George Walker Bush , known as George W. Bush . Forty-third President of the United States . Several experts have described him as ” a white man who believes he is God .” A long family tradition of dirty business, cheating, and government intrigues continues, beginning with his grandfather, Senator Prescott Bush , and continuing with his father, George Bush . Bush was elected governor of Texas in 1994 , being re-elected to that office in 1998 .
After the criminal attacks on the Twin Towers in New York on November of September of 2001 , George W. Bush was given the task of combating terrorism with more terrorism on a global scale. The attacks against Afghanistan and Iraq , with tens of thousands of civilian victims, demonstrate this. He applied all possible methods of the dirty war: clandestine jails, kidnappings, extrajudicial processes, telephone espionage and plagiarism of mere suspects.
Already in two cities in Europe Bush is at risk of being arrested for being the most responsible for the application of torture during and after the war he waged against Iraq . [one]
Summary
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- 1 Biography
- 1 Childhood
- 2 Youth
- 3 Beginnings in politics
- 3.1 Governor
- 4 Presidential campaign of 2000
- 4.1 James Hatfield
- 5 2004 campaign
- 6 Presidency of the United States
- 6.1 September 11
- 6.2 Invasion into Afghanistan
- 6.3 Invasion of Iraq
- 6.4 Hurricane Katrina
- 6.5 Government
- 6.6 Cabinet
- 7 After the presidency
- 7.1 Allegations of torture
- 2 Anti-Cuban policy
- 3 References
- 4 Sources
Biography
Childhood
Bush was born on 6 of July of 1946 in New Haven , Connecticut , the first son of the marriage formed George HW Bush and his wife Barbara. His grandfather, Senator Prescott Bush, spent over ten years helping his son-in-law George Herbert Walker finance Adolfo Hitler from the Wall Street bank , Union Banking Corporation . George Herbert Walker was one of the most powerful supporters of Hitler in the United States and obtained from Bush a position of director in the firm. Between 1924 and 1936, the Bush bank invested significant sums in Nazi Germany . In 1934 an investigation by Congress suspected that Walker’s Hamburg-United States line was subsidizing various pro-Nazi efforts in both Germany and the United States.
The Bush family decided in 1948 to move to the state of Texas . There, Bush was raised in the cities of Midland and Houston , along with his younger brothers Jeb, Neil, Marvin and his sisters Dorothy and Robin (the latter dying at the young age of three, from leukemia ).
Youth
He attended the Phillips Academy in Andover , Massachusetts and managed to be accepted at Yale University , where he entered the secret society known as Skull & Bones , and in 1968 obtained a Bachelor of Arts.
Bush was arrested for possession of cocaine in 1972 , but the traces or evidence of this arrest was removed as a special favor to his family.
During the Vietnam War ( 1968 – 1973 ), far from the theater of the colonial battle, he served as the Texas National Pilot.
In 1974, he was allowed to finish his six-year military service six months in advance in order to attend Harvard Business School , where a year later he obtained the Master of Business Administration. After graduating, Bush returns to Texas and becomes involved in the oil business. Between 1970 and 1980, he worked in the Texas oil and gas business, always linked to his family’s oil business. He ruined a couple of oil companies, but he pocketed millions in the process (wealthy friends of his father helped him).
In 1994 Bush’s campaign for the office of governor of the state of Texas was based solely on his past as a “businessman.” When popular and biting outgoing governor Ann Richards asked why all the businesses that Bush had run since 1979 suffered losses totaling $ 371 million, Bush immediately appeared on television to implore him to stop making “those personal attacks ».
In April 1989 , Bush brought together a group of investors from his father’s close friends, including his fraternity partner Roland W. Betts. The group bought 86% of the Texas Rangers baseball team for $ 75 million. Bush received 2% for his investment of $ 606,302, 500,000 of which came from a bank loan. Against the advice of his attorney, Bush paid off the loan by selling $ 848,000 worth of Harken Energy reserves. ‘Harken Energy’ made substantial losses in the year of this sale, triggering allegations of insider trading. He made millions of dollars when he sold his share of a baseball team that he had received almost as a gift.
