had their eyes on Iraq's oil.

I wish the Press had done its job. Those in authority would have to do their job. Millions might still be alive, the People might use the money spent on wars in better ways, and the Republic might see a return to Justice. To get that started requires jailing those who lied America into war, not making them into heroes cough Bush.

[RKP5637]

51. Sadly MIC = big $$$$$'s, and they don't want to interrupt that gravy train! n/t

[DirkGently]

2. Her prosthetic is red, white and blue.

She shames them all. And they almost look like they sense it.

[Octafish]

8. Their countenances are so revealing I almost feel sorry for their eternal souls.

Who knows what they believe?

[jalan48]

20. Like the Great Gatsby, they are not like us. American's have no idea how different they really are.

[Octafish]

56. ''The Aspens''

Then working at the White House, Scooter Libby reminded Judy Miller, then an imprisoned NYT reporter, to "remember the aspens."

The tree spreads to create a forest via sprouts from the roots; the species are all connected underground.

[Cracklin Charlie]

81. Would love to know the true nature of that underground connected-ness.

At first I thought the Georges were looking at her leg, like to see if she was wearing their precious president cowboy boots.

They make me sick.

[MADem]

3. What a curious picture.

The senior Bushes, along with Junior, look rather agitated, Laura looks medicated (but much less stressed), and Lt. Stockwell, USA (Ret) has been reduced to a prosthetic limb and a skirt.

[Octafish]

9. Yeah. It tells the Story of America since the war in Vietnam.

The great writer and researcher Russ Baker found CIA documents that show Poppy was CIA in 1968, well before he said he was...

CIA Helped Bush Senior In Oil Venture

A Real News exclusive, first published on The Huffington Post
By Russ Baker | January 7, 2007

Newly released internal CIA documents assert that former president George Herbert Walker Bush's oil company emerged from a 1950's collaboration with a covert CIA officer.

Bush has long denied allegations that he had connections to the intelligence community prior to 1976, when he became Central Intelligence Agency director under President Gerald Ford. At the time, he described his appointment as a 'real shocker.'

But the freshly uncovered memos contend that Bush maintained a close personal and business relationship for decades with a CIA staff employee who, according to those CIA documents, was instrumental in the establishment of Bush's oil venture, Zapata, in the early 1950s, and who would later accompany Bush to Vietnam as a “cleared and witting commercial asset” of the agency.

According to a CIA internal memo dated November 29, 1975, Bush's original oil company, Zapata Petroleum, began in 1953 through joint efforts with Thomas J. Devine, a CIA staffer who had resigned his agency position that same year to go into private business. The '75 memo describes Devine as an “oil wild-catting associate of Mr. Bush.” The memo is attached to an earlier memo written in 1968, which lays out how Devine resumed work for the secret agency under commercial cover beginning in 1963.

“Their joint activities culminated in the establishment of Zapata Oil,” the memo reads. In fact, early Zapata corporate filings do not seem to reflect Devine's role in the company, suggesting that it may have been covert. Yet other documents do show Thomas Devine on the board of an affiliated Bush company, Zapata Offshore, in January, 1965, more than a year after he had resumed work for the spy agency.

CONTINUED...

http://www.realnews.org/index.php-option=com_content&ta...

It's ironic, how CIA was helping Poppy drill for oil in Vietnam during the war in Vietnam -- a war JFK opposed.

Personally I find that criminally, as well as politically, interesting when I consider Poppy Bush told the FBI he was in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

[MADem]

18. GHW Bush went to university at a school that was commonly mined for intelligence assets.

Back in the day (and even to this day, but less so, now), the Ivies were a popular place to get the "right sort" of person for those jobs. They needed people who were at ease with the monied classes, because back then, you had to have money to travel. You needed to LOOK like you could afford to be where you were at. Average schmucks stuck out like sore thumbs, while rich people often went to the Continent for R and R.


I think you'd probably be more accurate if you cast your eye back a decade or two from where you're looking.


Some light reading: http://articles.courant.com/2004-08-15/news/0408150067_1_yale-students-yale-alumni-james-jesus-angleton


http://www.namebase.org/campus/henwood.html


http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2004/09/24/for-god-country-yale-and-the-cia/

[jalan48]

22. Do people really believe Reagan was the real President? Bush Sr. got 12 years.

[MADem]

24. No, that's not accurate. Jim Baker was POTUS during the Reagan years.

Bush was relegated to funerals and coronations duty, and his wife was quite resentful of that.

[jalan48]

27. I think given Bush's position as former CIA Director he was more powerful.

[MADem]

33. Nope. He was The Spy Who Was Often Left Out in the Cold for eight years.

He had very little capacity to influence events during that period. He did do as he was told, though. He probably should have piped up more often.

Reagan probably wouldn't have gotten into quite so many fuckups if he'd given George a bigger portfolio.

The fact that he became VP at all was a bit serendipitous (the whole article is educational):

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/07/30/magazine/george-herbert-walker-bush-the-accidental-vice-president.html

...''There's Bush,'' I suggested, half expecting him to close off the discussion. Instead, he paused and then said, ''I can't take him; that 'voodoo economic policy' charge and his stand on abortion are wrong.''

Sensing an opportunity, I reached for a copy of the platform lying on the coffee table, passed it to him and said, ''Governor, this is your platform, every word of it.'' I added that Martin Anderson, Reagan's chief domestic policy adviser, Peter Hannaford and I had scrutinized it carefully. ''If you could be assured that George Bush would support this platform in every detail,'' I asked, ''would you reconsider Bush?''

Reagan mulled this for a moment and then said, deliberately, ''Well, if you put it that way, I would agree to reconsider.'' The opening emerged.

At 7:50 Fairbanks called to say that Bush could indeed embrace the platform; soon thereafter, Halper phoned with the same message. Meanwhile, negotiations with Ford continued upstairs on the 70th floor, with Casey, Meese, Deaver and Wirthlin representing Reagan, and Greenspan, Kissinger and the Ford advisers John O. Marsh, Robert Barrett representing the former president....

