Customer Reviews

Bush's War For Reelection: Iraq, the White House, and the People

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No wonder the Bush Administration is so touchy about Mr Kerry's comments, "they are the biggest bunch of crooks and liars".
In this election year, I have been doing a lot of serious reading, both online, in the library, and when a really good book comes along -- buying it. This book is in that last category.
After hearing about this book on MSNBC, I had to get it. I was not disappointed. The format, style and detail is superb.
It confirms my original fears regarding Iraq, and gave me some new ones. The problem is, it makes me feel violated, taken advantage of by these people who arrogantly abuse their absolute power. And to think that I actually wrote Pres. Bush, and offered my "patriotic support, even though I didn't vote for you, as we go to war -- I have to trust that you know what you are doing and you will do the right thing". Trust? Do the right thing? Boy, was I a schmuck! Kerry was right -- "they are the biggest bunch of crooks and liars" that ANY of us have EVER seen. Worse than Nixon! And I used to be a Republican! Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. This book should be REQUIRED READING before you are ALLOWED to vote! I'm sending my copy to a brother-in-law, an uninformed Bush supporter. Hopefully he, and others like him, will make a more informed voting decision once they've read this book! My thanks to Mr Moore. I highly recommend this book. For a more comic, light, and entertaining approach to some of this subject matter, I also recommend Al Franken's, "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them".

James Moore, author of "Bush's Brain" (that would be Karl Rove) is back with more hard-hitting reporting. The theme of the book is that Bush, who had strings pulled to get him into the National Guard to avoid Vietnam and then went AWOL to work on a GOP political campaign, is no war hero. Moore's book is filled with the stories of the real war heroes, the young men and women who were sent to fight in two wars that should not have been fought -- Vietnam, and Iraq 2003. The format moves back and forth between chapters exposing the lies, vendettas and trickery of Bush and his team, and chapters profiling the stories of combat veterans.

The opening chapter documents the fact that the Bush administration was committed to a war on Iraq upon entering office. 9/11 was merely the pretext. They knew full well that they were manufacturing and twisting intel -- what nerve to deny it! (See the excellent story "The Lie Factory" on the Office of Special Plans in Mother Jones on the web.) Hundreds of U.S. troops have died for Bush's lies, Bush who used his family connections to avoid combat himself. A major contribution of the book is to document Bush being AWOL and the cover-up, including photocopies of many documents and a list of those that are missing. LTC Bill Burkett of the Texas Army National Guard is one who knows and has paid the price -- he has suffered death threats, shots fired into his house, and the denial of medical treatment that nearly killed him, all because he refused to join the coverup of Bush's AWOL episode in 1972-3. Another chapter covers the shameful outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame by the Bush administration. Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife was exposed by right-wing journalist Bob Novak in retaliation for Wilson's exposing the lie that Iraq had purchased uranium from Niger, the infamous "16 words" inserted into Bush's speech long after it was known to be unfounded.

One of the most shocking stories included here is the scandal of electronic voting. The use of electronic touch screen systems allows the manipulation of results -- this is documented by Moore, using the research of Bev Harris (see her book "Black Box Voting") among others. Diebold Election Systems, one of the leading manufacturers, is associated with the GOP -- CEO Wally O'Dell was a "Ranger" for Bush in 2000. Diebold is alleged to have stolen 16,022 votes from Gore in Volusia County, Florida in 2000 with vote tabulation equipment, and also to have stolen the election from Vietnam vet Senator Max Cleland of Georgia in 2002. It is explained how patches are used to fix malfunctioning machines, and that these patches can easily be used to insert codes that change the results. In the 2002 election in GA, which used Diebold machines, there was a 25-30% failure rate, which resulted in the application of patches to 1,387 terminals. This is not a science fiction dystopia, this is the GOP using computers to steal elections today in America.

Bush has manipulated the patriotic sentiments of the American people following 9/11, and is running as a "war president." But he launched an unnecessary war on Iraq, which had no connection to 9/11 and presented no imminent threat from nuclear weapons -- these facts were known all along, as those of us who opposed the war said so time and again as we tried to stop it. James Moore has done our nation a great service by exposing the high crimes of the current administration. It's time to put an end to the lies, to honor the brave men and women who have sacrificed for us, and bring about a regime change in November!