Beginnings in politics
Bush began his political career assisting his father in the campaigns for the United States Senate of 1964 and 1970 . After leaving the National Guard in 1972 , he served as the political director for the Alabama Senate campaign . In 1978 he chose the House of Representatives , but lost to his opponent, Democrat Ken Hance.
In 1989 Bush himself declared to a friend of his:
You know, I could run for governor but deep down I’m just a media creation … I’ve never done anything …
Governor
Bush easily prevailed in the Republican primaries and on November 8, 1994, she defeated Richards with 53% of the vote, compared to 46%. Manipulative strategies, considerable spending, and alarmist television commercials allowed Bush to finally win the election.
During his tenure, Governor Bush cut environmental regulations, making Texas one of the states with the highest concentration of air and water pollution in the entire country. He authorized the execution of 134 people and allowed the inequality between the rich and the poor to grow enormously.
It limited access to abortion and legalized the use of concealed firearms – weapons that can be camouflaged between clothing – despite protests by the police. He also refused to sign a new law on “hate crimes” (crimes based on discrimination), all this after the murder of James Byrd – a black man who was tortured and killed by three white racists -, arguing that such The legislature would be useless because “all crimes are committed because of hatred.”
Despite everything, in 1998 Bush ran for re-election and won a wide victory, with 69% of the vote, becoming the first Governor of Texas to be elected twice in a row to serve four years each.
2000 presidential campaign
In the campaign for the 2000 presidential election, Bush declared himself “compassionate conservative”, but he did not know how to shut up and keep his drug addiction past to himself. In August 1999 , while the “brains of his presidential campaign” were away from the capital preparing his official “autobiography”, Bush decided to give a press conference where he awkwardly escaped mentioning that he had not taken drugs since 1974 .
After defeating Senator John McCain in the Republican primary, Bush beat Democratic candidate and Vice President Al Gore . They were very close elections in which irregularities were found in the ballots that were used in certain areas of Florida, at the time, the state that would decide the elections.
The Guardian newspaper conducted an investigation into a voter purge of Florida’s electoral rolls . According to this, up to 57,000 people, mostly African-Americans and Democrats, were deprived of their right to vote. In the end Bush won with 271 electoral votes, against Gore’s 266, although he won in number of votes.
The 2000 presidential election was the first since Benjamin Harrison’s in 1888 in which a victor came out who did not receive a majority of the votes.
James Hatfield
The death of the American writer James Hatfield in 2001 raised many concerns for intellectuals but, paradoxically, did not generate much debate or curiosity in the United States media . Hatfield was the first to write an unauthorized biography of President George W. Bush where he reveals surprising issues.
Cover of the book El Nerón del Siglo XXI
Hatfield was the biographer of George W. Bush, whose book The Nero of the 21st Century (Fortunate Son, its original English title) made headlines twice in a single week, after more than 100,000 copies were removed from bookstores throughout the country in 2001 under the threat of being burned, without the US publishing house St. Martin’s Press , intervening any regulatory legal recourse. [two]
This book first made a splash in the media by alleging that Bush had been arrested for cocaine possession in 1972 , but a judge had removed any trace of the event from court records as a personal favor to his father.
The book was effectively wiped out for the election campaign of the year 2000 , when it could have caused a big difference in elections that were supposedly resolved by a difference of 525 votes.
Bush’s party with its long tentacles evidently knew of the book’s existence and was closely watching it. According to Hatfield, someone from Bush’s party contacted him and accepted an invitation to meet together and see if he was “on the right track.” When he met the caller in person, he said it turned out to be Karl Rove himself , Bush’s top strategist and adviser.
After the drug possession allegations were made public, Hatfield said he received threats from one of Bush’s allies who had upheld those allegations. Threats were directed at Hatfield’s wife and two-month-old daughter saying, “If you appreciate their lives, you had better give up on that issue.”
The book attests that James Bath , the US representative for Salem , the brother of Osama Bin Laden , had invested $ 50,000 in Bush, Little Bush’s oil company. In light of the events after Hatfield’s death, it seems that this was the part of the book that they most eagerly wanted to delete.
