One more note on the Neil Bush-Taiwan story.
This is the story about the meeting between the president’s brother and the Taiwanese president and charges that $1 milion was paid to arrange it.
Charges get thrown around a lot in Taiwan. They have a vituperative politics and a vituperative press. The country is heading into an election and the folks making the charges are the ones trying to unseat the president.
But what caught my eye about this story (noted below) is Neil Bush. However the meeting was arranged, why does the President of Taiwan want a meeting with the president’s ne’er-do-well brother? Foreign policy advice? Insights on fighting an air war over the Taiwan Strait? Seems hard to figure.
What’s more, Neil’s got a history. And I’m not talking about the Silverado business. See this piece I wrote on Neil for Salon in the spring of ’02.
And for more on the history of the use of cash in Taiwanese foreign policy, see this Salon piece from a week earlier.
