CounterPunch's
Scorching New Book on a Decade of War
Order Now / Available in April
Today's
Stories
April 3, 2004
Jeffrey St. Clair
How Neil Bush Succeeded in Business
Without Really Trying
April 2, 2004
Dave Lindorff
Barbaric
Relativism: the Press and Fallujah
Kurt Nimmo
Wherever
Bush Goes, Osama is Bound to Follow
Emma Miller
The
Role of the West in the Rwandan Genocide
Dr. Susan Block
Same
Sex Marriages: Just Say "No" to Prohibition
Norman Solomon
Media Strategy Memo for George & Dick
Sacha Guney
The Meaning of the Elections in Turkey
Christopher Brauchli
The
Disturbing Case of Cpt. Yee
Website of the Day
Mercenaries, Inc.
April 1, 2004
Ron Jacobs
Dying in Vain in Iraq
Harry Browne
No Smoke, Plenty of Fire: Ireland's Pubs Go Smokefree
Chris Floyd
Towel Boy: Bush Hits Workers with Chemical Weapons
Nicole Colson
Inside America's Concentration Camp: Tortured at Guantanamo
Charles Arthur
Haiti's Army Cracks Down on Workers
Laura Flanders
Elaine
Chao: a First Daughter for the First Son
March 31, 2004
M. Junaid Alam
Israel:
Suicide Nation?
John L. Hess
Condi
Under Oath: But What About the NYTs Reporters?
Fernando Suarez del Solar
A Year
Since My Son's Death in Iraq
Sofia Perez
Spain's
U-Turn on Iraq is Real Democracy in Action
David Vest
Stick 'Em Up: Put Cheney and Bush Under Oath
Tanya Reinhart
As in Tiannamen Square: Justice and the Yassin Assassination
Mike Whitney
Time to Dump the Pledge
Donald Kaul
Martha Stewart's Lesson: Never Talk to the FBI
Milt Bearden
Mired in the Tracks of Alexander the Great
Marjorie Cohn
The Illegal
Coup in Haiti: How the Kidnapping of Aristide Violated US and
International Law
Website of the Day
New Pentagon Papers Dropped at DC Starbucks
March 30, 2004
William S. Lind
An Occurrence
in Pakistan: the Battle That Wasn't
Ron Jacobs
Assassinations, Hate Mail &
Justice
Mickey Z.
Tommy Boy Friedman Does "Imagine"
Neve Gordon
Strategic Motives of the Yassin Assassination
Mark Scaramella
The Founding Scam: Insider Trading is the American Way
John Chuckman
The Countessa of Empire: Condi
Rice's Idea of Democracy
Greg Moses
Live from Pasadena: Silhouettes of New Order
Rai O'Brien
What Kind of Democracy to Expect if the Opposition Takes Power
in Venezuela
Bill Christison
The
9/11 Commission: Dangerous Harbinger for the Future
Website of the Day
Ghost Town: Riding Through Chernobyl
March 29, 2004
John Maxwell
Crisis
in the Caribbean: a Miasma Foretold
J. Michael Springmann
Email
Spying & Attorney Client Privilege
Robert Fisk / Severin
Carrell
Coalition
of the Mercenaries
The Black Commentator
Haiti's Troika of Terror
Doug Giebel
Candide in the Wilderness:
How Bush Policy Was Made
David Krieger
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Bargain
Mike Whitney
Rejecting the Language of Terrorism
Richard Oxman
The Pitts: a 9/11 Burrow of an American
Family
Kim Scipes
The AFL-CIO in Venezuela: Deja Vu All Over Again
Michael Donnelly
End Game for Northwest Forests
Norman Solomon
The Media Politics of 9/11
Kathy Kelly
Last Lines Before Vanishing
Website of the Day
Swans: Can Money Buy Everything?