The history of the Bush family was so linked to crimes, gruesome maneuvers, covert acts and murders that there were surely a multitude of obscure facts that were hidden under any information about the events of their lives.
James Hatfield was found dead in a motel room “Days Inn” in Springdale ( Arkansas ), the 18 of July of 2001 .
According to the police, it is a suicide. But a friend of Hatfield, the journalist David Cogswell , who knew all the difficulties and threats that Hatfield had to face, has written two unpublished and excellent final notes in “The Nero of the XXI Century”, where he explains all the rarity and mystery of his death, the way Hatfield was watched and stalked, a fact that raises many questions and concerns.
2004 campaign
In the 2004 re-election campaign , Bush managed to beat his opponent, Democratic Senator John Kerry . The ghost of fraud that irreparably discredited the American electoral system in 2000 , reappeared once again in Florida in the failure of the voting machines, changes of polling places, verbal exchanges of slogans, among other incidents.
Among the irregularities is the fact that several voters at the Pompano Beach Civic Center in Broward County discovered at the last minute that Precinct 1C was transferred to a nearby church, after several people had already cast their vote on provisional ballots at the first site. A similar problem was registered at the 72Q precinct in Weston, where about 1,920 voters were registered.
Bush was invested for his second term on January 20 , 2005 .
Presidency of the United States
11 of September
The November of September of 2001 the Twin Towers in New York were reduced to rubble and the Pentagon was severely damaged. These were the images of the worst attack suffered by the United States in its more than two hundred years of history. A wave of attacks perpetrated with four passenger planes hijacked by suicide bombers and later launched against the most characteristic buildings of the North American economic and military power.
The tragedy of September 11, 2001 was the justification used by the administration of the President of the United States, George W. Bush, to launch a campaign of “fight against terrorism” and “for the salvation of civilization”, and with This will organize massive and imminent attacks, which will reassure their influence on the vital areas for the energy supplies of their country.
Georgia Democratic Rep . Cynthia McKenney was the first American public figure to dare question the role of the Bush administration before the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon and the subsequent war on terror. That cost him criticism and threats. Then the evidence began to claim her.
The now famous Phoenix Report and the Minnesota memo are just one example that FBI agents knew that a major attack was in the works. The FBI chief himself, Robert Muller III , had to admit that his men should have “done a better job” reading the evidence that came before 9/11.
Invasion of Afghanistan
Bush and the president of Afghanistan , Hamid Karzai , during a visit to Kabul
The invasion of Afghanistan , which began on 7 of October of 2001 with ” Operation Enduring Freedom ” of the US military and ” Operation Herrick ” of British troops to invade and occupy the Asian country, was undertaken in response to the attacks of 11 September 2001 in the United States. This justification and the so-called “War on Terror” were only pretexts to unleash a wave of world domination by the United States.
The stated objective of the invasion of Afghanistan was to find Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders to bring them to trial, and to overthrow the Taliban regime . In fact, one of the main causes of the invasion was the construction of an oil pipeline through Afghanistan – without having to negotiate with the Taliban – to the coast of Pakistan , in order to be able to extract oil from Central Asia more simple and cheap.
The initial attack removed the Taliban from power, but the Taliban regained strength and position ever since. The war has been less successful than expected in terms of restricting al Qaeda’s movement. Since 2006 , stability in Afghanistan has been threatened due to increased Taliban-led insurgent activity, high records of illegal drug production, and a fragile government with little power outside Kabul .
Invasion of iraq
From inside the White House in his book Plan of Attack , Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward recounts a meeting between George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld on November 21 , 2001 , just a month and a half after the war against Afghanistan, in which the president asked his secretary of state to update the plan of attack against Iraq. From that moment on, the complex military plan, made up of multiple military, logistical, economic, political and diplomatic elements, was launched, while a large media machinery was being prepared to gradually soften the terrain, waiting for the right moment to start the war.
Eleven years earlier, in 1990 , his own father, George Bush senior, prepared the so-called Gulf War , the first against Saddam Hussein . This was preceded, like the second, by a meticulously prepared wave of lies.
