Normally I’d be very skeptical of an article like this one: “Exclusive: Bush Wanted To Invade Iraq If Elected in 2000.” According to the article, President Bush was mulling the political benefits of invading Iraq as long ago as 1999.
The second graf of the piece reads …
âHe was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999,â said author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz. âIt was on his mind. He said to me: âOne of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.â And he said, âMy father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.â He said, âIf I have a chance to invadeâ¦.if I had that much capital, Iâm not going to waste it. Iâm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and Iâm going to have a successful presidency.â
As I said, I’d be skeptical.
But Herskowitz is <$Ad$>a storied sports columnist for the Houston Chronicle. He’s a Bush family friend. He’s co-written numerous ‘as-told-to’ autobiographies for a slew of famous folks.
He was hired to co-author President Bush’s campaign autobiography A Charge to Keep. And even after there were some bumps in the road in that process, the president’s father asked Herskowitz to write a biography of his father — i.e., Prescott Bush, which he did (see Duty, Honor, Country: The Life and Legacy of Prescott Bush, 2003).
On top of that, the author of the piece, Russ Baker, is a journalist with an excellent reputation.
For both those reasons, what’s contained in the piece is hard to dismiss. It ain’t pretty. And, honestly, it fits the profile.