March 27 / 28, 2004
Jeffrey St. Clair
Empire of the Locusts
Gary Leupp
The Yassin Assassination: Prelude to an Attack on Syria
William A. Cook
The Yassin Assassination: a Monstrous Insanity Blessed by the
US
Faheem Hussain
Some Thoughts on Waziristan: Once and Always a Colonial Army
Elaine Cassel
Is Playing Paintball Terrorism?
Larry Birns / Jessica
Leight
Disturbing Signals: Kerry and Latin America
John Ross
Bush Tells the World: "Drop Dead"
John Eskow
A Memo to Karl Rove from the Hollywood Caucus
Alan Maass
Who Are the Real Terrorists?
Dave Lindorff
Spineless of US Journalists
Joe Bageant
Howling in the Belly of the Confederacy
Dave Zirin
Reasonable Doubt: Why Barry Bonds is Not on Steroids
Craig Waggoner
Who Would Mel's Jesus Nuke?
The Kerry Quandry
Joel Wendland
Marxists
for Kerry
Josh Frank
Scary,
Scary John Kerry
Matt Vidal
Spoilers, Electability and the Poverty of American Democracy
Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Hamod, Guthrie, Davies and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Say a Little Prayer
March 26, 2004
Christopher Brauchli
There's
a Chill Over the Country
Robert Fisk
The Man Who Knew Too Much: the Ordeal
of Mordechai Vanunu
Joe DeRaymond
Democracy in El Salvador? Think Again
Mike Whitney
Lessons on Apartheid from Ariel Sharon
Mickey Z.
Somalia and Iraq: Looking Back and Ahead
Chris Floyd
The Pentagon Archipelago
CounterPunch Photo Wire
Cheney's Close Shave?
John Breneman
Bush's Comic Bomb
Website of the Day
Dick
is a Killer
March 25, 2004
Lee Sustar
Who
is to Blame for Lost Jobs?
Standard Schaefer
An
Interview with Michael Hudson on Offshore Banking Centers
Roger Burbach
Lula vs. the IMF: Brazil Begins
to Throw Off the Austerity Planners
Jimmer Endres
Elections Without Politics: The Military Budget Is Not an "Issue"
Larry Tuttle
Acting in Your Name: Identity Theft and Public Interest Groups
Toni Solo
Misreporting Venezuela
Dan Bacher
A Memorial Wall for Iraq War's Dead and Wounded
Saul Landau
Is
Venezuela Next?
Website of the Day
The Spiral Railway
March 24, 2004
Gary Leupp
General
Musharraf's IOU
Richard Oxman
Shakespeare
for Kerry
William Lind
The Beginning
of Phase Three: 4G Warfare Hits Iraq
Rep. Ron Paul
Iraq One Year Later
Michael Dempsey
Killing Rachel Corrie Again
Alan Farago
The Bad Math of Mercury: Bush's War on the Unborn
Benjamin Dangl
and April Howard
Media
in Cuba
John L. Hess
No Lie Left Behind: Judy Miller Does Dick Clarke
Greg Weiher
Two Cheers for Dems: "We're Not as Bad as George"
Eva Golinger
An Open Letter to John Kerry on Venezuela
Grayson Childs
Where's Cynthia McKinney?
Steve Niva
Israel's Assassinations will Only
Fuel More Suicide Bombings
Website of the Day
The Bushiad and the Idiossey
March 23, 2004
Phillip Cryan
The
Drug War's Next Casualty: Colombia's National Parks
Ron Jacobs
They Shoot Men in Wheelchairs, Too?
