Bush Wanted To Invade Iraq If Elected in 2000

By Russ Baker
Houston: Two years before the September 11
attacks, presidential candidate George W. Bush was
already talking privately about the political benefits
of attacking Iraq, according to his former ghost writer,
who held many conversations with then-Texas Governor
Bush in preparation for a planned autobiography.
“He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999,” said
author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz. “It was on his
mind. He said to me: ‘One of the keys to being seen as a
great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.’ And
he said, ‘My father had all this political capital built
up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted
it.’ He said, ‘If I have a chance to invade….if I had
that much capital, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going
to get everything passed that I want to get passed and
I’m going to have a successful presidency.”
Herskowitz said that Bush expressed frustration at a
lifetime as an underachiever in the shadow of an
accomplished father. In aggressive military action, he
saw the opportunity to emerge from his father’s shadow.
The moment, Herskowitz said, came in the wake of the
September 11 attacks. “Suddenly, he’s at 91 percent in
the polls, and he’d barely crawled out of the bunker.”
That President Bush and his advisers had Iraq on their
minds long before weapons inspectors had finished their
work – and long before alleged Iraqi ties with
terrorists became a central rationale for war – has been
raised elsewhere, including in a book based on
recollections of former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill.
However, Herskowitz was in a unique position to hear
Bush’s unguarded and unfiltered views on Iraq, war and
other matters – well before he became president.
In 1999, Herskowitz struck a deal with the campaign of
George W. Bush about a ghost-written autobiography,
which was ultimately titled A Charge to Keep : My
Journey to the White House, and he and Bush signed a
contract in which the two would split the proceeds. The
publisher was William Morrow. Herskowitz was given
unimpeded access to Bush, and the two met approximately
20 times so Bush could share his thoughts. Herskowitz
began working on the book in May, 1999, and says that
within two months he had completed and submitted some 10
chapters, with a remaining 4-6 chapters still on his
computer. Herskowitz was replaced as Bush’s ghostwriter
after Bush’s handlers concluded that the candidate’s
views and life experiences were not being cast in a
sufficiently positive light.
According to Herskowitz, who has authored more than 30
books, many of them jointly written autobiographies of
famous Americans in politics, sports and media
(including that of Reagan adviser Michael Deaver), Bush
and his advisers were sold on the idea that it was
difficult for a president to accomplish an electoral
agenda without the record-high approval numbers that
accompany successful if modest wars.
The revelations on Bush’s attitude toward Iraq emerged
recently during two taped interviews of Herskowitz,
which included a discussion of a variety of matters,
including his continued closeness with the Bush family,
indicated by his subsequent selection to pen an
authorized biography of Bush’s grandfather, written and
published last year with the assistance and blessing of
the Bush family.
Herskowitz also revealed the following:
-In 2003, Bush’s father indicated to him that he
disagreed with his son’s invasion of Iraq.
-Bush admitted that he failed to fulfill his Vietnam-era
domestic National Guard service obligation, but claimed
that he had been “excused.”
-Bush revealed that after he left his Texas National
Guard unit in 1972 under murky circumstances, he never
piloted a plane again. That casts doubt on the
carefully-choreographed moment of Bush emerging in
pilot’s garb from a jet on the aircraft carrier USS
Abraham Lincoln in 2003 to celebrate “Mission
Accomplished” in Iraq. The image, instantly telegraphed
around the globe, and subsequent hazy White House
statements about his capacity in the cockpit, created
the impression that a heroic Bush had played a role in
landing the craft.
-Bush described his own business ventures as
“floundering” before campaign officials insisted on
recasting them in a positive light.
Throughout the interviews for this article and in
subsequent conversations, Herskowitz indicated he was
conflicted over revealing information provided by a
family with which he has longtime connections, and by
how his candor could comport with the undefined
operating principles of the as-told-to genre. Well after
the interviews—in which he expressed consternation that
Bush’s true views, experience and basic essence had
eluded the American people —Herskowitz communicated
growing concern about the consequences for himself of
the publication of his remarks, and said that he had
been under the impression he would not be quoted by
name. However, when conversations began, it was made
clear to him that the material was intended for
publication and attribution. A tape recorder was present
and visible at all times.
