Introduction

 

I’ve chosen to write a project about George Walker Bush. The reason I chose this topic, is that I don’t like Bush or his policy. I wanted to know more details about what he has done during his political career, and now I know. And there was surprisingly more than I had expected..

 

George W. Bush is a person who I assume most people have an opinion about. The opinions that we mostly hear about, is negative. That isn’t surprising, at least not to me. All the things he has don, not only as the President of the United States of America, but also as a senator. He actually has a criminal rcord as well, but we’ll never know what it is for.

 

This project has infact been interesting, and now I know much more facts about Bush, the terror-attacks, the war in Iraq and much more.

 

You’ll get to read facts about Bush, a biography, find out more details about everything that he has done, and other interesting things it’s worth to know.

 

 

What did George W. Bush do before he became the President of the United States of America?

 

George Walker Bush was born on July 6th, 1946, in New Haven, Connecticut, an he grew up in Midland and Houston, Texas. He is the son of former president George Bush.

 

Bush attended to Yale University, and received a bachelor’s degree in 1968, then from 1968 to 1973, he was an F-102 fighter pilot in the Texas Air National Guard. In 1975, he graduated from Harvard Business School, where he received a Master of Business Administration.

 

In 1977, he married the former librarian and teacher Laura Welsh. They have got twin daughters, Jenna and Barbara. In the family, thay have also included their cat India, and their two dogs, Spot and Barney.

 

Most of the 1970’s and 1980’s, Bush workes in the oil and gas business in Texas. But in 1978, he ran as the Republican nominee for Congress in Texas’s 19th House district. He lost, and went back to the oil and gas business, and his business got into trouble. In 1987 and 1988, Bush started to work on his father’s presidential campaign. After Bush Senior won the presidency, Bush Junior became a managing general partner of the baseball team Texas Rangers from 1989 to 1994.

 

In 1994, Bush was 48 years old. He won the election as governor of Texas with 53,5% of the vote against the Democratic nominee for governor, Ann Richards. Bush became the 46th Governor of the State of Texas. Many people believe that George W. Bush became governor mostly because of his and his fatjer’s name. On November 3rd, 1998, Bush was re-elected as governor of Texas, now with 68,6% of the vote. During the six years as governor of Texas, he got a reputation. This reputation was that he was ”a compassionate conservative who shaped public policy based on the principles of limited government, personal responsibility, strong families, and local control.”

 

But at the same time, while Bush was the governor of Texas, he changed pollution laws for power and oil companies, and made Texas the most polluted state in the US. He also set the record for most executions by any governor in American history.

 

When Bush and Al Gore were the two left standing in the ”Presidential Race”, Bush was clearly leading the national polls. But after a little while, it seemed like his campaign lost focus, and many people thought that he would lose. It seemed like Bush was more interested in discussing the format of the candidate debates instead of the policy issues that had made him a strong candidate for the presidency in the first place. At this point, he had lost tha last popular vote by over 500 000 votes. But luckily for Bush, he managed to debate really well on the first presidential candidates’ debate on October 3rd, 2000. After this, Bush’s poll numbers increased. At the next debate, on October 11th, Bush actually did it well when he had to answer a large number of questions about foreign policies and defense issues, which everybody knew was Bush’s weak spots. The voters believed in George Bush, and he won the votes of the people who wanted to get a change after the Clinton-Gore aministration. The voters regarded Bush as the candidate of change, and Gore as the candidate who represented the status quo. There were a lot of back and forth on the counting of the votes. In the end, it was the U.S. Supreme Court who decided the case in favor of Bush.

 

Bush is the 43rd President of the United States of America. He became president on January 20th, 2001.

 

 

What has President Bush done during his presidency?

 

First of all, is Bush the first president in US history with a criminal record. This is of course secretly garded, so that no one can see which crimes he actually has comitted. But only few days before the election, reporters got hold of this story: Bush is convicted of drunk driving. On September 4th 1976, a state trooper saw him drive, and he got caught, and he lost his driver’s license. His spokesman said that he had drunk several beers before the arrest. At the time, Bush was 30 years old. He stopped drinking when he turned 40, because he had a drinking problem. Bush denied this story when it came out in the media, and lied about being arrested. He still claims that he only got a fine and got his driver’s license suspended, that he didn’t get arrested.

 

Another thing Bush has been arrested for, is theft and vandalism, when he went in college, in 1968.

 

In 2001, Bush set the all time record for most days on vacation by any president in the USA. When he had finished his vacation after the whole month of August, 2001 off, he lead the worst security failure in the USA. This was the attacks on Septemmber 11th. This changed America, and in President Bush’s own words: ”in our grief and anger we have found our mission and our moment.” Then he declared war against terror, and claimed that he had ”made victory in the war of terrorism and the advance of human freedom are the priorities og his Administration.” But later, he said that it was the terrorists who declared war on the US, and that the US had taken the fight to the terrorists. And the reason he said that he had made victory, was because they captured or killed many key leaders of the al Qaeda network.