Saddam Hussein, the man Donald Rumsfeld visited in Baghdad in 1983 , then special envoy of Ronald Reagan ; the man who was financed and armed to declare war on the nascent Islamic republic of Iran had demonstrated his inability to fill the role that the US He needed in the area and had to be killed and his power dismantled. Every lie was valid for it. A large media operation was launched.
The 23 of July of 2002 , at a meeting of the cabinet of Prime Minister Anthony Blair , is discussed in confidential terms strategy to sell the invasion of public opinion on the basis of weapons of mass destruction , not to mention the change directly regime, which was not covered by international law. In the summer of that year, Bush’s advisers launched a campaign to convince public opinion. In September, Congress overwhelmingly approves the use of force against Iraq . Reports directed by Hans BlixRegarding the non-existence of weapons of mass destruction or chemicals, or the capacity to produce them, they are completely ignored.
The 22 of February of 2003 , at a meeting between Bush and Aznar in Crawfod Ranch, Texas, Bush made it clear that it was time to get rid of Saddam: ” In two weeks we will be militarily ready. We will be in Baghdad at the end of March . ”
The 16 of March of 2003 meet in the Azores islands the top leaders of the US, UK , Spain and Portugal , to launch the last warning to Iraq (although the invasion was determined two years earlier) and set the date of commencement of air attack on Baghdad .
The invasion of Iraq begins on March 20, 2003. The effects: According to the Iraqi Ministry of Health, 151,000 violent deaths out of 400,000 deaths due to war. According to the Lancet newspaper , 601,027 violent deaths. According to Opinion Research Business , one million violent deaths from the conflict.
The 14 of December of 2008 , during a press conference Muntadar el-Zeidi , a correspondent for the Iraqi television station el-Baghdadia , based in Cairo , Egypt , took off his shoes before the astonished gaze of the Prime Minister of Iraq , Nuri al-Maliki , and the amazement of the security guards, threw them at Bush. “This is the kiss of goodbye to the Iraqi people, dog,” the journalist then shouted at the former White House chief. Behind this attempted attack is hidden “the worst gesture of contempt” that an Iraqi can do. Also, calling someone a “dog” for the Muslim world is “one of the worst insults that can be dedicated.”
Hurricane Katrina
The Hurricane Katrina was one of the tropical cyclones more deadly, destructive and costly it has impacted the United States in decades.
It was a large tropical cyclone that hit the southern and central United States in August 2005 . It caused extensive damage in Florida, the Bahamas , Louisiana and Mississippi , including extensive material damage and severe flooding. It made landfall on the Louisiana coast on August 29 and despite the fact that at the last moment it deviated slightly from its route, which directly crossed the city of New Orleans , there was great devastation in it and in nearby areas. Due to the damage caused, it became one of the most devastating hurricanes in the United States in recent history, and perhaps the greatest natural disaster in the history of that country.
Two days before Hurricane Katrina hit the city of New Orleans, President George Bush recommended “Pray and Run.”
Thousands of people in New Orleans argue that the Katrina-related disaster could have been largely avoided if the government had ensured the safety and resilience of levees in the canal system in southern Louisiana .
The Bush administration canceled a proposal for an investigation by the Corps of Engineers to evaluate ways to protect New Orleans from a catastrophic hurricane. He reported that for 2003 federal funds for flood control in this area were reduced to almost nothing due to the financing needs of the war in Iraq, while in 2004 the White House reduced the financing requested by the Army Corps of Engineers by 80 percent to control the waters of the area. In fact, there were more cuts earlier this year, and as a result since 2001, the budget devoted to this was reduced 44.2 percent overall.
On August 29, 2005, Category 5 Katrina, with sustained winds of 280 km / h, impacted the Louisiana coast and produced waves that overflowed and split the levees, causing flooding in 80 percent of the city, with a balance close to two thousand deaths and losses of more than 80 billion dollars.