[reddread]

41. serendipity?

hinckley straightened Reagan out. Howdy Doody to Poppy's puppetry.
you are attempting to whitewash some dark stains.
good luck.

[MADem]

53. This isn't creative speculation. nt

[reddread]

60. so quit making stuff up

[MADem]

65. I'm not. So stop accusing me of doing that.

The public libraries are full of histories of that era--they're pretty interesting reads, too.

[reddread]

71. already lived through it, even paid attention.

Too bad I cant spend all day in a library documenting your beliefs.
Hinckley, just another wild coincidence in the most coincidental of political dynasties.

[MADem]

84. I was living in Iran at the time. I don't think the fact that you happened to be alive during the

period in question is a) unusual or b) grants you special knowledge, because it doesn't.

[ieoeja]

85. If Bush was running the Reagan White House, why did he ignore the S&L crisis?

Then make it his first priority once he became President thus absorbing a lot of the blame for something that occurred under his predecessor?

[Octafish]

90. He did as his son Neil Bush ripped a billion from Silverado Savings.

It's almost an ENIGMA, what the rich and powerful say. It's to hide what they do.



Case in point: One Neil Mallon Pierce Bush, son of then-president George Herbert Walker Bush and caught with his hand in a billion-dollar S&L cookie jar called Silverado Savings & Loan. Here's what Poppy did for his Number 3 Son:

How the Elite Talk in Code

EXCERPT...

A perfect example of code talk comes from a true master insider, George H.W. Bush, when his son, Neil, was caught red handed in the middle of the S&L crisis as a director of Sliverado Bank.

Did Bush lay out his cards and call in his operatives and say pull some strings, get my son out of this investigation (Remember Bush was president at the time.) No. Bush is too smooth. In his published collection of letters, All The Best, George Bush, he shows us how the heat is delicately taken off Neil. On page 449, there is this letter to Thomas Ludlow Ashley.

Ashley is a Yale University grad, and member of the secret society Skull and Bones along with Bush. Here's the letter:

The Honorable Thomas Ludlow Ashley
Association of Bank Holding Companies
Washington, D.C. 20005

Dear Lud,

Thank you for your good memo December 8th.

I would appreciate any help you can give Neil. He tells me he never had any insider dealings. He got off the Board early--long before I was elected President. The Denver paper apparently ran a very nice editorial about him on that. He is an outside director, and thus I guess has liability, but I can't believe his name would appear in the paper if it was Jones not Bush. In any event, I know that the guy is totally honest. I saw him in Denver and I think he is worried about the publicity and the "shame". I tell him not to worry about that but any advice you can give as this matter unfolds would be greatly appreciated by me. If it turns out there has been some marginal call, or he has done something wrong, needless to say there will be no intervention from his dad. But, I'm quite confident this is not true...

Warm regards,

George

Notice how smooth. No talk about getting Ashley anything for taking care of the matter. The nice touch about if Neil "has done something wrong", but the clear finish, he didn't.

CONTINUED...

http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2009/07/how-elite-talk-in-code.html

So, when it comes to money and power, it really is a small world. We'd hear it more often, if only we were privy to the conversation.

The public discovering the kinds of treason and corruptions these characters are perpetrating frightens the crooks like nothing else. if the media did their job, we wouldn't need DU so much.

[reddread]

95. ignore it?

didnt he cause it?
he had one word for all problems from day zero-
deregulation.

[GoneFishin]

57. Yep. Agreed 100%.

[Octafish]

44. That's not what Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh said.

IRAN CONTRA AT 25: REAGAN AND BUSH 'CRIMINAL LIABILITY' EVALUATIONS

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 365

Posted - November 25, 2011

"Memoranda on Criminal Liability of Former President Reagan and of President Bush"

EXCERPT...

On the role of George Herbert Walker Bush, Mixter reported that the Vice President's "knowledge of the Iran Initiative appears generally to have been coterminous with that of President Reagan." Indeed, on the Iran-Contra operations overall, "it is quite clear that Mr. Bush attended most (although not quite all) of the key briefings and meetings in which Mr. Reagan participated, and therefore can be presumed to have known many of the Iran/Contra facts that the former President knew." But since Bush was subordinate to Reagan, his role as a "secondary officer" made it more difficult to hold him criminally liable.
Mixter's detailed report on Bush's involvement does, however, shed considerable light on his role in both the Iran and Contra sides of the scandal. The memorandum on criminal liability noted that Bush had a long involvement in the Contra war, chairing the secret "Special Situation Group" in 1983 which "recommended specific covert operations" including "the mining of Nicaragua's rivers and harbors." Mixter also cited no less than a dozen meetings that Bush attended between 1984 and 1986 in which illicit aid to the Contras was discussed.

Despite the Mixter evaluations, Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh continued to consider filing criminal indictments against both Reagan and Bush. In a final effort to determine Reagan's criminal liability and give him "one last chance to tell the truth," Walsh traveled to Los Angeles to depose Reagan in July 1992. "He was cordial and offered everybody licorice jelly beans but he remembered almost nothing," Walsh wrote in his memoir, Firewall, The Iran-Contra Conspiracy and Cover-Up. The former president was "disabled," and already showing clear signs of Althzeimers disease. "By the time the meeting had ended," Walsh remembered, "it was as obvious to the former president's counsel as it was to us that we were not going to prosecute Reagan."

The Special Prosecutor also seriously considered indicting Bush for covering up his relevant diaries, which Walsh had requested in 1987. Only in December 1992, after he had lost the election to Bill Clinton, did Bush turn over the transcribed diaries. During the independent counsel's investigation of why the diaries had not been turned over sooner, Lee Liberman, an Associate Counsel in the White House Counsel's office, was deposed. In the deposition, Liberman stated that one of the reasons the diaries were withheld until after the election was that "it would have been impossible to deal with in the election campaign because of all the political ramifications, especially since the President's polling numbers were low."

