the·sis
ˈTHēsis / noun
The thesis that will be explored, investigated and researched for this book proposal is that G W Bush has spent his adult life being a willing front-man (a puppet if you will) for others who sought to hide in the shadows and let W get the credit or the blame for the results. He essentially has had three different careers that followed his graduation from Harvard Business School.
Career #1. As an oil business "entrepreneur" in Texas.
The allegations that have surfaced in regard to this career is that W was a puppet who fronted for a group of wealthy businessmen who set up money losing, short lived businesses as tax shelters.
Career #2 As the so-called "owner" of the Texas Rangers professional Baseball Team.
Once again, W was the public face of this business, but the truth was that he wasn’t really a principal owner; his $600,000 investment amounted to less than a 1% ownership position - making him an employee, subject to taking orders from the "real owners" of the team. Some of these silent partners, who apparently took steps to hide their involvement and financial stake in the franchise from public view, are suspected to be the same tycoons whom W fronted for in his oil-business ventures.
Career #3 As an incredibly successful politician. We will explore exactly how he achieved this success - and whether it is more or less likely that the price he paid to win office left him beholden to others.
Could a man who had shown such willingness to be a puppet figurehead in his previous two careers, suddenly resist and fight against the demands now placed on him when the special interest and neocon "markers" are called in?
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The thesis above is expanded in greater detail below:
In 1991, highly placed neocons within George Herbert Walker Bush’s administration lobbied hard for the President to continue pushing into Iraq after driving the invading forces out of Kuwait; which was the stated mission. They wanted coalition forces to march all the way to Baghdad, overthrow the government of Saddam Hussein and establish a democracy with friendly ties to the U.S..
When their plan was forcefully rebuffed by the President and our allies, they became bitter and resentful. The issue festered with them and they silently vowed to find a way to return and finish that war in the scorched-earth manner that they believed it should have been waged in the first place.
This book investigates the thesis that these neocons, working behind the scenes with powerful big-oil special interests took the oldest son of the 41st president (an unlikely major-league politician if there ever was one) and groomed him in a manner that would make Henry Higgins proud.
In 1991, W had absolutely nothing on his resume that could have predicted where he would be in just a few short years. It’s one of the greatest, most stunning and quickest transformations in the history of politics.
The best thing that George W Bush had done in his life up until that point was marry a good woman. That’s job #1 for presidential aspirants. Of course W wasn’t aspiring to that lofty goal just yet, but it appears that others, working in the shadows, believed that they could use him to attain their own goals.
The highly-placed neocons within the 41st President’s administration knew that the moderate President would never be the hawkish ideologue that they wanted him to be. But perhaps they could mold his son, "W" as they called him, in their image. And if their big-oil friends and powerful connections were able to bankroll and PR him into the mansion on Pennsylvania avenue, the leverage they would hold would be enormous.
In 1989, W was floated as a potential candidate for Governor of Texas in the 1990 election cycle. But State Republican party big-wigs scoffed at the notion of backing this entitled, silver-spooned young man who had zero accomplishments of note and several other negatives working against him. Under pressure, they steadfastly refused to throw their support behind him for the GOP nomination. At that point in time; he wasn’t well known and voters were indifferent to him as a candidate. His last name alone was insufficient to draw enough interest to overcome the lack of family and Party support.
Regrouping, W’s handlers set their sights on 1994 instead. George had been set up as the titular front-man in a few short-lived, oil-exploration business ventures. Even though he had earned an MBA at Harvard he did not have any background or experience running anything substantial and was wholly unqualified to lead. But he wasn’t in these ventures to succeed, he was placed there to start to build a resume and (perhaps more importantly), to put money in his pockets and bank accounts. The businesses were utter failures, and appear to have been deliberately set up as money-losing Tax Shelters for wealthy oil-business tycoons who were friends of the Bush family. W came out of them with a bankroll and just a smitten of the credibility that he would need to advance in politics.
The next step in this My Fair Ladylike saga was to get W into a high-society, high-profile position with lots of free TV exposure in Texas.
All of a sudden and seemingly out of the blue, George W Bush was sitting in the owners box at Arlington Stadium, home of the Texas Rangers.
Even though he held the title of Managing General Partner and was the public face of the franchise, the truth was that he was just a pretend-owner. The team owned him. In reality, he was an employee with less than a one percent ownership stake in the team! He was a figurehead, propped up to look much more impressive than he actually was. But now the voters in Texas could get to know him. All of this, (it has been alleged) thanks to the shadowy figures pulling the strings from behind the scenes.