Dave Lindorff
A Spanish Parallel: Scare Tactics and Elections
Mike Whitney
Richard Clarke and Teflon George
Brian McKinlay
Bush's Lil' Buddy in Trouble: John Howard Starts to Wobble
JG
Driving Mr. Koon: "Jim Crow Lives Next Door"
Phyllis Pollack
Gettin' Jigga with Metallica: the Battle Over the Double Black
CD
Ahmed Bouzid
Sharon's One-Way Track
Sean Carter
The G-Word Goes to Court: One Nation Under [Your Logo Here]
M. Shahid Alam
World's Greatest Country: Do the Facts Lie
March 22, 2004
Mazin Qumsiyeh
On Extrajudicial
Executions
Uri Avnery
The
Assassination of Sheikh Yassin is Worse Than a Crime
Gilad Atzmon
Sharon's Rampage
Mike Whitney
Guilty Until Proven Innocent: the Story of Captain James Yee
Jason Leopold
Firm With Ties to Cheney Faces Criminal Indictment in Cal Energy
Scam
Greg Moses
Stop
Walling and Stalling: a Report from Houston's Peace March
Phil Gasper
San Francisco: 25,000 March for an End to the Occupation
Lenni Brenner
Report
from NYC: Old and Young Parade for Peace
Julian Borger
The Clarke Revelations
Steve Perry
Karl Rove's Moment
Website of the Day
Enviros Against War
March 20 / 21, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Gay
Marriage: Sidestep on Freedom's Path
Jeffrey St. Clair
Intolerable Opinions in an Age of Shock and Awe: What Would Lilburne
Do?
Ted Honderich
Tony Blair's Moral Responsibility for Atrocities
Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
The Plot Against Syria: an Irresponsibility Act
Gary Leupp
On Viewing "The Passion of the Christ"
William A. Cook
Fence, Barrier, Wall
Phil Gasper
Bush v. Bush-lite: Chomsky's Lesser Evilism
Ron Jacobs
Fox News and the Masters of War
John Stanton
Which Way John Kerry? The Senator's Inner Nixon
Justin Felux
Kerry and Black America: Just Another Stupid White Man
Mike Whitney
Greenspan's Treason: Swindling Posterity
Augustin Velloso
Avoiding Osama's Abyss
Lawrence Magnuson
Eyes Wide Open: Is Spain Caving in to Terrorism?
Kathy Kelly
Getting Together to Defeat Terrorism
Tracy McLellan
Scalia & Cheney: Happiness is a Warm Gun
Kurt Nimmo
Emma Goldman for President!
Luis J. Rodriguez
The Redemptive Power of Art: It's Not a Frill
Mickey Z
The Michael Moore Diet
Jackie Corr
When Harry Truman Stopped in Butte
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Great Trial of 1922: Gandhi's Vision of Responsibility
Poets' Basement
Stew Albert & JD Curtis
Website of the Weekend
Virtual World Election
March 19, 2004
Jeffrey St. Clair
Zapatero
to Kerry: Back Off, Senator, Our Troops are Coming Home
Ann Harrison
So
Protesters, How Well Do You Know Your Rights?
William MacDougall
Fortress Britain's War on "Economic Migrants"
Greg Moses
Sold American: Cowboy Nation Gets Ready to Vote
Cynthia McKinney
Haiti and the Impotence of Black America: Roll Back This Coup,
Mr. Bush
Norman Solomon
Spinning the Past; Threatening the Future
John L. Hess
"Missing" Evidence and the NYTs
Vicente Navarro
The
End of Aznar, Bush's Best Friend
Website of the War
Naming the Dead
March 18, 2004
Gila Svirsky
Rachel
Corrie, One Year Later: She Never Lost Faith in Decency
Christopher Brauchli
Drilling a Hole in the Sanctions: How Halliburton Made $73 Million
from Saddam
William Kulin
Report from Iraq: Just Another Baghdad Car Bombing
Mike Whitney
Resistance: a Moral Imperative
Rep. Ron Paul
Broadcast Indecency Act: an Indecent Attack on the First Amendment
Josh Frank
The Nader Question
Jack Random
They Lied & They Lost: Madrid and the Lessons of Democracy
Greg Bates
What Makes a Nader Voter Tick? A Survey
Sam Hamod / Alfredo Reyes
Contempt of the World: Hastert, Bush and Cheney on Spain
Gary Leupp
The
Madrid Bombings: the Chickens Come Home to Roost
Website of the Day
Privatizing Armageddon: Buy Your Own Doomsday Key
March 17, 2004
Marjorie Cohn
Spain, the EU and the US: War on
Terror or Civil Liberties?