On September 13, 2005, Bush takes responsibility for the federal government’s failures during a press conference with Iraqi President Talabani:
Katrina exposed serious problems to our responsiveness at all levels of government. To the extent that the federal government did not do its job completely well, so I take responsibility. I want to know what went right and what went wrong.
government
The Bush administration was marked by several scandals. As an example, it is enough to mention the one related to the Halliburton oil company, a company investigated for mega fraud and to which Vice President Richard Cheney belonged .
Another case is that of the American spy Valerie Plane , as a sample of political use of the secret services and revenge, when her identity was leaked by high officials, in retaliation because her husband, diplomat Joe Wilson , denounced the falsehood of some evidence that the White House used to justify the invasion of Iraq.
In addition, the linguistic, geographic, conceptual and all kinds of mistakes made in his speeches by W. Bush, are frequently ridiculed by humorists and a good part of the population, who often question the President’s intellectual capacity, a limitation that could give rise to analyze his thoughtlessness and the tragic consequences of the actions he undertakes. George W. Bush has the lowest IQ in the history of North American leaders, according to a report prepared by the Lovenstein Institute in Scranton , Pennsylvania , which determined the IQ of twelve leaders in the last sixty years.
Anecdotes about their gaffes, their silly starts, their ineptitude and foolishness run in all the gatherings and provide a streak of laughter at the expense of the president. These expressions of presidential stupidity have been dubbed by the American public as ” bushisms .”
But perhaps what would make him pass to posterity with a universal brand of cynicism is his entire work after the attacks of September 11, events about which there are still many unknowns.
Bush’s successor to the presidency, Barack Obama , criticized the economic policies of his Republican predecessor, George W. Bush. Obama said that the “disastrous” policies of the former president knocked the US economy to the ground and turned budget surpluses into deficits.
George W. Bush, set a record of low popularity, registering only 28% support for his management.
Bush justifies in an autobiographical book published in 2010 the use of torture during the so-called “fight against terrorism”. The decisive moments memories broke the relative silence in which Bush remained since he gave his place in the White House to President Barack Obama. It defends its decision to authorize what were called “strong interrogations” such as the submarine and related torture techniques, against those suspected of terrorism. He says that these techniques “saved lives” and that to a CIA consultation to use the submarine against one of the brains of the attacks of September 11, 2001, he replied: “of course . “
Later, during an interview, he pointed out that his biggest failure in the eight years he was in the White House was not having privatized Social Security in the United States. ” I would like to be remembered as a guy who had a set of priorities, and was willing to live by those priorities ,” Bush explained. “ In terms of achievement, my greatest achievement was that I kept the country safe in the midst of real danger. ”
Cabinet
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After the presidency
Minutes after he was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama and his wife accompanied Bush and his wife to the steps of the front door of the Capitol. The Bushes acquired a house in Dallas , not far from the campus of Southern Methodist University , where the former president plans to build the George W. Bush Presidential Library. [3]
Photography without ceded dated by Random House the 8 of November of 2010 showing the cover of the book “Decision Points” (key issues), memoirs of former US President George W. Bush
Bush once again became a public figure when he announced the launch of his book, ” Decision Points “, in November 2009 . [4] The publication, of a circulation of 1.5 million copies, was accompanied by a press campaign by Bush, who was interviewed by NBC the day before at night , in his first television interview since it was transferred the presidency to Barack Obama.
Most critics agreed that the book itself, which is less than 500 pages, contains little to surprise the public. “Competent, readable and flat” was the headline of the criticism of The Washington Post . [5]
In his statements to The Times newspaper , [6] W. Bush justified his decision to allow suspects to be subjected to torture known as “bathtub torture”, alleging that he avoided deadly attacks in London .
The former president also considered it “correct” to have authorized the use of the controversial method against the Pakistani Khaled Cheik Mohamed , self-proclaimed mastermind of the September 11 , 2001 attacks in the United States.
In “Decision Points,” Bush also says that before the invasion he was a “dissident voice” within his administration for opposing the use of force, but was later persuaded.