It was a brilliant PR move that gave W instant street cred and the appearance that he was a man of great wealth and substance. As far as the vast majority of Texans knew, George W Bush OWNED the Texas Rangers! The media, either gullibly or with a wink and a nod, went along with the ruse.
A likable guy with a ready smile and an "aw shucks, I’m just a simple-minded, plain spoken Texan" personality; W and his family resonated very well with the public. That’s one of the funny things about politics - to succeed in that game, you don’t necessarily need to be qualified, sometimes it’s enough just to be connected, well liked and thought of by the commoners and the power brokers. At this point, his reputation had risen to a level equal to his last name. That combination soon became a powerful force to be reckoned with.
We know the rest of the story. The young man who started out as a disinterested C student at Yale; a privileged member of the entitlement society with a drinking problem and a history of recreational drug abuse, got sober, got religion, became Governor and then President. Only in America.
Then November 11 happened. We constructed an international military and diplomatic coalition to go after Al-Qaeda, Bin-Laden and The Taliban. W had the highest approval rating of any U.S. President in history. The free world was on our side and stood ready to help us fight the enemy in Afghanistan.
But the neocons, with their still throbbing hard-on for Saddam, couldn’t wait a minute longer. They muscled a questionable story through the U.N. and pulled troops out of Afghanistan (to deploy in Iraq). Just when they had Bin-Laden trapped at Tora Bora, they pulled back, allowing him to escape into Pakistan.
The coalition, disagreeing with the two-wars at the same time strategy, splintered and crumbled. We were left to fight those wars with insufficient resources in each one and neither Iraq or Afghanistan was able to be dealt with effectively and strongly enough. Without the full coalition and fighting on too many fronts, we were spread thin.
Had we maintained our focus on Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, the coalition would have stayed with us in full force. We would have stood a much better chance of stabilizing that nation and fostering a lasting democracy. Bin-Laden likely would have been captured at Tora-Bora. The vacuum that allowed ISIS to emerge and take hold would probably not have materialized. The Islamist terrorists would have known that the world wasn’t going to allow them to operate and that the coalition would pursue them to the ends of the earth.
Saddam, who had no connections to Islamist terrorism, could have been dealt with at a later date, with an intact and willing coalition and a less-costly, more focused strategy, AFTER Afghanistan was secured and self-sufficient. But alas, those potential outcomes were lost in the haste and hubris that took our eyes off the prize. All because a few misguided but powerfully placed individuals had an old score to settle and greedy businessmen could book more profits.
What made this all possible was having a President in office who couldn’t see the difference, as his dad had seen a decade earlier. A dad who was available and willing to be a mentor; who would have advised his son against pursuing the neocon agenda, had he only been asked.
In W’s second term, he began to realize that the advice he had been getting from the neocons did not serve the country well. Their influence waned, but the realizations had come too late and the damage was done.
W’s eight years in The White House ended with yet another major disaster. He left office as one of the most unpopular presidents in history. The U.S. and the world faced the brink of financial collapse, with the prospect of a crippling depression, worse than the 1930’s looming.
In the final days of his administration, they started the process of adopting the expensive poison-pill economic defense plans that were continued by the incoming administration. Those defensive maneuverings eventually stopped the bleeding, but just bough us time. When and if we will fully recover from the multiple failed policies of 2000 - 2008 remains to be seen.
The neocons got their way. Now they have to live with it.
I do not come to this project from a partisan background. Politically, I’m an independent moderate who values people over parties.
I turned 18 in 1974 and was granted the precious right to vote. I took that obligation seriously and have followed politics very closely my entire life. My favorite President since reaching voting age was George Bush Sr.
As an aspiring investigative journalist, I strive to remain neutral and report the facts as I find them. I will not attempt to prove the above thesis, but instead will leave final judgement to my readers.
The funds raised here will be used to research, produce, distribute and market this potentially explosive exposé. I’ll follow the money and the curious chain of events that brought an apparently unqualified party-boy / male cheerleader with a history of heavy drinking and drug experimentation into the most powerful political position on Earth.
Sure, to fund the book with your pre-orders, but more importantly to help me research and refine it. I’m looking for active backers who will read the chapter drafts and provide feedback. Perhaps some will come forward who have access to one of the principles and can help secure interviews. I need fact checkers and research assistants; people to challenge me at every step in the process.
This is a very important story. I’d like to get it right, or as close to right as WE can, working together!
Feel free to write to me at rsaunders@anexpub.com
Thank you for taking the time to review my proposal!