Along the way Mr. Bush acknowledges various mistakes. On his administration’s handling of Hurricane Katrina he says, “As leader of the federal government, I should have recognized the deficiencies sooner and intervened faster.” On Iraq he says he regrets that “we did not respond more quickly or aggressively when the security situation started to deteriorate after Saddam’s regime fell,” that “cutting troop levels too quickly was the most important failure of execution in the war,” and that he still has “a sickening feeling every time” he thinks about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Still, he insists that “removing Saddam from power was the right decision”: “for all the difficulties that followed, America is safer without a homicidal dictator pursuing WMD and supporting terror at the heart of the Middle East.”

In the course of this book Mr. Bush hops and skips over many serious issues raised by critics, including the cherry-picking of intelligence by administration hawks in the walk up to the invasion of Iraq; the push for aggrandized executive power by the White House in the war on terror; and the ignoring of advice from the military and the State Department on troop levels and postwar planning.

The former president does not address the role that the decision to divert resources to the war in Iraq played in the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan, instead arguing that “the multilateral approach to rebuilding, hailed by so many in the international community, was failing.” He tries to play down the problems of Guantánamo Bay, writing that detainees were given “a personal copy of the Koran” and access to a library among whose popular offerings was “an Arabic translation of ‘Harry Potter.’ ” And he asserts that “had I not authorized waterboarding on senior al Qaeda leaders, I would have had to accept a greater risk that the country would be attacked.”

Mr. Bush does not grapple with the role that his deregulatory, free market policies played in fueling the economic meltdown at the end of his second term. Nor does he take any responsibility for the fierce partisanship and political divisiveness that took root in his administration.

Several times in the book Mr. Bush uses the term “blindsided” to describe his feelings about a crisis that his advisers and cabinet seem not to have filled him in on. He says he felt “blindsided” over Abu Ghraib: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld “had told me the military was investigating reports of abuse at the prison, but I had no idea how graphic or grotesque the photos would be,” he writes. “The first time I saw them was the day they were aired on ‘60 Minutes II.’ ”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/04/books/04book.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

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Justificationing Idiot... Bush "signed the papers that removed the habeus corpus" and such decree....

The term "unlawful combatant" has been used for the past century in legal literature, military manuals, and case law.[7] However, unlike the terms "combatant", "prisoner of war", and "civilian", the term "unlawful combatant" is not mentioned in either the Hague or the Geneva Conventions. So while the former terms are well understood and clear under international law, the term "unlawful combatant" is not.[3][8]

At the First Hague Conference, which opened on 6 May 1899, there was a disagreement between the Great Powers—which considered francs-tireurs to be unlawful combatants subject to execution on capture—and a group of small countries headed by Belgium—which opposed the very principle of the rights and duties of armies of occupation and demanded an unlimited right of resistance for the population of occupied territories. As a compromise, the Russian delegate, F. F. Martens, proposed the Martens Clause, which is included in the preamble to the 1899 Hague Convention II – Laws and Customs of War on Land. Similar wording has been incorporated into many subsequent treaties that cover extensions to humanitarian law.[9][10][11]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawful_combatant

The timing may be coincidental, but days before the launch of his autobiography, Decision Points, the views of former US president George W Bush on the darling of the Tea Party movement, Sarah Palin, have come to light - and they are not positive.

Bush apparently lost his respect for John McCain when he discovered that he had picked Palin as his running mate, and lays the blame for the Republicans' defeat in the 2008 election squarely at her door.

His opinions are aired in the New York Daily News, which interviewed a Republican insider close to the 43rd president of the US. The un-named adviser told the paper: "Bush... thinks McCain ran a lousy campaign with an unqualified running mate and destroyed any chance of winning by picking Palin."

The paper also reports that Bush believes Barack Obama has failed as President, but "won't trash him". Although he thinks Obama has made mistakes in foreign policy he supports the troop surge and drone strikes in Afghanistan .

Whether the comments were officially sanctioned by Bush is unclear, but he reportedly has a policy of never allowing criticism of other politicians to be directly attributed to him.

Palin has yet to respond, but earlier this week she managed to elicit an apology from Bush’s senior strategist Karl Rove after he appeared to question her gravitas.

Read more: http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/71131,people,news,george-bush-blames-palin-for-2008-election-defeat#ixzz14YWWTwv0
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Of course Dubya would say that... It's a clever sneaky way to absolve himself of the mess he left behind...

