Does Bush have afterthoughts?

Recently I learned from a feature article in a print magazine that George W. Bush, as Jimmy Carter and Winston Churchill did, has taken up painting. Among Bush’s subjects are 98 war veterans from Bush’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq who suffered traumatic injuries. Some of the portraits were reproduced in the magazine, and they are good. Three months ago, 98 portraits were published in a coffee table book, Portraits of Courage, the proceeds from which are donated to the Bush Center.

I have wondered if Bush feels responsibility and remorse for the deaths and injuries of so many people. I have wondered if he knew at the time or even now that he was fighting wars for Israel.

Israel’s efforts to annex southern Lebanon have been blocked by Hezbollah, a militia supplied by Syria, Iran, and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. This is why these countries were on the list of countries to be invaded prepared by the Zionist neoconservatives who controlled George W. Bush’s administration.

It is certainly conceivable that Bush was manipulated by his neocon National Security Council, neocon Department of Defense, neocon State Department, and his vice president. Presidents only know what their advisors tell them. I have wondered if afterward when Bush admitted that there were no weapons of mass destruction he thought he had been manipulated.

I have also wondered if Bush was part of what many believe to be the 9/11 inside job pulled off by Dick Cheney, Israel, and the neoconservatives occupying the government’s high offices. I don’t think he was for these reasons: (1) his expression when told by the Secret Service of the attack does not show any pre-awareness, (2) he had been moved far out of the way on 9/11 to a distant children’s school and was not present on the scene to issue orders inconsistent with the plan, (3) had he been part of the plot, he would have been present to show presidential leadership during the crisis, and (4) he was not allowed to testify alone or under oath before the 9/11 Commission. He had to be chaperoned by Dick Cheney.

I suspect that Bush has wondered if it was just a coincidence that he was scheduled to be out of Washington on 9/11. Nevertheless, it would require a lot of inner strength for Bush to conclude that he was a pawn in a game of death. Even if he came to such a conclusion, to express it publicly would shake the public’s confidence in their government. I doubt anyone who has served as president could bring himself to do that. We will never know from Bush himself whether my suspicions are on the mark.

Copyright © 2017 Paul Craig Roberts

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts’ latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order.

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