In 1993, Walsh advised now former President Bush that the Independent Counsel's office wanted to take his deposition on Iran-Contra. But Bush essentially refused. In one of his last acts as Independent Counsel, Walsh considered taking the cover-up case against Bush to a Grand Jury to obtain a subpoena. On the advice of his staff, however, he decided not to pursue an indictment of Bush.

Among the first entries Bush had recorded in his diary (begun in late 1986) was his reaction to reports from a Lebanese newspaper that a U.S. team had secretly gone to Iran to trade arms for hostages. "On the news at this time is the question of the hostages," he noted on November 5, 1986. "I'm one of the few people that know fully the details. This is one operation that has been held very, very tight, and I hope it will not leak."

SOURCE w/links: http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB365/

[MADem]

55. Bush was in "orders-taking" mode; he wasn't calling those shots.

And Lawrence Walsh said nothing of the sort--in fact, he holds Reagan primarily accountable in your very excerpt. Just because someone is cut into the loop doesn't mean they have any say over how the operation is executed.

Had Bush been pulling the strings and running the show, he would have been at more meetings--not fewer-- than Reagan managed to attend. He likely also would have cut that fucking blowhard North out of the herd early on--that pompous ass had few friends for good reason, not the least of which was his poor judgment.


Bush was following orders in that scenario, had he been directing the operation, it probably would have been stealthier, more subtle, less blatant, and odds are we never would have even KNOWN about it. There would have been no ham-handed signed Bibles or cakes, no big-mouthed Marines spending government money on security improvements to their personal residences who hadn't worn their uniforms in years and were operating far above both their level of competency and their paygrades, and probably far fewer misunderstandings as to the nature of the Persian psyche. GHWB may have been a spook, he may have been a damned Republican, but he wasn't stupid.

It's hard to understand how that guy could produce such crappy kids, even with the introduction of the vastly inferior "Pierce" (as in Franklin, the drunkard) line. It's astounding how "low quality" his offspring are, every doggone one of 'em.

[Octafish]

59. That's just what Poppy said: ''I was out of the loop.''

But that's not what Walsh found:

Bush role "coterminous" with Reagan.

Coterminous or conterminous means sharing a common boundary, bordering or contiguous. For example, the northern border of the United States is conterminous with the southern border of Canada. It also means enclosed within a common boundary. For example, the conterminous 48 states.

As for Bush being "subordinate," right.

[MADem]

68. Bush was not the ACTOR, though. In the OTHER sense of the world.

He had concurrent, or near concurrent, knowledge of events, but he did not direct those events, he didn't plan those events, and he didn't coordinate those events. He just got briefed in the event that Saint Ronnie keeled over.


George had too many friends in the intel community to be cut out of the loop, but he wasn't the one calling the shots.

As I said, had he been, we wouldn't have even known about it.

You seem to forget that Bush ran for the Presidency at the same time that Reagan did, they were primary opponents, and Reagan only put him on the ticket because he could help in TX and New England, and Ronnie hated Ford--if your grand conspiracy was, in fact, true, why didn't """they""" just slide George into the top slot straight off? Seems like a chancy way to get this Mastermind into the White House.

[Octafish]

69. Agents for Bush

Agents for Bush

The 1980 Campaign

by Bob Callahan
Covert Action Information Bulletin

George Bush owed his recent political fortune to several old CIA friends, chiefly Ray Cline, who had helped to rally the intelligence community … and started … "Agents for Bush."

Bill Peterson of the Washington Post wrote in a March 1, 1980 article, "Simply put, no presidential campaign in recent memory – perhaps ever – has attracted as much support from the intelligence community as (has) the campaign of former CIA director George Bush."

George Bush’s CIA campaign staff included Cline, CIA Chief of Station in Taiwan from 1958 to 1962; Lt. Gen. Salm V. Wilson and Lt. Gen. Harold A. Aaron, both former Directors of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Also included were retired Gen. Richard Stillwell, once the CIA’s Chief of Covert Operations for the Far East, and at least 25 other retired Company directors, deputy directors and, or, agents.

… Angelo Codevilla, informed a congressional committee that was "aware that active duty agents of the CIA worked for the George Bush primary election campaign.

… Ray Cline claimed that he had been promoting the pro-CIA agenda that Bush had embraced for years, and that he had found the post Church-hearings criticism had died down some time ago. "I found there was a tremendous constituency for the CIA when everyone in Washington was still urinating all over it," Cline said. … "It’s panned out almost too good to be true. The country is waking up just in time for George’s candidacy. …

In July 1979 George Bush and Ray Cline attended a conference in Jerusalem. … (with) leaders of Israel, Great Britain and the United States. … The Jerusalem Conference on International Terrorism was hosted by the Israeli government and … most of Israel’s top intelligence officers … were in attendance. …

… The Israelis were angry with Carter because his administration had recently released its annual report on human rights wherein the Israeli government was taken to task for abusing the rights of the Palestinian people on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. …

The Republican delegation was led by George Bush. It included Ray Cline and Major Gen. George Keegan (former USAF intelligence chief) and Harvard professor Richard Pipes.

Looking for a mobilizing issue to counter the Carter-era themes of détente and human rights, the Bush people began to explore the political benefits of embracing the terrorism/anti-terrorism theme.

… Ray Cline developed the theme that terror was not a random response. … but rather an instrument of East bloc policy adopted after 1969 when the KGB persuaded the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to accept the PLO as a major political instrument in the Mideast and to subsidize its terrorist policies by freely giving money, training, arms and coordinated communications. …

… Within days after the conference the new propaganda war began in earnest. On July 11, 1979, the International Herald Tribune featured a lead editorial entitled "The Issue is Terrorism," which quoted directly from conference speeches. …

SOURCE: Covert Action Information Bulletin No.33(Winter 1990) "The Bush Issue"

http://mediamayhem.blogspot.com/2004_04_11_archive.html

History doesn't seem to repeat so much anymore; it vibrates on one resonant frequency. The people who call the shots see to it.

