Read My Lips: No New Bushes
Like Son, Like Father
by Alan Bisbort

June 27, 2004 -- HARTFORD (apj.us) -- In high school, it was a fact of life that if you were husky, chunky or just a wee bit plump, you hung out with the real fatsos to make yourself appear less tubby. If you were homely, you sought out the hopeless nerds. If you were of modest height, you hung with the shrimps. If you possessed only modest skills for team sports, you lagged back with those who, in my day, were called "sissies." And so on.

These same laws of human nature apply to members of the Bush family. They have worked wonderfully, for example, at spit-shining the tarnished reputation of GWBush's dad, George Herbert Walker Bush. Not only are his grandchildren among the most embarrassing assemblage of spoiled rotten sociopaths with which any granddad has been cursed, his son Marvin is a front man for the Saudi and Kuwaiti ruling families, his son Neil was a major force in the savings and loan scandals that ripped apart the American financial community during the 1980s and is now a shady international dealmaker, playboy and whoremonger, his son Jeb is an election thief and lousy dad, and his son GWB is so miserably bad, so monumentally incompetent and dangerous that it makes his father's administration seem like a lost golden age by comparison. In fact, almost every assessment of Junior Bush's chronic mismanagement includes a reference to how his father's administration was a model of decorum and unity by comparison.

Whenever I hear or read such hogwash, I feel like I've entered the same Twilight Zone of lamentation that followed Reagan's death. The truth of the matter is that Bush the Elder was just as bad as Bush the Younger. They are cut from the same cloth. They should both burn in political hell, shoring up their own wings in the Hall of Shame.

We all know what Junior hath wrought. We will spend the rest of our lives trying to clean up the damage he's done to our nation's institutions and reputation, not to mention our economy, environment, public education, health care system, Social Security and miltary morale. And his reign of error is still not over. But let's give the Boy a break for a moment, while we revisit what Daddy did. After all, a son learns to do from his father. And, if nothing else, we've come to appreciate how not one single thing that has occurred on Junior's watch has ever been his fault. He is, in fact, the most blameless human being who has ever lived, almost Olympian in his purity of thought and deed, and all conduits of mass brainwashing are calibrated to parrot this notion.

Thus, since Junior won't take, or be made to take, any responsibility for his actions, maybe all of this can be laid at the feet of his dad, Mr. Out-Of-The-Loop himself, the 41st President of the United States, George Herbert Walker Bush. Bush the Elder, of course, learned it from his dad, Prescott, who spent much of his business career, like his brother Jonathan, trying to impress Nazi financiers and profiting from slave labor at Auschwitz (see John Buchanan's thorough examination, utilizing records from the National Archives, that first appeared in the New Hampshire Gazette, Oct. 10, 2003, and has since been widely reprinted).

Rather than rehash all the nastiness that George H.W. Bush unleashed as CIA director and Vice President (toppling democratically elected regimes in Latin America, facilitating the Iran-Contra negotiations, etc.), let's stick with his four years as president. During that time, Bush the Elder continued to back and befriend Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Violating a Congressional mandate, George H.W. Bush, as U.S. president, continued to allow the sale of chemical and biological weapons to Saddam Hussein after it had been shown that he'd used them on innocent Kurdish civilians.

Like his son, the only arrow in Bush the Elder's political quiver during his White House tenure was his stature as a "war president" once he initiated the Persian Gulf conflict against his former friend, Saddam Hussein. At the time, in full war frenzy, the media dutifully depicted the firm and forthright control wielded by Bush the Elder, ignoring a House Resolution for the "Impeachment of George Herbert Walker Bush" issued on Feb. 21, 1991, by Rep. Henry Gonzalez.

Let us not ignore it in hindsight. Thirteen years later, this document is remarkable for its prescience. The following are just some of the charges that Rep. Gonzalez made against Bush the Elder. They are almost identical to those that should be issued against his son:

-- "in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, [Pres. George H.W. Bush] has violated the U.S. Constitution, federal law, and the United Nations Charter by bribing, intimidating and threatening others, including the members of the United Nations Security Council, to support belligerent acts against Iraq....[He] has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States."

-- [Pres. George H.W. Bush] "has prepared, planned, and conspired to engage in a massive war against Iraq employing methods of mass destruction that will result in the killing of tens of thousands of civilians, many of whom will be children. This planning includes the placement and potential use of nuclear weapons, and the use of such indiscriminate weapons and massive killings by serial bombardment, or otherwise, of civilians violates the Hague Conventions of 1907 and 1923, the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and Protocol I thereto, the Nuremberg Charter, the Genocide Convention and the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights..."

-- [Pres. George H.W. Bush] "has committed the United States to acts of war without congressional consent and contrary to the United Nations Charter and international law. From August, 1990, through January, 1991, the President embarked on a course of action that systematically eliminated every option for peaceful resolution of the Persian Gulf crisis. Once the President approached Congress for a declaration of war, 500,000 American soldiers' lives were in jeopardy--rendering any substantive debate by Congress meaningless. The President has not received a declaration of war by Congress, and in contravention of the written word, the spirit, and the intent of the U.S. Constitution has declared that he will go to war regardless of the views of Congress and the American people. In failing to seek a declaration of war, and in declaring his intent to violate the Constitution in disregarding the acts of Congress--including the War Powers Resolution--George Herbert Walker Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States."

-- [Pres. George H.W. Bush] "has planned, prepared, and conspired to commit crimes against the peace by leading the United States into aggressive war against Iraq in violation of Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter, the Nuremberg Charter, other international instruments and treaties, and the Constitution of the United States."

This is only scratching the surface of deceit that disguises the miserable failings of George Herbert Walker Bush to American people in 2004. Just as it is with his son, Bush the Elder's past is an open book just waiting for someone to turn its page.

Have a look for yourself some time.

Alan Bisbort is a columnist for the Hartford Advocate. His most recent publication is "What Happened Here? Washington" (Pomegranate Communications).