Several people who know Herskowitz well addressed his
character and the veracity of his recollections. “I
don’t know anybody that’s ever said a bad word about
Mickey,” said Barry Silverman, a well-known Houston
executive and civic figure who worked with him on
another book project. An informal survey of Texas
journalists turned up uniform confidence that
Herskowitz’s account as contained in this article could
be considered accurate.
One noted Texas journalist who spoke with Herskowitz
about the book in 1999 recalls how the author mentioned
to him at the time that Bush had revealed things the
campaign found embarrassing and did not want in print.
He requested anonymity because of the political climate
in the state. “I can’t go near this,” he said.
According to Herskowitz, George W. Bush’s beliefs on
Iraq were based in part on a notion dating back to the
Reagan White House – ascribed in part to now-vice
president Dick Cheney, Chairman of the House Republican
Policy Committee under Reagan. “Start a small war. Pick
a country where there is justification you can jump on,
go ahead and invade.”
Bush’s circle of pre-election advisers had a fixation on
the political capital that British Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher collected from the Falklands War. Said
Herskowitz: “They were just absolutely blown away, just
enthralled by the scenes of the troops coming back, of
the boats, people throwing flowers at [Thatcher] and her
getting these standing ovations in Parliament and making
these magnificent speeches.”
Republicans, Herskowitz said, felt that Jimmy Carter’s
political downfall could be attributed largely to his
failure to wage a war. He noted that President Reagan
and President Bush’s father himself had (besides the
narrowly-focused Gulf War I) successfully waged limited
wars against tiny opponents – Grenada and Panama – and
gained politically. But there were successful small
wars, and then there were quagmires, and apparently
George H.W. Bush and his son did not see eye to eye.
“I know [Bush senior] would not admit this now, but he
was opposed to it. I asked him if he had talked to W
about invading Iraq. “He said, ‘No I haven’t, and I
won’t, but Brent [Scowcroft] has.’ Brent would not have
talked to him without the old man’s okaying it.”
Scowcroft, national security adviser in the elder Bush’s
administration, penned a highly publicized warning to
George W. Bush about the perils of an invasion.
Herskowitz’s revelations are not the sole indicator of
Bush’s pre-election thinking on Iraq. In December 1999,
some six months after his talks with Herskowitz, Bush
surprised veteran political chroniclers, including the
Boston Globe’s David Nyhan, with his blunt
pronouncements about Saddam at a six-way New Hampshire
primary event that got little notice: “It was a
gaffe-free evening for the rookie front-runner, till he
was asked about Saddam’s weapons stash,” wrote Nyhan.
‘I’d take ‘em out,’ [Bush] grinned cavalierly, ‘take out
the weapons of mass destruction…I’m surprised he’s still
there,” said Bush of the despot who remains in power
after losing the Gulf War to Bush Jr.’s father…It
remains to be seen if that offhand declaration of war
was just Texas talk, a sort of locker room braggadocio,
or whether it was Bush’s first big clinker. ”
The notion that President Bush held unrealistic or naïve
views about the consequences of war was further advanced
recently by a Bush supporter, the evangelist Pat
Robertson, who revealed that Bush had told him the Iraq
invasion would yield no casualties. In addition, in
recent days, high-ranking US military officials have
complained that the White House did not provide them
with adequate resources for the task at hand.
Herskowitz considers himself a friend of the Bush
family, and has been a guest at the family vacation home
in Kennebunkport. In the late 1960s, Herskowitz, a
longtime Houston Chronicle sports columnist designated
President Bush’s father, then-Congressman George HW
Bush, to replace him as a guest columnist, and the two
have remained close since then. (Herskowitz was
suspended briefly in April without pay for reusing
material from one of his own columns, about legendary
UCLA basketball coach John Wooden.)
