London Times: Lengthy excerpt from KITTY KELLEY BOOK

[DeepModem Mom]

This excerpt includes charges of drug use by both George and Laura, but also includes flattering and/or sympathetic anecdotes about both.


September 12, 2004

How team Bush took an airbrush to the Chosen One’s misdeeds

The public swallowed a story of the wayward president’s son who cleaned up his act to take his place in the White House. Kitty Kelley exposes what really lurks in George W Bush’s past


....The family was looking towards its restoration to power through the presidential candidacy of George W. His mother, Barbara Bush, referred to him as “the Chosen One”. There was a problem, however. After eight years of Clinton, the American public “want to elect a statue”, as Oklahoma’s Republican governor Frank Keating put it. “They want a hero, an unblemished and untarnished guy in the White House.”

Karl Rove, the political adviser with the task of shaping W’s image, knew he had to present his candidate as the anti-Clinton: fresh (no drugs, no alcoholism), religious (acceptable to evangelicals) and faithful to his wife (majority of voters: women).

Fanning out across the country, Rove and the Bush team began to tidy up the governor’s past. Rove wanted no potentially devastating revelations to emerge that might portray W and Laura, his wife, as anything but an ideal and idealised couple. But to present W as pure and pristine was hypocritical and untrue....

***

THE first hurdle facing the tidy-up team was to deal with W’s past drug use. As governor of Texas, he took a hard line on drugs. He supported increased penalties for possession and signed legislation mandating jail time for people caught with less than a single gram of cocaine.

Yet, as the claims of Sharon Bush, his sister-in-law, show, he could have been subject to jail time himself had he been caught “doing coke” with his brother Marvin at Camp David during his father’s presidency....

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,2766-1256973,00.html

[nostamj]

1. damn!

you have to subscribe to read the article... :grr:

[DeepModem Mom]

2. Sorry -- didn't realize, as I'm not a subscriber -- Anglophile hubby...

must have subscribed!

[21winner]

3. Its OK.

you cite the source which is important. The horrid details will ooze out later. Filling many news cycles.

[KoKo]

8. Not only that you have to PAY to subscribe! What if they all start to

force one to pay...?

[DeepModem Mom]

9. Sorry again -- I was unaware -- we've posted most of the info

in posts 5 and 7 below --

[RamboLiberal]

4. Any chance you could post a few details in the article

I can't wait to check out the book. B&N better have it, have tons of copies, and be displayed front and center.

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. The juicy bits

Dubya and Marvin did coke at Camp David more than once;
Dubya and Laura smoked pot in the British Virgin Islands when young;
Dubya used coke at Yale;
he manufactured fake ID cards at Andover;
Yales classmates remember him as a “hard-drinking good-time guy” and “a jock sniffer”(ed: ????) who “loved to raise hell”;
he used pot and coke while working on the senatorial campaign in Alabama.

[RamboLiberal]

6. he manufactured fake ID cards at Andover

Gee, wonder if he taught or made them for the twins. :evilgrin:

[DeepModem Mom]

7. Thanks, mv! I'll add some more bits --

While working on the Alabama Senate campaign, W would sneak off for coke and pot; he would put his cowboy boots up on his desk every morning, and brag about how much he'd had to drink the night before

His Dad wanted him to do the inner-city youth "community service" in l973 in Houston; everybody there loved him, and didn't want him to leave

At Harvard Business School, he was in-your-face with the Yankees, and wore cowboy boots and chewed tobacco during classes, spitting into a paper cup

Laura had been a Democrat, who supported Eugene McCarthy's campaign; she had backpacked in Europe, and smoked pot

Having difficulty getting pregnant, and then becoming pregnant, Laura left the fast-crowd lifestyle behind, but W didn't

When W was "born again," it was not through Billy Graham, as reported, but through a lesser-known evangelist, Arther Blessitt; he replaced alcohol with strict routine, Bible reading and study, and exercise

At a l999 D.C. fundraiser, he was lovely to a little old lady who had paid $1,000 to get in, wanting to return her money; when she insisted she wanted to contribute, he agreed to keep $100 and return $900 to her

[MsTryska]

10. A JOCK sniffer?!

hmmmmmm....

well isn't that special??

/churchlady