Exposing the Dirty Truth That Bush's New Memoir Tries to Cover Up

In George W. Bush’s book Decision Points, the former president tells a story of his presidency based on his own say-so. In my book Family of Secrets, based on five years of research, hundreds of interviews and thousands of documents, I reveal a very different one.

BUSH: Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld pushed him to invade Iraq. He portrays himself as a reluctant warrior who had qualms about resort to force.

BAKER: Bush was already looking forward to invading Iraq years earlier. Bush told his own contracted ghostwriter, back in 1999, when he was not yet even the GOP nominee, that if elected president he would invade Iraq. The reason? Score political points and secure high poll numbers. Bush confided his belief that successful presidents needed to win a war, and he thought Iraq would be an easy one.

BUSH: A religious conversion changed his life.

BAKER: In a way, yes; but not as Bush’s account implies. Bush’s “conversion” came after a key Bush family political adviser warned that it was impossible to win the presidency without embracing the sentiments of America’s huge bloc of fundamentalist Christians.

BUSH: He was mortified by the disaster that resulted from Hurricane Katrina (and takes some responsibility for the slow response)

BAKER: The incompetence of the federal government was the result of willful neglect of FEMA, the agency in charge of response. Bush and his team were interested in weakening and defunding agencies like FEMA, and outsourcing their functions and budgets to friends and supporters.

BUSH: His father did not have much influence with him, beyond being generally supportive offstage.

BAKER: Father and son were joined in the family enterprise from the start. Their respective ventures in the oil business were connected to covert intelligence operations. Most of the key figures in bringing Bush to power and keeping him there were associates of his father.

Those are just a few of the problems with the Bush narrative. But the principal failing of Decision Points is that it skips over so much that is crucial to understanding the man and his presidency. It is not accidental that, like his father, George W. chose not to write a full-bore memoir that would have brought this broader focus into play.

Here are a few examples of what Bush has chosen not to tell us:

-A Good Cleaning Saves a Presidency: Two generations of George Bushes, working together, used a simple dental exam to cover up the son’s disappearance from the military during the Vietnam War. The trick has successfully deflected inquiry for nearly four decades.

-“A Higher Father”: George W. Bush’s claim that he didn’t ask his father for advice on Iraq but rather turned to a “higher father” for guidance was a story most of the media found too good to check. Reporters also recited faithfully the supposed generational schism between father and son that cast George W. as a genuine rough-hewn Texan, unlike his father, whose political career was hobbled and re-election bid foiled in part because he could never shed his establishment trappings. In fact, George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush were not just close—they were partners in complex political and intelligence operations that are to this day completely unknown to the public.

-Oil the Presidents Men: A close friend of George W. Bush helped provide cover for W’s disappearance from the Texas Air National Guard unit in which both served. He then was rewarded with a lucrative assignment as middleman between Saudi oil interests and the Bush family, that included financing of the illegal Iran-Contra operation and an alliance with a clan called Bin Laden.

-Land of Opportunity: One of the strangest companies ever to appear in the oil business, tied to the CIA, foreign dictators, money launderers, and illicit caches of gold, helped fund George W. Bush’s rise to the presidency.