In 1999, when Herskowitz turned in his chapters for
Charge to Keep, Bush’s staff expressed displeasure
—often over Herskowitz’s use of language provided by
Bush himself. In a chapter on the oil business,
Herskowitz included Bush’s own words to describe the
Texan’s unprofitable business ventures, writing: “the
companies were floundering”. “I got a call from one of
the campaign lawyers, he was kind of angry, and he said,
‘You’ve got some wrong information.’ I didn’t bother to
say, ‘Well you know where it came from.’ [The lawyer]
said, ‘We do not consider that the governor struggled or
floundered in the oil business. We consider him a
successful oilman who started up at least two new
businesses.’ ”
In the end, campaign officials decided not to go with
Herskowitz’s account, and, moreover, demanded everything
back. “The lawyer called me and said, ‘Delete it. Shred
it. Just do it.’ ”
“They took it and [communications director] Karen
[Hughes] rewrote it,” he said. A campaign official
arrived at his home at seven a.m. on a Monday morning
and took his notes and computer files. However,
Herskowitz, who is known for his memory of anecdotes
from his long history in journalism and book publishing,
says he is confident about his recollections.
According to Herskowitz, Bush was reluctant to discuss
his time in the Texas Air National Guard – and
inconsistent when he did so. Bush, he said, provided
conflicting explanations of how he came to bypass a
waiting list and obtain a coveted Guard slot as a
domestic alternative to being sent to Vietnam.
Herskowitz also said that Bush told him that after
transferring from his Texas Guard unit two-thirds
through his six-year military obligation to work on an
Alabama political campaign, he did not attend any
Alabama National Guard drills at all, because he was
“excused.” This directly contradicts his public
statements that he participated in obligatory training
with the Alabama National Guard. Bush’s claim to have
fulfilled his military duty has been subject to intense
scrutiny; he has insisted in the past that he did show
up for monthly drills in Alabama – though commanding
officers say they never saw him, and no Guardsmen have
come forward to accept substantial “rewards” for anyone
who can claim to have seen Bush on base.
Herskowitz said he asked Bush if he ever flew a plane
again after leaving the Texas Air National Guard in 1972
– which was two years prior to his contractual
obligation to fly jets was due to expire. He said Bush
told him he never flew any plane – military or civilian
– again. That would contradict published accounts in
which Bush talks about his days in 1973 working with
inner-city children, when he claimed to have taken some
of the children up in a plane.
In 2002, three years after he had been pulled off the
George W. Bush biography, Herskowitz was asked by Bush’s
father to write a book about the current president’s
grandfather, Prescott Bush, after getting a message that
the senior Bush wanted to see him. “Former President
Bush just handed it to me. We were sitting there one
day, and I was visiting him there in his office…He said,
‘I wish somebody would do a book about my dad.’ ”
“He said to me, ‘I know this has been a disappointing
time for you, but it’s amazing how many times something
good will come out of it.’ I passed it on to my agent,
he jumped all over it. I asked [Bush senior], ‘Would you
support it and would you give me access to the rest of
family?’ He said yes.”
That book, Duty, Honor, Country: The Life and Legacy
of Prescott Bush, was published in 2003 by
Routledge. If anything, the book has been criticized for
its over-reliance on the Bush family’s perspective and
rosy interpretation of events. Herskowitz himself is
considered the ultimate “as-told-to” author, lending
credibility to his account of what George W. Bush told
him. Herskowitz’s other books run the gamut of public
figures, and include the memoirs of Reagan aide Deaver,
former Texas Governor and Nixon Treasury Secretary John
Connally, newsman Dan Rather, astronaut Walter
Cunningham, and baseball greats Mickey Mantle and Nolan
Ryan.
After Herskowitz was pulled from the Bush book project,
the biographer learned that a scenario was being
prepared to explain his departure. “I got a phone call
from someone in the Bush campaign, confidentially,
saying ‘Watch your back.’ ”
Reporters covering Bush say that when they inquired as
to why Herskowitz was no longer on the project, Hughes
intimated that Herskowitz had personal habits that
interfered with his writing – a claim Herskowitz said is
unfounded. Later, the campaign put out the word that
Herskowitz had been removed for missing a deadline.
Hughes subsequently finished the book herself – it
received largely critical reviews for its self-serving
qualities and lack of spontaneity or introspection.
So, said Herskowitz, the best material was left on the
cutting room floor, including Bush’s true feelings.
“He told me that as a leader, you can never admit to a
mistake,” Herskowitz said. “That was one of the keys to
being a leader.”
Research support for this article was provided
by the Investigative Fund of The Nation Institute.
Russ Baker is an award-winning
independent journalist who has been published in The
New York Times, The Nation, Washington
Post, The Telegraph (UK), Sydney
Morning-Herald, and Der Spiegel, among
many others.