George Bush ordered the Pentagon to plan an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities and considered a covert attack on Syria, the former president reveals in his memoirs.

Bush, in the 497-page Decision Points, a copy of which was obtained by the Guardian in advance of its publication in the US tomorrow, writes of Iran: "I directed the Pentagon to study what would be necessary for a strike." He adds: "This would be to stop the bomb clock, at least temporarily."

Such an attack would almost certainly have produced a conflagration in the Middle East that could have seen Iran retaliating by blocking oil supplies and unleashing militias and sympathisers in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon.

Bush also discussed with his national security team either an air strike or a covert special forces raid on an alleged Syrian nuclear facility at the request of Israel.

The book, which is published in the US tomorrow, seeks to rebuild Bush's reputation, giving his side of the story on the most controversial issues of his presidency, which include Iraq, Afghanistan, hurricane Katrina, the Wall Street meltdown and torture at Guantánamo.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/08/george-bush-memoir-decision-points

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see toon at top

Howard's end - a footnote in Bush's memoirs

Simon Mann

WASHINGTON

GEORGE BUSH appears to have confined his ''deputy sheriff'' John Howard - and Australia - to little more than a footnote in his just-published memoirs.

Mr Bush mentions Mr Howard just three times in his 500-page Decision Points.

He includes him in a list of leaders who in 2002 shared the Bush administration's assessment of the threat posed by Iraq. He also notes that Mr Howard - a ''staunch advocate'' of confronting Saddam Hussein - was one of many allies who told him that a United Nations resolution was essential for winning public support for action against the dictator.

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Does god get a mention?

...

Barbara looked as bitter as ever, stabbing away at a crossword. Laura looked bored. George Jr looked happy enough. But then, he'd once been managing general partner of the Rangers. When the Rangers franchise was sold for $250 million in 1998, at a total profit of $170 million, Bush got $14.9 million for his $600,000 investment, in what many regarded as a transaction that should have had George and his partners facing serious jail time.

What a family! Brendan Gill, the great New Yorker writer, told me he'd once spent the night in the Bush manse in Kennebunkport, Maine. Sleepless, he descended from his bedroom in search of reading matter. The only volume in the house he could lay his hands on was The Fart Book. A tacky family, except for the Welch girl.

Read more: http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/71356,news-comment,news-politics,barbara-bush-horrible-mother-to-a-tacky-family,2#ixzz14yGXCQN0

Now read in the newspaper about a saintly old widow who had her home foreclosed by a sleazy mortgage company, her medical insurance canceled on flimsy grounds, and got a lousy, exploitative offer at the pawn shop where she tried to hock her kidney dialysis machine. You sit there thinking, those bastards, those people are scum, they’re worse than maggots, they make me want to puke … and your insula activates. Think about something shameful and rotten that you once did … same thing. Not only does the insula “do” sensory disgust; it does moral disgust as well. Because the two are so viscerally similar. When we evolved the capacity to be disgusted by moral failures, we didn’t evolve a new brain region to handle it. Instead, the insula expanded its portfolio.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/this-is-your-brain-on-metaphors/?hp

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Gus: well, well well... may I say this... For many people (including me) this "insula" is also very selective, or selectively manipulated by our learning (or what we want to know/not know)... We all should be outraged by the immoral antics of Bush, Blair and Howard but the trick has been that they have performed an illusion of moral stand when they actually did something highly immoral: an illegal war based on lies.

The point here is unless we seriously analyse for ourselves what crap is being fed to us under the umbrella of news (or these three monkeys' "autobiographies"), our "insula" falls asleep or is hypnotised (narrowly guided) by the importance others place on the bastards (them liars and the "news"). And "we" (our news providers and "we" in general) don't want to rock the boat... Should we prove the bastards lied — WHICH WE CAN — "it would reflect badly on us" for having let them do the bad deed, would it not? ... It would reflect badly on us for having elected them in the first place... WE ARE RESPONSIBLE for the shamboozle... So we let them get away with it to absolve ourselves from the immorality of it all — and they know it, they have manipulated our position. We sort of don't want to scratch too much because we'd feel guilty at all the death and tragedy "created by us". So we "accept" that the intelligence was flawed, while deep down, WE HAVE TO KNOW BUSH, BLAIR AND HOWARD LIED...

We are accomplices in their hypocritical smugness...