[MADem]

70. You're proving my point, though--in 1980, he ran against Reagan, and LOST.

He wasn't the first choice as VP, either--he was only an afterthought after Reagan got pissed at Ford.

If those "Agents for Bush" were so all-powerful, he would have slid into the gig. Instead, he got in by way of Gerald Ford's "co-presidential" hubris.

They aren't pals in this pic, they are OPPONENTS:


E3-2, Republican Debate with Ronald Reagan, Philip Crane, George Bush and John Anderson with moderator Eric Sevareid in Chicago , Illinois . 3/13/80.

Feb 23, 1980.

In the New Hampshire primary, a single symbolic act dramatized the debut of Reagan's new image as a candidate and the demise of Bush's presidential hopes. It occurred during what was scheduled to be a two-person debate between Bush and Reagan in Nashua, New Hampshire, on Feburary 23, the Saturday before balloting. As it turned out, Bush crumpled under pressure orchestrated by Reagan's camp.

Initially, both Reagan and Bush had seen advantages in a two-person debate sponsored by a local newspaper. When the FEC ruled that newspaper sponsorship of the debate amounted to an illegal campaign contribution and when Bush refused to pay half of the debate's cost, Reagan agreed to underwrite it himself.

Reagan then moved to include the other five contenders - a move that identified him both as a candidate and a unifier. When the other candidates showed up on stage, Bush froze.

As Reagan made his case for inclusion of the other candidates, the moderator ordered Reagan's mike turned off. Reagan responded, "I'm paying for this microphone, Mr. Green." The fact that the moderator's name was Breen seemed to matter little. The crowd cheered. When neither newspaper hosting the debate nor Bush would accede to the inclusion of the others, the other candidates left the stage. Reagan's prospects had been boosted, Bush's buried. Reagan carried New Hampshire 50% to Bush's 23%.

Reagan crushed Bush with a little old fashioned out-maneuvering. If some mysterious "PTB" were in fact behind this circus, they wouldn't have permitted this to happen.

[Octafish]

77. The Ayatollah Khomeini didn't care as long as the check cleared.

The contacts made in holding the hostages until after the election would later resurface in the arms-for-hostages scam. Why do you think the Iran-Contra affair went through The National Security Council?

Rethinking Iran-Contra

By Robert Parry
July 1, 2010


EXCERPT...

Indeed, it now appears clear that the Iran-Contra Affair began five years earlier in 1980, with what has often been treated as a separate controversy, called the October Surprise case, dealing with alleged contacts between Reagan’s presidential campaign and Iran.

In view of the latest evidence – and the crumbling of the long-running October Surprise cover-up – there appears to have been a single Iran-Contra narrative spanning the entire 12 years of the Reagan and Bush-41 administration, and representing a much darker story.

And it was not simply a tale of Republican electoral skullduggery and treachery, but possibly even more troubling, a story of rogue CIA officers and Israel’s Likud hardliners sabotaging a sitting U.S. president, Jimmy Carter.

Plus, with Washington’s failure to get at the larger truth about the Iran-Contra Affair, crucial patterns were set: Republicans acted aggressively, Democrats behaved timidly, and the U.S. national news media was transformed from Watergate-era watchdogs, to lapdogs and finally to guard dogs protecting national security wrongdoing.

In that sense, the Iran-Contra/October Surprise scandal represented the missing link in a larger American political narrative covering the sweep of several decades, explaining how the United States shifted away from a nation grappling with epochal problems, from energy dependence and environmental degradation to bloated military budgets and an obsession with empire.

For all his shortcomings and half-measures, President Carter had begun promoting solar and other alternative energies; he pushed conservation programs and worked to reduce the federal deficit; and abroad, he advocated greater respect for human rights and pulled back from the imperial presidency.

More on point, he cashiered many of the freewheeling Cold Warriors of the CIA and demanded land-for-peace concessions from Israel.

CONTINUED...

https://consortiumnews.com/2010/063010.html

Thanks for adding your POV on Reagan's role. He's not the power behind the throne though.

[MADem]

82. Cheap George wouldn't even pay half the cost of a debate.

Reagan wasn't running things -- Jim Baker was. George wasn't a PTB--he was a useful tool. Had he been capable of exercising any real power, he would have "won" in 1980. It was easy to stuff ballot boxes back in the day.

[Uncle Joe]

99. Jim Baker's connections were closer to Bush than Reagan and Bush came before Baker.

Baker's first wife, the former Mary Stuart McHenry, was active in the Republican Party, working on the Congressional campaigns of George H. W. Bush. Originally, Baker had been a Democrat but too busy trying to succeed in a competitive law firm to worry about politics, and considered himself apolitical. His wife's influence led Baker to politics and the Republican Party. He was a regular tennis partner of George H. W. Bush at the Houston Country Club in the late 1950s. When Bush Sr. decided to vacate his Congressional seat and run for the U.S. Senate in 1969, he supported Baker's decision to run for the Congressional seat he was vacating. However, Baker changed his mind about running for Congress when his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer; she died in February 1970.

Bush Sr. then encouraged Baker to become active in politics to help deal with the grief of his wife's death, something that Bush Sr. himself had done when his daughter, Pauline Robinson (1949–1953), died of leukemia. Baker became chairman of Bush's Senate campaign in Harris County, Texas. Though Bush lost to Lloyd Bentsen in the election, Baker continued in politics, becoming the Finance Chairman of the Republican Party in 1971. The following year, he was selected as Gulf Coast Regional Chairman for the Richard Nixon presidential campaign. In 1973 and 1974, in the wake of the Nixon Administration's implosion, Baker returned to full-time law practice at Andrews & Kurth.[5][6]

(snip)

In 1981, Baker was named White House Chief of Staff by President Ronald Reagan, in spite of the fact that Baker managed the presidential campaigns of Gerald Ford in 1976 and of George Bush in 1980 opposing Reagan.[7] He served in that capacity until 1985. Baker is considered to have had a high degree of influence over the first Reagan Administration, particularly in domestic policy.