David MacMichael
Untruth
and Consequences
Michael Donnelly
Wear the Green, But Skip the Green Beer
Tom Stephens
"Steady Leadership": Let the Buyer Beware
Wayne Madsen
Sen. Kerry, Let Me Help You Out
Karyn Strickler
Who Owns the Sierra Club? Anonymous Donors and Rigged Elections
Peter Linebaugh
Bush:
Blanc Blanc
March 16, 2004
Lenni Brenner
James
Madison: the Anti-Clerical Father of the Bill of Rights
Scott Boehm
Madrid
Diary: How to Change World Order in Four Days
Alexander Lynch
From Franco to Aznar: the History
Behind the Spanish Elections
Sam Hamod and Alfredo
Reyes
The Truth About the Spanish Elections: Aznar Was Going Down Anyway
Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg
You Wouldn't Do a Dog This Way:
Executing David Clayton Hill
Mike Whitney
The Case for a Nuclear Iran
Robert Fisk
The Bloody Price of the "War
on Terror"
Bill Christison
The
Aftershocks from Madrid
CounterPunch Photo Wire
The Passion of St. Teresa
Website of the Day
Join the War on Art!
March 15, 2004
Harry Browne
Terror Nothing New to Europe
Mike Whitney
Justice
Not Murder: the Tragic Symmetry of Terrorism
Lidice Valenzuela
Haiti: a Coup without Consultation
Greg Moses
Lessons
from the Texas Primaries: Looking for a Coalition with Legs
Mickey Z.
Depraved Indifference: C-Sections, Patriarchy & Women's Health
Asaf Shtull-Trauring
AWOL
in New York: From Refusenik to Organizer
CounterPunch Wire
Gen. Gramajo Executed by Bees!
March 12 / 14, 2004
Gabriel Kolko
The
Coming Elections and the Future of American Global Power
Saul Landau
Oh, Jesus...It's the Movie!
William Blum
Neo-Con(tradictions)
William S. Lind
Why They Throw Rocks
Rahul Mahajan
The Meaning of Madrid: War on "Terrorism" Makes Us
All Less Safe
Neve Gordon
Demographic Wars
Kurt Nimmo
Kerry and the Progressive Interventionists
Mickey Z.
The "New" UN Blames the Poor
Mike Whitney
War Games: the American Media Leads the Charge
Helen Scott and Ashley
Smith
Aristide's Fall: What Led to the Coup?
Justin E.H. Smith
Loïc Wacquant: Against a Sociodicy
of the American Prison
Brandy Baker
Him Again? Al Gore Needs to Move On
Robin Philpot
Nobody Can Call It a "Plane Crash" Now: the Report
on the Assassination of Rwandan President Habyarimana
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Meat Monopoly Takes a Rare Pounding
Dave Zirin
She Turned Her Back on the War: an Interview with Toni Smith
Daniel Wolff
The Lord's Pier
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
April
3, 2004
Hey, Brother, Can
You Spare a Million?
How
Neil Bush Succeeded in Business Without Really Trying
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
Now, that ain't workin'
That's the way you do it
Get money for nothin'
And your chicks for free.
Dire Straits, Money for Nothing
His mother still calls him Neilsie. He refers
to his dad, the former president, as Gampy. Neil Bush may be
the black sheep of the Bush family, but his relatives have never
let him down. Whenever he's been mired in financial, legal or
marital imbroglios, someone in the Bush family entourage has
always reached out a helping hand and often that hand has slipped
Neil a fat check.
Neil Bush, the fourth child of George
and Barbara, was long thought to be the rising star of the family.