 

After the attacks, the EPA told the citizens of New York that the air quality was fine, and that it was safe to work and live near Ground Zero. But that wasn’t true. The White House had pressured the EPA to say this. Since the air quality wasn’t good, people may get serious injuries, but it can take many years before we get to see the effect. It can be possibly birth defects or increased cancer rates. People say that this may be the worst lie of President Bush - yet.

 

Bush said in his speech for the Congress on 20th September that he declared that the attackers hated America because they hate the American’s liberties, their religious freedom, their freedom of expression, their freedom to vote and organize and to disagree. ”Our country is strong”, he said. ”Our country is strong. A great people has gotten challenged to defend a great nation.””Those who go to war against the USA, have chosen to get destroyed themselves.” Bush never mentioned the UN in this speeches. America would manage by themselves. He gave the rest of the world two alternatives; you are either with the USA, or against the USA. If you are against the USA, then you support the terrorists. Bush and bin Laden does have one thing in common, though; they close their speeches by asking God of blessing for their people.

 

Bush reacted in an understanding way after the attacks, but what he did afterwards, was not at all right. He attacked Afghanistan, and bombed almost everywhere in the whole country. With one starting point; to get Osama bin Laden – dead or alive. He didn’t think about all the consequences, that many innocent people would die because of him. He wanted to get the whole Taliban-regime, but obviously, that wasn’t enough. Among other things, Bush let CIA get access to lethal covert action, which would let them kill specific unwanted people. This pracsis was abolished by President Ford in 1976, but Bush has re-introduced this. Another example is that Bush has given the police and security-services in the USA allowed to supervision, house search, custody and expulsion.

 

Don Rehkopf, the forman in the American defence-lawyers court-martiall-committee, has made this statement: ”if I had seen these rules after 20 years absence in the tangle, I would have thought that they were made by Hitler or Stalin.” This has made me begin to wonder; who should we be most afraid of, Osama bin Laden Saddam Hussein, or George W. Bush? Bush seems like a dictator himself, and still he claims that he has done what’s best for Afghanistan and Iraq, to remove their leader. Maybe what really should be done is remove Bush?

 

Bush has also made this statement: ” In Iraq, America and our coalition partners removed a brutal dictator and the threat he posed to America and the world. We are working with the Iraqi people and other nations to build a free, democratic and peaceful Iraq that no longer harbors illegal weapons or supports terrorists.” Bush obviously talked about Saddam Hussein here, but is it really Hussein who is dangerous in this case? Bush didn’t have any proof that showed that Amreica was dangered by Hussein, only suspections. And suspections aren’t enough when the result is war. The Iraqi people haven’t been happy about it either. First, they’re being shot at, then Bush thinks that everything is OK and comes to visit Iraq on Thanksgiving, an he doesn’t even visit anyone who have something to do with Iraq as a country. Of course, the Iraqi people aren’t happy about this. Bush went to Iraq just to make the American people to like him again, simply a politial stunt. And what makes this episode even worse, is that now the Americans look at Bush in a different way, like a hero. At least the American media are doing it.

 

Unlike Bush, some people have moral. Like former Ambassodor Joseph Wilson. He investigated President Bush’s State of the Union claim that Iraq tried tu purchase uranium from Africa. Wilson didn’t believe the story, and that’s why he investigated it. He found out that Bush’s administration had used false intelligence to justify the war in Iraq, and Wilson went public with this. For revenge, Bush’s administration revealed that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, was an undercover CIA-agent. This of course, ruined her career.

 

Bush has said in many speeches that America is grateful for what all their soldiers do for their country. But he hasn’t actually showed much gratitude towards them. The Pentagon (under Bush) cuts imminent danger pay as soldiers die every day in Iraq and family separation pay as soldiers are separated from their families for months.

 

Bush has come up with many strange things. An example, is the ”Marriage Protection Week”. This is something that makes me believe that Bush feels threatened by gay people. The whole thing is that gay marriages are threatening marriages between heterosexual people, so Bush wants his administration to work on a way to make it illegal for gay people to get married, in every state in America.

 

Bush has removed more freedoms and civil rights than any other president in the USA, and he also had the UN remove the US from the human rights commision.

 

 

The conclusion of this project

 

This has been the most interesting project I’ve ever worked on, and now I even know abou things from Bush’s criminal record!

 

He is really starting to get the tendencies to become a dictator, so I just hope that the American people will wake up and realize what kind of man he really is. He is not a kind of man I would want to rule my country, and at least not after reading all this information about him. That he has lied so much about so important things like the air quality in New York, is a completely different thing than when Bill Clinton lied about having an affair with Monica Lewinsky. But there’s still one thing I’m wondering about when it comes to George W. Bush; what is going on in this guy’s head, what is he thinking with when he does all these horrible things? I guess that I’ll never know..

 

 

Sources

 

Internet:

- www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html

- www.wage-slave.org/scorecard.html

- www.realchange.org/bushjr.htm#spy

- www.buzzflash.com/contributors/03/04/23_resume.html

- www.bushorchimp.com

 

Book:

- The lies of George W. Bush:

Mastering the Politics of Deception

(written by David Corn)