In 1982, conservative activists Howard Phillips, founder of The Conservative Caucus, and Clymer Wright of Houston joined in an unsuccessful effort to convince Reagan to dismiss Baker as Chief of Staff. They claimed that Baker, a former Democrat and a Bush political intimate, was undermining conservative initiatives in the administration. Reagan rejected the Phillips-Wright request, but in 1985, he named Baker as United States Secretary of the Treasury, in a job-swap with then Secretary Donald T. Regan, a former Merrill Lynch officer who became Chief of Staff. Reagan rebuked Phillips and Wright for having waged a "campaign of sabotage" against Baker.[8]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Baker#Early_political_career

Baker was Bush's man before the election and afterwards when a President Bush appointed Baker as his Secretary of State.

[reddread]

96. they took the VP spot, not by luck.

spent twelve years in the white house
before STEALING the election in 2000?

how lucky do you think they are?

[MADem]

97. We're miles apart on this and unlikely to find concordance. nt

[reddread]

98. i know

[Octafish]

25. Poppy got powerful via National Security Decision Directive No. 159 (NSDD 159)

George Bush Takes Charge: The Uses of ‘Counter-Terrorism’

By Christopher Simpson
Covert Action Quarterly 58

A paper trail of declassified documents from the Reagan‑Bush era yields valuable information on how counter‑terrorism provided a powerful mechanism for solidifying Bush's power base and launching a broad range of national security initiatives.

During the Reagan years, George Bush used "crisis management" and "counter‑terrorism" as vehicles for running key parts of the clandestine side of the US government.

Bush proved especially adept at plausible denial. Some measure of his skill in avoiding responsibility can be taken from the fact that even after the Iran‑Contra affair blew the Reagan administration apart, Bush went on to become the "foreign policy president," while CIA Director William Casey, by then conveniently dead, took most of the blame for a number of covert foreign policy debacles that Bush had set in motion.

The trail of National Security Decision Directives (NSDDS) left by the Reagan administration begins to tell the story. True, much remains classified, and still more was never committed to paper in the first place. Even so, [font color="green"]the main picture is clear: As vice president, George Bush was at the center of secret wars, political murders, and America's convoluted oil politics in the Middle East. [/font color]

SNIP...

Reagan and the NSC also used NSDDs to settle conflicts among security agencies over bureaucratic turf and lines of command. It is through that prism that we see the first glimmers of Vice President Bush's role in clandestine operations during the 1980s.

SNIP...

NSDD 159. MANAGEMENT OF U.S. COVERT OPERATIONS, (TOP SECRET/VEIL‑SENSITIVE), JAN. 18,1985

The Reagan administration's commitment to significantly expand covert operations had been clear since before the 1980 election. How such operations were actually to be managed from day to day, however, was considerably less certain. The management problem became particularly knotty owing to legal requirements to notify congressional intelligence oversight committees of covert operations, on the one hand, and the tacitly accepted presidential mandate to deceive those same committees concerning sensitive operations such as the Contra war in Nicaragua, on the other.

[font color="green"]The solution attempted in NSDD 159 was to establish a small coordinating committee headed by Vice President George Bush through which all information concerning US covert operations was to be funneled. The order also established a category of top secret information known as Veil, to be used exclusively for managing records pertaining to covert operations.

The system was designed to keep circulation of written records to an absolute minimum while at the same time ensuring that the vice president retained the ability to coordinate US covert operations with the administration's overt diplomacy and propaganda.

Only eight copies of NSDD 159 were created. The existence of the vice president's committee was itself highly classified.[/font color] The directive became public as a result of the criminal prosecutions of Oliver North, John Poindexter, and others involved in the Iran‑Contra affair, hence the designation "Exhibit A" running up the left side of the document.

CONTINUED...

CovertAction Quarterly no 58 Fall 1996 pp31-40.

The real color of greed is blood.

[zentrum]

50. It does tell the story….

….right down to the inappropriately smiling Laura Bush looking like she's on too much of her valium. As she always looked during his speeches.

What an unspeakable family. Can't believe Jeb is running. It's as shocking in its own way as Trump.

[dixiegrrrrl]

21. Babs has her hand on Bush Sr. as if to say..."there, there, don't drool in public"

and Laura sure does look medicated.
I noticed her glassy expressions early on, she had the look of a true Xanax type user.

[deutsey]

72. Barbara is known for not allowing such unpleasantries

to waste her beautiful mind.

[Agschmid]

66. It telling that's for sure.

[snooper2]

79. Laura looks like she just saw one of these-

Oh look, a Roly Poly

[Electric Monk]

4. Pickles is oblivious

She remembered to take her Xanax that morning.

(k&r)

[Octafish]

10. I feel sorry for her, but not as much as for other people...

"We got a laugh out of it."

Noonan: You were separated on September 11th. What was it like when you saw each other again?

Mrs. Bush: Well, we just hugged. I think there was a certain amount of security in being with each other than being apart.

President Bush: But the day ended on a relatively humorous note. The agents said, "You'll be sleeping downstairs. Washington's still a dangerous place." And I said no, I can't sleep down there, the bed didn't look comfortable. I was really tired, Laura was tired, we like our own bed. We like our own routine. You know, kind of a nester. Like the way things are. I knew I had to deal with the issue the next day and provide strength and comfort to the country, and so I needed rest in order to be mentally prepared. So I told the agent we're going upstairs, and he reluctantly said okay. Laura wears contacts, and she was sound asleep. Barney was there. And the agent comes running up and says, "We're under attack. We need you downstairs," and so there we go. I'm in my running shorts and my T-shirt, and I'm barefooted. Got the dog in one hand, Laura had a cat, I'm holding Laura --

Mrs. Bush: I don't have my contacts in, and I'm in my fuzzy house slippers --

President Bush: And this guy's out of breath, and we're heading straight down to the basement because there's an incoming unidentified airplane, which is coming toward the White House. Then the guy says it's a friendly airplane. And we hustle all the way back upstairs and go to bed.