Finally a reasonable perspective on the current political miasma created by the Bush Administration. Well written, organized in a logical presentation, and more even handed than the usual fair from both extremes, i.e. Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh or Michael Moore, Al Franken.
One mystery that isn't explained however is, why is it called the "Commitee to re-elect the President" when he wasn't "elected" yet.
If much of what is discussed by James Moore is weighted more to the truth, then a win for Bush in 2004 will be a bigger disaster than the re-election of Nixon in 1972.
If read with a truly open mind, Moore's book is at least an eye opener and a cause for much needed debate before we go to the polls in Novemeber.

You must keep the title in mind while reading this book as, if you don't, you're not likely to remember the book's point.

I got the book largely because I was impressed with "Bush's Brain," the other book one of whose authors was James Moore who wrote this volume. He starts the book with an "in memory" of military men the fate of whom he covers more thoroughly in the text. He then covers some details of the military actions in which those individuals were involved--and in which they and others were killed.

The text then covers much of Dubya's dubious military record. Well, as I've said to many, if most of us were so irresponsible to our commanders, national guard or otherwise, we'd be in jail.

I guess what impressed me most was the style and the angle of the text. I'm not accustomed to such detailed coverage of military actions, then reflections on the lives of the survivors of those to whom the book is dedicated.

While it's been a couple of months since I finished the book, I review it now and see the only "objections" I had to the text: There are so many at best distantly related subjects that the theme of the book wasn't clear. I opened a chapter now and saw the part I'd forgotten about voting machines in Florida. And the next chapter is about the wife and daughters of one of the marines killed in Iraq.

Overall it's not a bad book, but, again, the object of the book doesn't seem clear. Add it, perhaps, to your library of books challenging the "war" in Iraq (and the moral capacity of those who instigated it) but don't read it until you've read many of the others that are more clearly presented.

This book should be on the reading list of anyone who wants to make an informed voting decision in November. The author reveals startling information about the mishandling of the Iraqi situation, and provides telling insight into the decision making processes of the Bush administration. Please read before you vote in November. Disregard those close-minded reviewers who *condemn* the book simply because it dosen't conform to what they believe to be the *truth*. Read the book first and then judge for yourself the veracity of Moore's revelations.

This is a riveting account of Bush's war against Iraq, its causes and consequences. Veteran journalist James Moore vividly shows the courage and patriotism of American soldiers in battle and the heartache of the casualties' families. He contrasts this with the cold-hearted lying of those who abuse their trust. In particular, he examines the doctored military records of a certain congressman's son, who managed to evade serving in the war against Vietnam.

In 2000, outgoing President Clinton told George W. Bush that the terrorist threat from bin Laden was `the top priority', followed by Israel-Palestine, North Korea, India-Pakistan and Saddam Hussein. Bush replied, "I think you've got your priorities wrong. I'm putting Saddam at the top of the list." From the first, Bush targeted Iraq, which has oil, not Al Qa'ida, which doesn't.

So Bush had to lie that Iraq, not Al Qa'ida, was the main threat to the American people. Fortunately for him, the US state has decades of experience of deceiving people into aggressive wars. Moore examines several of these tested techniques.

For example, Bush alleged that Iraq had bought aluminum tubes to help develop nuclear weapons. Here's how it works. Ignore the facts - the experts at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory unanimously found that the tubes were not for nuclear weapons. Plant the story with a pliant journalist - in this case, Pulitzer Prize-winning Judith Miller of the New York Times. Order the intelligence and scientific communities not to dispute the administration's claims, implying that any dissent would be treated as treachery. Do a media blitz, and use the silence from the spooks and scientists as proof of the claims. Get an administration stooge - Colin Powell - to tell the lie to the UN. Get another stooge - Blair - to repeat the lie around the world.

Moore also shows how the US Army censored reports from Iraq - that's what `embedded journalism' means - so Judith Miller reported what the Army told her. She got most of her WMD stories from Ahmad Chalabi, who told the same tales to the Army and the White House, which then confirmed their truth to Miller.

Moore recounts how, eight days after Joseph Wilson wrote that the White House `twisted intelligence to exaggerate the Iraqi threat', `senior administration officials' released his wife's identity as a CIA agent. Divulging such information is a criminal offence.

