A few days ago I heard that Geo and Barb were far from supportive of their son’s military escapes, and Barbara was heard to say that she and George spent a lot of sleepless nights worrying about the repercussions of such a foolish misadventure.
But I sort of heard this through the grapevine. I haven’t seen anything that we’d call a credible cite. Are there any?
I want to keep this thread GQ-worthy. Just the facts, ma’am.
That comes from Bob Woodwards new book, State of Denial
Thanks for that. The review you linked to didn’t answer my specific question, and of course you can’t link to the book. But I trust Woodward’s reporting, so perhaps I should just pick up a copy.
Newsweek ran an exerpt from the book in last weeks issue (the one with Rumsfeld and Bush on the cover). Plus they wrote a review of the book just before the exerpt.
If you can grab a copy at the library you can perform a quick read before spending the money.
And BTW, both parents deny the Woodward report. Of course, you’d expect them to in public.
In 2002, Brent Scowcroft former National Security Advisor to President G.H. Bush wrote an op-ed piece against invading Iraq. At the time there was wide speculation that he did this with the knowledge and at least tacit approval of Bush the elder who many speculated was trying to dissuade his son without getting into a public battle with him.
Scowcroft had co-authored a book with Bush the elder and is very close to him which is why many thought he was speaking for Bush on this. Here is a link to a blog with the original article.
Didn’t Bush Sr. have qualms about invading Iraq the first time? ‘Now is not the time to go wobbly, George.’
Why does Bush senior hate America? 
No, he had no qualms at all about invading Iraq. STAYING in Iraq for a long time was another story.
Bush the Elder spent a long time piecing together an alliance to take on Saddam Hussein, solely for the purpose of getting Saddam out of Kuwait. There were those in his administration who thought that, once Kuwait was liberated, the U.S. should oust Saddam from power.
Bush refused, and his reasoning was this:
Our allies didn’t sign on for a conquest of Iraq, and even England would have balked at that.
Stability is always better than chaos. One Iraq, even one ruled by the odious Saddam, seemed preferable to a divided Iraq.
To be fair, Bush 41 has been interviewed on television repudiating all the claims Woodward made about him in his book.
Whether you want to believe this set of statements over those Woodward mentions is up to you, of course. But Bush 41 has officially denied any statements that Bush 43 is on the wrong course.
Roughly in the center, when the weather is nice.
Another important point for why Bush Sr. didn’t topple Hussein is that the US wanted to keep Iraq as a counterbalance to Iran. The two nations had already fought one very nasty war that didn’t really resolve anything. A weakened Iraq would still be strong enough to constrain Iran which has been a long-term goal of the US since the fall of the Shah.
I’ve always thougt it telling that Bush 41 remained silent on the subject of his son’s invasion of Iraq until recently and now he pretty much dances around any questions about the wisdom of the initial invasion.
One of the big mistakes, IMHO, of the first Gulf War, was not destroying the Republican Guard and it’s equipment. The Iraqi unit was in retreat, in the final days of the war, and Schwarzkopf’s field commanders wanted to attack them, but Powell, among others, advised Bush 41 that it was a bad idea. It probably was, but it would have severely weaked Saddam and caused him to spend time a money to rebuild the unit that protected his hold on power, setting back any other aspirations he may have had. It’s even possible that he could have been overthrown by his own people.
As previously mentioned, overthrowing Saddam wasn’t part of the UN mandate and you wouldn’t have had any authority to do so.
You seem to have misunderstood my post. I was suggesting that destroying the republican guard and much of it’s equipment would have weakened Saddam’s regime and possibly allowed forces inside Iraq to overthrow him. I was not referring to U.S. forces doing so.