Bush dynasty weaves tangled Mideast web (MAJOR HIT PIECE)

San Antonio Express News ^ | Feb. 15, 2004 | Kevin Phillips

[deport]

Do a little search on Kevin Phillips...... He's been hammering the Bush Dynasty theme over and over for years.... Here's his conclusion published on 1-29-01 after President Bush was elected...... note how wrong he was about the 2002 elections.... And as for the House it appears after some additional redistricting his predictions will be even farther off base. For some reason he's a Bush hater.

If history is any guide, the Democrats, buoyed by these Bush weaknesses, will likely take back the Senate and House in 2002 and then in 2004 regain the White House they should not have lost in 2000. Recent evidence also suggests, however, that they will be timid and uncertain enough to keep that outcome in doubt down to the wire.

[Howlin]

I'll be insane and/or in prison by November; I just know it.

[section9]

Phillips is "respected" by the Left because he is a "crank" Republican who has made it his business to dump on Republicans.

Idiot.

Be Seeing You,

Chris

[texasbluebell]

I wonder why I never saw such an in-depth amount of reporting about the clintons, him and her, in any sort of mainstream paper? Never did anything like this see the light of day, not that I can recall.

[Fedora]

> Will this bring about a proportional response from the Republican camp? The more we delve into John Kerry's past, it seems to be a target-rich environment for a conspiracy theory.

Here's my contribution towards a "counter-conspiracy theory":

Kerry's past includes hiring BCCI suspect David Paul (associate of Saudi Ghaith Pharaon) as his Senate campaign treasurer and protecting Democrat Clark Clifford (associate of Jimmy Carter's budget manager Bert Lance) during the BCCI investigation. There's a summary of how one Jack Blum got Kerry involved in BCCI which mentions these individuals here:

http://www.geocities.com/saudhouse_p/roadbloc.htm

I'm sure there's a lot there that a little digging will turn up. Kerry's role in the BCCI investigation was evidently not that of a disinterested inquirer.

As for the rest of this hit piece, this is based on the Lyndon LaRouche organization's extrapolation from a conspiracy theory that FDR's trust-busters concocted during WWII. I've yet to see a source which sums up the whole development of this--been piecing it together from various sources with the intent of writing my own analysis--but basically, to be very brief: A number of Communists and fellow travellers in Congress and the Senate had been attacking the oil companies and their financial allies (esp. J.P. Morgan) since the 1890s, with renewed attacks in the 1930s. During WWII Harry Dexter White (recently exposed as a Soviet agent), Henry Morgenthau, and Harold Ickes, with help from the law firm of Thurman Arnold (Arnold and Porter), focused the attack on Standard Oil and any company remotely associated with it, which is how the Dresser-Harriman-Farish-Prescott Bush thing got mixed up with it. The attack on these companies was part and parcel of the Soviets' plan to confiscate German assets and reduce postwar Germany to a pre-industrial state so that the Soviet Army could easily roll in, which was the purpose behind the so-called "Morgenthau Plan" (that Harry Dexter White actually conceived while in contact with Stalin's agents who had the same idea). Ever since then left-wing conspiracy theorists have built on White and Morgenthau's original conspiracy theory by updating it periodically. LaRouche's organization revived the theory and modified it to its current form during the first Bush administration by throwing BCCI into the mix (while downplaying/ignoring the Democrats' role in BCCI mentioned above with respect to Clark Clifford and Bert Lance). The theory is largely constructed of innuendoes based on guilt-by-association, and it doesn't hold up to scrutiny if you dig into the details. For instance if you'll read a biography of Averell Harriman you'll find that his relation to the Bush family was not particularly close, and nowhere near as close as his relationship to key Democrats in the FDR and LBJ administrations. As mentioned I'm summing up a lot briefly here, but that's a broad outline of how I'd suggest going about constructing a counter to this line of propaganda.

[linn37]

He is one cranky old SOB I wonder who peed in his cheerios.

[beckett]

I agree the piece is noteworthy, and, truth be told, the overall argument, i.e., that Bush ties in the Middle East are a legitimate campaign issue, is correct.

[beckett]

Also I was a little hard on Phillips in a sort of knee-jerk reaction. In some quarters he is considered something of a "deep thinker," not entirely without justification.

[freeangel]

It is time to expose the terrorist organizations that are donatin to f******kerry.

[hobson]

I'm going to be right there with you. I told my husband to just go ahead and knock me out. He refused.

[Howlin]

Perhaps we should go ahead and just get a Valium IV in place right now......LOL.

[Destro]

Help me out-whta part of this article got the facts wrong? Or is it the tone that is wrong?

[Destro]

He went on to became the first vice president — and then the first president — to have either an oil or CIA background.

Not fully true-LBJ was linked to Texas oil if not the CIA.

[daybreakcoming]

I'll save you a seat in either place......:o(

[daybreakcoming]

Fascinating. Back in our school days, who would have ever thought history could get so convoluted, Thanks for this closer look.

[Fedora]

> He went on to became the first vice president — and then the first president — to have either an oil or CIA background.
>
> Not fully true-LBJ was linked to Texas oil if not the CIA.

Yes, to Brown & Root, the part of the "Halliburton" thing the Democrats never mention. The Roosevelts, the Kennedys (Mokeen Oil, Kenoil, Sutton Producing Corporation, Forest Oil Corporation of Bedford=Ted Kennedy), Jimmy Carter (Bert Lance), Lloyd Bentsen, and Al Gore (Armand Hammer) also had their oil interests.

[Fedora]

> Help me out-whta part of this article got the facts wrong? Or is it the tone that is wrong?

Well, for instance, look at this part as a good example:

> the Baku oil fields only a few hundred miles north of current-day Iraq

Now notice the selective innuendo here. The writer could've just as easily mentioned that the Baku oil fields are "only a few hundred miles" south of Moscow, west of Mongolia, east of Greece, northeast of Cyprus, etc. But they chose to associate Baku with Iraq, for the sake of misleadingly implying that Bush's great-grandfather had some interest in Iraq underlying the administration's current Iraq policy. The whole article is written like that.

[CyberAnt]

"As early as 1964, George H.W. Bush, running for the U.S. Senate from Texas, was labeled by incumbent Democrat Ralph Yarborough as a hireling of the sheik of Kuwait, for whom Bush's company drilled offshore oil wells"

This is the liberal's main problem. They take a statement from another liberal, and purport to make it a sinister truth. Just because an "incumbent Democrat" LIED ABOUT George H.W. Bush, doesn't make it some kind of truth of a DYNASTY. How ignorant.

This is the same thing they have done with the "awol" statement.

[Destro]

Well you and I did more then Alissa did in pointing out some errors in this article. I pretty much hate posts like Alissa's that claim "hit-piece" without telling us what she thinks is in error. Beyond claiming Bush was the first VP with oil interests (what about Nelson A. Rockefeller sworn in as the 41st vice president on Dec. 19, 1974??) I don't see what else is in error? Maybe everything? Maybe most of it? Maybe most of it is right? Maybe ALissa is a Democrat and wants people to read this while pretending to be outraged?

[Destro]

So the tone is wrong - but the fact was correct. The spin is the bad part?