Using known forgeries is another technique. Although even Berlusconi's tabloid paper Panorama turned down an article based on forged documents alleging that Iraq bought uranium from Niger, Blair published the story as fact in his September 2002 dossier, and Bush used it in his State of the Union address.

Bush also has techniques for stealing elections: his new one, electronic touch screen voting, beats `hanging chads' and postal voting any day. Georgia was the first state to conduct an election using only electronic voting: as a result, the Republican candidate's votes rose by 16% in the four days after the last opinion poll, producing the first Republican governor of the state in 130 years. Nebraska's Republican Senator Chuck Hagel owns the firm that counted 85% of the votes in the state election that he won with 83% of the vote, the largest electoral victory in Nebraska's history. November's Presidential election is scheduled to be conducted electronically.

This is one book that should be read by every American, whether you are pro-Bush or anti-Bush, liberal or conservative. Moore sheds light on the nature of true patriotism by interweaving the very personal and moving stories of soldiers who fought and died in Vietnam along with the heart-rending stories of some of the heroes who died in Iraq. These poignant stories form the backdrop against which Moore details of how George W. Bush avoided serving in Vietnam by receiving preferential treatment in get a spot in the Texas National Guard -- and then went AWOL to work on a GOP campaign in another state.

There are other important themes that author Moore elucidates, such as the recurring accusation that Bush was dead set on deposed Saddam Hussein even before he took the oath of office. By now, we all know that Iraq was not an imminent threat to the US, that there were no weapons of mass destruction, and that Saddam was little more that a "mayor of Baghdad." We also know that Iraqis did not welcome American troops with open arms, as we had been told.

One of the most troubling themes Moore describes is the lack of preparedness American soldiers received in terms of arms and equipment. The lack of appropriate body armor for soldiers has already received wide coverage in the press. But Moore follows the same mechanized unit that Jessica Lynch was attached to in the ambush at Al Nasiriyah which occurred after the 507th took a wrong turn in the desert. There's a lot more to the incident than has come out in the press, especially with the sensationalism of the rescue of Private Lynch. Perhaps more lives would have been saved if the military had provided these troops with weapons that not get jammed, and a commication system that actually worked. Battery operated walkie-talkies and communication devices were useless when the batteries went dead. And many of the young soldiers had been put into a position of having to purchase extra batteries because none had been supplied by the military.

Conservative and pro-Bush citizens may close their ears and hearts to the preceding information written passionately and lucidly by Mr. Moore. They may poo-poo incident in which right-wing journalist Robert Novak revealed the identity of a CIA operative based on comments revealed by a "high ranking administration official". But the one chapter in the book that MUST be read by every American is "Soldier Down."

In "Soldier Down," chapter 15, James Moore delves into the dirty details or electronic voting, the companies that build the software and hardware for the electronic voting machines, the startling ties of those companies to the Bush adminnistration. With no paper trail and no method for holding a recount, these machines may be the downfall of our democracy. The machines have an unacceptable error rate, can be hacked into, and offer the possibility of "fixing" elections. Radical Republicans may welcome this underhanded way of usurping power. But they should pause and think first. If the electronic voting machines are incestuously linked to the GOP, as Moore states, and if that linkage is used nefariously to boost GOP election results -- well, the Republicans don't have that market cornered on how to prevent others from taking advantage of the vulnerabilities of the electronic voting system. Perhaps there are equally nefarious hackers with allegiance to the Democratic party or to Ralph Nader. Even worse, what is terrorists trained in the best computer science programs in the United States set out to sabotage our election process. As a systems engineer familiar with security issues, these are not conspiracy theories or fantasy threats. We all have a stake in safeguarding the integrity of our voting system, now more than ever.

With divisiveness between the two major political parties at an all-time high, it may serve us well to remember that true patriotism is allegiance to a body of ideals expressed in our Constitution and symbolized by our flag. Patriotism is not a matter of left or right, nor a matter of allegiance to a particular politician or a particular political party. This is a point well made by Mr. Moore.