Mrs. Bush: And we just lay there thinking about the way we must have looked.

Noonan: So the day starts in tragedy and ends in Marx Brothers.

President Bush: That's right -- we got a laugh out of it.

http://blog.thedemocraticdaily.com/?p=3172

[mithnanthy]

36. LARVA

.....the Xanax Queen.

[wendylaroux]

5. disgusting family

wish I hadn't seen this pic.,but everyone should.

[Octafish]

11. Thank them for their service.

Economist Tyler Cowen of George Mason University has seen the future and it looks bleak for most of us. Thankfully, the United States of America may be in for good times, especially for those perched atop the socio-economic pyramid scheme, should war break out.

The Pitfalls of Peace

The Lack of Major Wars May Be Hurting Economic Growth

Tyler Cowen
The New York Times, JUNE 13, 2014

The continuing slowness of economic growth in high-income economies has prompted soul-searching among economists. They have looked to weak demand, rising inequality, Chinese competition, over-regulation, inadequate infrastructure and an exhaustion of new technological ideas as possible culprits.

An additional explanation of slow growth is now receiving attention, however. It is the persistence and expectation of peace.

The world just hasn’t had that much warfare lately, at least not by historical standards. Some of the recent headlines about Iraq or South Sudan make our world sound like a very bloody place, but today’s casualties pale in light of the tens of millions of people killed in the two world wars in the first half of the 20th century. Even the Vietnam War had many more deaths than any recent war involving an affluent country.

Counterintuitive though it may sound, the greater peacefulness of the world may make the attainment of higher rates of economic growth less urgent and thus less likely. This view does not claim that fighting wars improves economies, as of course the actual conflict brings death and destruction. The claim is also distinct from the Keynesian argument that preparing for war lifts government spending and puts people to work. Rather, the very possibility of war focuses the attention of governments on getting some basic decisions right — whether investing in science or simply liberalizing the economy. Such focus ends up improving a nation’s longer-run prospects.

It may seem repugnant to find a positive side to war in this regard, but a look at American history suggests we cannot dismiss the idea so easily. Fundamental innovations such as nuclear power, the computer and the modern aircraft were all pushed along by an American government eager to defeat the Axis powers or, later, to win the Cold War. The Internet was initially designed to help this country withstand a nuclear exchange, and Silicon Valley had its origins with military contracting, not today’s entrepreneurial social media start-ups. The Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite spurred American interest in science and technology, to the benefit of later economic growth.

War brings an urgency that governments otherwise fail to summon. For instance, the Manhattan Project took six years to produce a working atomic bomb, starting from virtually nothing, and at its peak consumed 0.4 percent of American economic output. It is hard to imagine a comparably speedy and decisive achievement these days.

SNIP...

Living in a largely peaceful world with 2 percent G.D.P. growth has some big advantages that you don’t get with 4 percent growth and many more war deaths. Economic stasis may not feel very impressive, but it’s something our ancestors never quite managed to pull off. The real questions are whether we can do any better, and whether the recent prevalence of peace is a mere temporary bubble just waiting to be burst.

Tyler Cowen is a professor of economics at George Mason University.

SOURCE: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/14/upshot/the-lack-of-major-wars-may-be-hurting-economic-growth.html?_r=0

[font color="purple"]Dr. Cowen, from what I've read, is a fine person and not one to promulgate war. He's just sayin'.

He has commented on other Big Ticket economic themes impacting us today: "Inequality," for another instance. [/font color]

Tired Of Inequality? One Economist Says It'll Only Get Worse

by NPR STAFF
September 12, 2013 3:05 AM

Economist Tyler Cowen has some advice for what to do about America's income inequality: Get used to it. In his latest book, Average Is Over, Cowen lays out his prediction for where the U.S. economy is heading, like it or not:

"I think we'll see a thinning out of the middle class," he tells NPR's Steve Inskeep. "We'll see a lot of individuals rising up to much greater wealth. And we'll also see more individuals clustering in a kind of lower-middle class existence."

It's a radical change from the America of 40 or 50 years ago. Cowen believes the wealthy will become more numerous, and even more powerful. The elderly will hold on to their benefits ... the young, not so much. Millions of people who might have expected a middle class existence may have to aspire to something else.

SNIP...

Some people, he predicts, may just have to find a new definition of happiness that costs less money. Cowen says this widening is the result of a shifting economy. Computers will play a larger role and people who can work with computers can make a lot. He also predicts that everyone will be ruthlessly graded — every slice of their lives, monitored, tracked and recorded.

CONTINUED with link to the audio...

http://www.npr.org/2013/09/12/221425582/tired-of-inequality-one-economist-says-itll-only-get-worse

For some reason, the interview with Steve Inskeep didn't bring up the subject of the GOVERNMENT DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT LIKE IN THE NEW DEAL so I thought I'd bring it up. Older DUers may recall the Democratic Party once actually did do stuff for the average American, from school and work to housing and justice. But, we can't afford that now, obviously, thanks to austerity or the sequester or the divided government.

What's important is that the 1-percent may swell to a 15-percent "upper middle class." Unfortunately, that may see the rest of the middle class go the other way. Why does that ring a bell? Oh yeah.

"Commercial interests are very powerful interests," said George W Bush on Feb. 14, 2007 White House press conference in which he added, "Let me put it this way, ah, sometimes, ah, money trumps peace." And then he giggled and not a single member of the callow, cowed and corrupt press corpse saw fit to ask a follow-up.