In his memoirs, Bush also assures that he advised then Mexican President Vicente Fox in 2003 , in the middle of a diplomatic debate on an attack on Iraq , not to ally himself with France at the United Nations . [7]
Allegations of torture
Already in two European cities George W. Bush is in danger of being arrested for being the most responsible for the application of torture during and after the bloody war that he waged against Iraq, with the support of his main allies, the former prime ministers of Great Britain Tony Blair , and from Spain , José María Aznar . [8] As of November 2009, London Mayor Boris Johnson had sent a message to Bush requesting him to stay away from British territory and other European countries during the promotional tour for his book, since he could be arrested as a war criminal for having authorized the use of torture. [9]
The accusations against Bush in this regard prevented him from materializing a trip that he had planned in the first week of February 2011 to Geneva , Switzerland , where human rights organizations have launched legal actions against the former US president for his flagrant violations of human rights. . [10]
The incrimination of the former president is based on the extensive legal arguments of three prestigious Human Rights organizations and has the support of 22 other entities and individuals, among which are several Nobel Peace Laureates .
The 40-page brief denounces the use of torture by the US administration both in Guantánamo and in the CIA secret detention centers around the world.
According to the United Nations Convention against Torture and Abuse [11] a total of 147 States are obliged to investigate Bush and prosecute him if it is shown that there is sufficient evidence against him. The 6 of February of 2011 the organization Amnesty International (AI) said that Bush can be prosecuted in any country after publicly admitting last November that it had authorized torture in the interrogation of the security services of the United States. [12] In statements to EFEMatthew Pollard, who prepared the report submitted to the Swiss authorities, has pointed out that the situation changed when Bush last November “admitted on television and in his memoirs, without apology, that he had personally authorized the torture technique called ‘waterboarding”. .
Anti-Cuban policy
“Regime change” has always been the policy of the United States regarding Cuba . It has been structured with total disrespect for international law and in the eyes of world public opinion, an annexationist plan that integrates all aggressive anti-Cuban programs and actions.
During his administration, the Bush Plan for the annexation of Cuba was presented, actively involving the United States Interests Section in Cuba . On July 10, 2006, through a brief written statement by President Bush, the report of the so-called ” Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba ” was released.
Based on the 2004 report, it consisted of 93 pages organized in the following seven chapters:
- Chapter 1: “Accelerating the end of the Castro dictatorship: Transition, not succession.”
- Chapter 2: “Help Cubans respond to critical humanitarian and social needs.”
- Chapter 3: “Help Cubans achieve free and fair elections.”
- Chapter 4: “Helping Cubans create market-based economic opportunities.”
- Chapter 5: “The role of the international community”.
- Chapter 6: “The vital role of Cubans abroad”.
- Chapter 7: “Prepare now to support the transition.”
As in 2004, the first chapter of the Report stated the specific strategy and measures that the Commission recommends to apply immediately to precipitate the overthrow of the Cuban government.
Chapter 1: “Accelerating the end of the Castro dictatorship: Transition, not succession.”
The existence of recommendations in a secret annex alleging reasons of national security and to “achieve its effective realization” was a new feature of this Report. Its greatest repercussion lay in the fact that such recommendations refer specifically to Chapter 1 of the annexationist plan, aimed at speeding up the overthrow of the Cuban revolutionary government.
The measures announced in Chapter 1 can be grouped into eight categories, namely:
- Increased financing for internal subversion and propaganda campaigns against Cuba.
- Increase in the electronic radio waragainst Cuba.
- Offensive for governments and NGOs from third countries, as well as certain international organizations to join the policy of the United States against Cuba.
- Recurrence of the blockade through measures aimed at exerting greater economic and financial pressure on Cuba.
- Application of Titles III and IV of the Helms-Burton Act.
- Measures against Cuban government officials.
- Actions to avoid the continuity of the revolutionary government in Cuba.
- Migratory issues.
One of the most notable aspects of the anti-Cuban action of the President W. Bush administration was the issue of restricting freedom of travel through sanctions and threats against US citizens who want to travel to Cuba. Suffice it to say that while in the January 3 on 3 May of 2001, within four months, the Department of the Treasury sent 74 letters to US citizens who dared to travel to Cuba without permission, fines imposing by 7 500 USD as On average, in the following three months, from May 4 to July 31 of the same year, 443 letters of this nature were sent.