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See toon at top and the trilogy...

see also :http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/8493#comment-10879

and http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/8011#comment-10403 (Basic stages of the mind),

if you are game...

During the last days of my presidency I gave serious thought to writing my memoirs. Karl Rove suggested I get a ghost who could write proper sentences and restrict myself to key moments of my time in office that I could retell to my advantage. So what follows is selective euphoric recall.

Quitting drinking was the toughest decision I've ever made. Those closest to me were begging me to carry on. "Think what you're doing, George," they cried. "If you do get sober, you'll go on to be president and wreck the lives of countless people. Do us all a favour and keep getting legless." I'm happy to say the only legless people these days are the US servicemen returning from Afghanistan.

I was extremely proud when my father installed me as governor of Texas. During my time in office I managed to build a new ball park for the Texas Rangers and execute record numbers of mentally ill prisoners. I had no aspirations to higher office until God told me I had a duty to serve my country.

"But Daddy," I said, "I haven't a clue what I'm doing." "That's precisely why you're the right man. Keep your mouth shut and appoint my friends to key jobs and you'll be fine." "And what if we lose the election?" "Your brother Jeb can fix things in Florida."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/nov/15/decision-points-by-george-bush

The Defense Department forced all "war on terror" detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison to take a high dosage of a controversial antimalarial drug, mefloquine, an act that an Army public health physician called "pharmacologic waterboarding."

The US military administered the drug despite Pentagon knowledge that mefloquine caused severe neuropsychiatric side effects, including suicidal thoughts, hallucinations and anxiety. The drug was used on the prisoners whether they had malaria or not.

The revelation, which has not been previously reported, was buried in  documents publicly released by the Defense Department (DoD) two years ago as part of the government's investigation into the June 2006 deaths of three Guantanamo detainees.

Army Staff Sgt. Joe Hickman, who was stationed at Guantanamo at the time of the suicides in 2006, and has presented evidence that demonstrates the three detainees could not have died by hanging themselves, noticed in the detainees' medical files that they were given mefloquine. Hickman has been investigating the circumstances behind the detainees' deaths for nearly four years.

Controversial Drug Given to All Guantanamo Detainees

George Herbert Walker Bush, the 41st president of the United States, is the only commander in chief in modern times who has declined to write a memoir. Now George W. Bush, the 43rd president, strides into the void with a book of his own intended to give voice to his modest father’s life and legacy.

At the outset of “41,” George W. makes clear his objective. He says he expects that many books will assess his father’s contributions. “Some of those works may be objective,” he writes in an author’s note. “This one is not. This book is a love story.”

Indeed, “41” is a chronicle of family love and loss, written in a plainspoken voice that sounds just like George W. Bush in person, with wisecrack asides and loads of family sentimentality. 

read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/book-review-41-a-portrait-of-my-father-by-george-w-bush/2014/11/13/961189b4-6a8d-11e4-a31c-77759fc1eacc_story.html

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"It has been said that though God cannot alter the past, historians can; it is perhaps because they can be useful to Him in this respect that He tolerates their existence...

Samuel Butler (1835-1902)

America’s way of acting in the world, the violence it often does to the truth while asserting its will, cannot be explained simply through its alleged “interests.” The U.S. acts the way it does because of the peculiar American way of understanding what gives life and action meaning.

At the core of the American philosophy is voluntarism, the justification of action based purely and simply on the will. The distinguishing characteristic of voluntarism is that it gives pride of place to the will as such, to the will as power, the will abstracted from everything else, but especially abstracted from the good. The notion of the good is necessarily inclusive of the whole, of all sides. Concern exclusively for oneself goes by a different name.

The clearest and perhaps the best expression of American voluntarism come of age was expressed by Karl Rove during the George W. Bush administration, as reported by Ron Suskind in New York Times Magazine on October 17, 2004:

We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.

This oft-quoted statement is naively assumed to have been the expression of a single moment in American politics, rather than a summation of its ethos by one of its shrewder and more self-aware practitioners. The point of the voluntarist order is to act, to impose one’s will on global reality by any means necessary. The truth is not something to be understood, or grasped, still less something that should condition one’s own actions and limit them in any way. Truth is reducible to whatever is useful for imposing one’s will.

Read more:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/americas-men-without-che...

 

Read from top...

"It has been said that though God cannot alter the past, historians can; it is perhaps because they can be useful to Him in this respect that He tolerates their existence...

Samuel Butler (1835-1902)