Gold Star mom Cindy Sheehan tried to bring it to our nation's attention back in 2007. I don't recall even one reporter from the national corporate owned news seeing it fit to comment. Certainly not many have commented on how three generations of Bush men -- Senator Prescott Sheldon Bush, President George Herbert Walker Bush and pretzeldent George Walker Bush all had their eyes on Iraq's oil.

I wish the Press had done its job. Those in authority would have to do their job. Millions might still be alive, the People might use the money spent on wars in better ways, and the Republic might see a return to Justice.

[sorechasm]

54. So the next time we hear Jeb say we need "4% economic growth", what he is really saying is:

'We need some new wars to get this economy moving.'

Living in a largely peaceful world with 2 percent G.D.P. growth has some big advantages that you don’t get with 4 percent growth and many more war deaths. Economic stasis may not feel very impressive, but it’s something our ancestors never quite managed to pull off. The real questions are whether we can do any better, and whether the recent prevalence of peace is a mere temporary bubble just waiting to be burst.

These Bush's are so transparent.

I don't believe the inequality gap will get worse, because the 1% seem too stupid to hold on to power, and they're getting dumber every day.

[HFRN]

6. says it all - just one data point on the cost of a needless war

a photo of what a statistic looks like

[Octafish]

14. Truly heartbreaking image for Lt. Stockwell and all the ''Wounded Warriors.''

Your Military Industrial Complex at Work

On Dec. 8, 1992, after George Herbert Walker Bush was defeated at the polls by Bill Clinton with an assist from Ross Perot, he ordered the U.S. military into Somalia. Operation RESTORE HOPE was sold at the time as a "Humanitarian Mission," a phrase rarely used in conjunction with anything the guy did as president, as vice-president, as a Congressman from Texas or in his time at CIA for anyone other than his cronies and partners in crime.



What Poppy Bush's last new mission in Somalia did accomplish was to leave a crisis -- a huge dog turd in a burning bag of a crisis -- on the welcome mat at the front door of the White House for incoming President Bill Clinton. After that, things got off on the "right foot," from peace and prosperity for all to healthcare for the public and continued welfare for the wealthy. And the humanitarian mission? It quickly devolved into a fiasco of the first order, culminating in the disaster seared into the public consciousness as "Black Hawk Down."

Oh. Not that it's on tee vee or anything where millions might see it, but we're still in Somalia.



Plus all the millions more men, women and families injured and killed by illegal, immoral, unnecessary, disastrous and criminal wars for profit these people and their cronies in the Dulles Brothers foreign policy - Wall Street Buy Partisan axis of money.

[Dont call me Shirley]

12. That family is a human disgrace.

[Octafish]

48. Harold Pinter is one human being they should know...

The late author's Nobel Prize lecture on Truth:

Human redemption is possible. For traitors and criminals, however, they must also face justice.

[Dont call me Shirley]

93. SHAMESHAMESHAMESHAMESHAMEfullspectrumdominanceSHAMESHAMESHAMESHAMESHAME

[Brother Buzz]

13. I wonder what Barbara (Why should I waste my beautiful mind?) Bush is thinking?

[Octafish]

67. A heartbreaking set of priorities.

Remember how Hurricane Katrina presented a chance for a better life for the poor, forced to evacuate New Orleans to the friendly confines of the Houston Astrodome? She must not be aware of how tough life really is for the poor. And what Nixon said about her.

[SoapBox]

15. No more Bush...EVER!

Freak'n war criminals...walk'n free and rich.

[Octafish]

78. War Criminal and Traitor

The guy lied America into an unnecessary, illegal, immoral war for profit. He has used the offices of government to advance the commercial interest of cronies, including the secret agencies.

Carlyle Group owns and operates NSA contract spy house Booz Allen Hamilton.



Carlyle is War Inc merged with Washington DC, personified.

Background from days when 92-percent of the country stood behind Smirko Bush:

War Is Sell - Washington Elite Benefits from War

Christopher Bollyn
October 31, 2001

War has always been a profitable money machine for shrewd investors with foresight, but the extremely close connections of the Carlyle Group, a Washington-based private equity investment firm and major war profiteer, to the Bush and Bin Laden families raise unavoidable questions of waging war for profit.

Established in 1987 the Carlyle Group was founded by David Rubenstein, a former staff member in the Jimmy Carter White House, and his two partners, Dan D'Aniello and Bill Conway. Today there are 18 partners in the firm and one outside investor. The Washington Post has described Carlyle as a "merchant banking firm" set up "to serve corporations and wealthy families." From the beginning the founders of Carlyle have recruited former politicians as consultants: former President George H. W. Bush is among them, along with a host of other Bush family cronies.

The Bush connection to the Carlyle Group is nothing short of a scandal, according to Larry Klayman, a notable government watchdog best known for pursuing the scandals of former President Bill Clinton. Now that the United States is bombing Afghanistan and allocating huge sums of money for defense, including $40 billion for the "war on terrorism" and more than $200 billion [1994 dollars] for the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), the conflict of interest is "direct," Klayman says. "President Bush should not ask but demand that his father pull out of the Carlyle Group." Carlyle owns many of the companies that will share in the $200 billion JSF deal.

"Carlyle is as deeply wired into the current administration as they can possibly be," Charles Lewis, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, said. "George Bush is getting money from private interests that have business before the government, while his son is president. And, in a really peculiar way, George W. Bush could, some day, benefit financially from his own administration's decisions, through his father's investments. The average American doesn't know that. To me, that's a jaw-dropper."

CONTINUED...

http://www.bollyn.com/war-is-sell-washington-elite-benefits-from-war

Turning the NSA on the American people is what Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) warned us in 1976. That was about the last time the United States Congress stood up to the intelligence agencies and enacted reforms.

Wonder what Sen. Church would say about a privatized intel?