Bush, known cocaine user at the time, was kicked out of the Air National Guard under the regulation 36-05 that provided for the involuntary separation of officers who were unfit or unprofessional. That regulation is clearly stated on his discharge that indicates he had not met his legal obligation to the Air National Guard. So he was forced intu the Reserves and given extra months.

Moore doesn't go into some of this. The Guard also had to look at his being AWOL, not meeting the minimum attendance standards. And there was the problem of the flight physical. Bush has one story. But the documents prove there's nothing to back up his version, just the order for him to get it done.

Bush could have resolved these questions any time with the simple stroke of a pen. Instead, as Moore documents, the Bush political staff had a general gather all the material, then they censored it before providing anything to the media. Much of it was duplicated and it was clear that many things were missing. Documents were never provided relating to his discharge, the Flight Inquiry Board about his refusal to obey orders to take the flight physical, etc.

What we don't know, because the Bushes conceal it, is whether the Guard decided to use the other issues to oust the wandering concaine snorting, alcoholic Lt. Bush. Or did they look his arrest on Cocaine charges and sentencing to community service and just say, that's enough. all the while aware they would have to consider his political connections.

Sometimes it's hard to tell. But what Moore makes clear withough any hysterics or too much interpretation is that Bush needs the coverup. The documents there tell the story.

If you've got an open mind, you'll find it hard to support Bush for anything, especially given his sending troops to Iraq just to get himself re-elected. But even if you still feel compelled to vote for Bush, you'll find it hard to trust this spoiled brat born with a silver spoon in his mouth who used influence and connections to avoid the consequences of his actions .... and gotten richer at the same time without doing any honest work.

There were three reasons that I bought this book, the first is that I read the authors other book on Bush, Bush's Brain, and found it a wonderful book. The second reason is that I tend to read a number of anti Bush books so this was just one more to add to the collection. And lastly, with a goofy picture of Bush on the cover of the book I just figured the book would be full of sharp barbs and nasty zingers aimed at Team Bush that would make for happy reading for me. Unfortunately for me, my high expectations for the book did not materialize. I found the book to ramble from one area to another, which were tied together by only, at times, a passing link to Bush Jr. I was thinking I was going to get a detailed account of how the Bush Administration used over the top partisan politics to lead the country to war. Maybe also an interesting view into how the author feels the war will effect the 2004 election. This framework did not really come together. The author focused on numerous other areas that took focus and energy away from a look at the Bush Administration.

I do not what this review to be all negative as that would not be fair to the book. The author provided a very interesting review of the actions of the 507th in Iraqi and the ambush that resulted in numerous deaths and the capture of Jessica Lynch. The author is good at this type of reporting and you could really get a sense of the battle form his writing. He also gave the reader a nice overview of the Ambassador Wilson story and the publication of his wife's name in the press. It was such a good overview that I am wondering if I even need to read the Wilson book. I doubt there is a book that goes into more detail on the Bush Jr. National Guard AWOL story then this book. You could tell the author was really having fun digging into this dirt. Where I got disappointed was that the author spent a lot of time on the effects of combat deaths on the people back home. He did it in a very good way, it was just not the type of book I was looking for. He then spent a good deal of time tying in Vietnam combat stories to Bush Jr.'s Texas Air Guard days in kind of a compare and contrast between real military heroes and children of the wealthy.

But where I lost respect for the book was in two separate parts where the author slipped into odd conspiracy theories about Bush Jr. Again I am no fan of the boy king, but reading these types of over the top X Files type innuendo gossip does nobody any good. The detractors of the book can point to these items to paint the full book and all the important comments in the book as a hate inspired hack job meant to dirty the reputation of a President. The author tried to claim that one of the military people that saw the "cleaning" of the Bush guard files has been suffering from some mystery illness and that somehow Team Bush is keeping needed medical treatment away from the guy. The author then spent the end of the book talking about how the Bush group is in bed with the manufactures of electronic voting machines and that the Max Cleland election was somehow rigged in favor of the Republicans by this shadowy electronic voting.

Overall I had mixed feeling for the book. The writing was good and most of the reporting seamed solid. There were sections that I really enjoyed. It was just that the book went off into directions that I was either not interested in reading about or was so over the top that I came away from the book with a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.

One must be sure to keep an open mind for both sides while reading the book, and form your own opinions.