[lunatica]

16. Bush the elder is wondering how it would look with hot pink socks like his

Dubya is wondering how she screws it on and Laura is avoiding it like she avoids everything else.

And Battleaxe Babs? I'm sure whatever she's thinking is something we don't want to know. Maybe she's thinking something beautiful.

[Octafish]

94. Smirko said he and Poppy talk a lot about the ladies.

http://www.salon.com/2000/09/04/cuss_word/

[Omaha Steve]

17. Great post!

Perfect photo.

K&R!

OS

[oldandhappy]

19. Cool leg!!

[Octafish]

91. Nice, but given the choice, she prefers the original.

Like 99% who prefer peace to war.

[camelfan]

23. Reminds me of a Doonesbury book: "Guilty, Guilty, Guilty!"

That was about Nixon...another Republican. What a maroon! (TM B. Bunny)

[Rex]

26. Reminds me of this one someone posted the other day.

[WinkyDink]

31. Is that Damiena?

[Rex]

32. I was thinking a young Laura Bush.

Is it just me (it probably is) or is Laura Bush pointing at the same leg as the one missing on the Lt.? The Bush family pics make the Adam's Family pics look normal.

[WinkyDink]

34. Dang, she IS so pointing! Probably subconsciously (but revealingly, with the smile).

[Rex]

35. I was thinking that too, subconsciously. Almost childlike (or in a drugged state).

That picture is creepier then hell. They ALL look like they are hiding behind Laura! Too cowardly to face what made them rich imo. I'm GLAD they have to see that...and I hope it does disturb them for the rest of their days.

Laura OTOH, I bet she stays oblivious to all her families evil brought upon humanity. I wouldn't blame her if that is true.

[snooper2]

80. the bad seed

[logosoco]

28. Don't you need a conscious to feel guilty? nt

[RufusTFirefly]

42. That was my thought, too

I expect his expression had to do with some sort of selfish inconvenience. I seriously doubt that it had anything to do with guilt, a feeling that suspect is no longer part of the Bush family genetic code.

[NightWatcher]

29. Reminds me of Urkell, "did I do that?"

Yes sir, you sure as hell did.

[WinkyDink]

30. But how is Bar's beautiful brain?!

[Liberal_in_LA]

37. cool artificial leg

[lpbk2713]

38. Will Laura ever lose that "Prozac is my friend" look?

[Rex]

43. Would you if you were married to Dubya?

I think I know why Poppy stayed in a continuous Halcyon daze now.

[lpbk2713]

45. Good point.

And it looks like Dumbya never heard about body language or he'd never appear in public.

[Rex]

52. Yes exactly, his shoulders are a dead giveaway he is in defensive mode.

Trying to seperate himself as far apart from the Lt. as possible without climbing behind Poppies wheelchair.

Bab's hand over her stomach is...touching...



Is there something going on here we should be putting together? Do the lizard people in the center of the earth have hearts close to where we have our stomaches?

Somehow we are missing something important here?

[MisterP]

39. look at the sheer cowardice in his eyes: he knows that any vet, even if totally vetted,

Last edited Sun Aug 23, 2015, 06:16 PM - Edit history (1)

can just turn on him and pop his little "we did it for the Iraqis: now they have satellite dishes" bubble

[mountain grammy]

40. It sure does.

[libodem]

46. Bar and Poppy

Look stricken as well. She just stuffs it better.

This all makes me ache with despair.

[lpbk2713]

49. Trouble is ...

they finished singing the National Anthem twenty minutes ago.

[MsMAC]

47. Heck yeah! And check out the look on his mother's face!

[Judi Lynn]

58. This image says it all. Horrendous. Thank you, Octafish. n/t

[HeiressofBickworth]

61. LOVE it that Lt. Stockwell wore a skirt!!

No hiding the damage that was done to her. And a symbol of the damage done to others, all in the name of Bush's neurosis of wanting to be "better" than his father who didn't go to Baghdad and the oil-hungry interests surrounding him.

Want to bet there will never be another skirt exposing artificial limbs at a Bush function?

[lumberjack_jeff]

62. Why yes, George. Yes, you did do that. n/t

[hifiguy]

63. Damn skippy.

#guilty

[Enthusiast]

64. Holy shit! Dubya is guilty.

He shouldn't have escaped prosecution.

[blackspade]

73. That is a powerful photo.

[OldRedneck]

74. Did anyone else notice . . .

The caption says 1LT Stockwell is leading the assembly in the Pledge of Allegiance. But Barbara Bush is the only one saluting.

If this had been the Obama family . . . .

[GreatGazoo]

75. "Miss me yet?" A: Hell no and you can stop asking.

[treestar]

76. The fact she's there shows she is a Bush supporter

A lot of the military are Republicans. In fact the right wing thinks they own the military and it fights only for their vision of America. Bush has a weird look on his face. But I doubt he thinks he did anything wrong.

[sinkingfeeling]

83. Only one of four Bushes knows how to respond to the Pledge of Allegiance

The protocol for the Pledge of Allegiance is laid out in the Flag Code in Sec. 4: The Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag should be rendered by standing at attention facing the flag with the right hand over the heart. When not in uniform, men should removed any non-religious headdress with their right hand and hold it at the left shoulder, the hand being over the heart. Persons in uniform should remain silent, face the flag, and render the military salute.

[Generic Other]

86. That was phantom pain, Octafish

He doesn't quite know where it is coming from. He has become the pitiful man he worked so hard to create.

[pansypoo53219]

87. gergee w bush, destroyer of people, lands, & historic treasures. and the crap

is still going on.

[olddots]

88. if anybody should be drug tested its the Bushes

they are off the charts in medicating denial .

[Elmer S. E. Dump]

89. Laura too two many valiums today. Bu she looks happy!

The rest of the Bushes look like they want her to go away as soon as possible.

[Rex]

92. His paintings must really be helping his beautiful mind stay in order.