He had the looks, the convivial demeanor, middle-of-the-road
politics and, despite suffering from a severe case of dyslexia
that made him the laughing stock of St. Albans, the stuffy DC
prep school that groomed Al Gore, the brainpower. At least he
seemed brighter than Jeb or George Jr. And, most important of
all, he was the favorite son of Barbara Bush, the Agrippina of
American politics.
All those lofty political aspirations
came to a fatal crash in the fall of 1988, at the precise moment
his father was poised to ascend to the presidency, when the Silverado
Savings and Loan went belly up with Neil in the driver's seat.
In these days of multi-billion dollar
financial crimes by the likes of Enron, Tyco and WorldCom, the
failure of a relatively small Colorado thrift may not seem like
much. But Silverado came to symbolize the entire savings and
loan debacle, which ended up costing the government more than
$150 billion in bail out money. Many of these companies exploited
the newly deregulated financial markets to lavish unsecured loans
to company insiders or political favorites and rewarded company
officers and directors with ostentatious salaries and benefits.
When the thrifts collapsed, the directors and executives walked
away unscathed, while small investors and account-holders were
left out in the cold. Appropriately, the looting of the savings
and loans hit Texas harder than most other states.
At the time, Neil Bush claimed that he
was being made a political scapegoat for Silverado's troubles.
He said he was only a bit player in the S&L with no real
decision making power, a figurehead and little more. Of course,
there was some truth to this. But Neil Bush was not an entirely
passive director. Indeed, he used his position as director to
steer unsecured loans to his business partners, including at
least one project, a scheme to drill for oil in Argentina, in
which he had a direct financial stake.
The US Office of Thrift Supervision,
which scrutinized the implosion of Silverado, determined that
Bush had engaged in numerous "breaches of his fiduciary
duties involving multiple conflicts of interest." A couple
of years later, Bush and his cohorts in Silverado settled a $200
million civil suit brought by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
for $49.5 million dollars. The FDIC had charged the executives
and directors of Silverado with gross negligence. Bush forked
out $50,000 of his own cash for his part of the settlement, with
most of the money coming from insurance companies.
It wasn't supposed to be this way. Bush
had moved to Denver in 1980 with his new bride, Sharon. He was
to set up a base of political operations in the Rocky Mountain
state, with his eyes on the governor's mansion or a senate seat.
But first there was a fortune to be made.
In 1983, Neil started an oil company,
naturally, called JNB Exploration. The seed money for the opeation
came in the amount of $150,000 from a Colorado real estate mogul
named Bill Walters, the self-proclaimed Donald Trump of Denver.
Another early investor in JNB was Walter's friend Ken Goode,
another real estate baron, who arranged $1.75 in million credit
for Bush's company from a bank controlled by Walters. For his
part, Neil Bush kicked in $100 to the JNB Exploration kitty.
It wasn't long before JNB began to list.
A bail out was arranged with money coming from Silverado Savings
and Loan, where Bush now served as a director.
Meanwhile, Bush continued to receive
favors from Ken Goode. In the mid-1980s, Goode gave Bush $100,000
in investment funds, chips to play with in the stock market.
Bush ended up losing all the money, but never paid a cent back
to Goode.
Bush did, however, steer millions in
Silverado loans Goode's way. In 1986, Bush prevailed upon the
Silverado board to approve more than $34 million in loans and
credit to Walters and Goode, unsecured by anything other than
Bush's word.
Neil also urged the board to loan another
of Goode's companies, Goode International, $900,000 to finance
an oil drilling operation in Argentina. In his pliant letter
to the board, Neil conveniently elided the fact that he was a
silent partner in this deal. Indeed, the Argentina oil scheme
was his idea, predicated on familial ties to the corrupt of junta
of generals then clutching the country in a murderous grip. Silverado
was a pyramid scheme of financial self-dealing.
After Silverado crashed, Neil briefly
became the poster boy for the S&L crisis. He was mercilessly
mocked by the great Texas populist Henry Gonzales, during his
hearings on the S&L scandal. Neil Bush's political ambitions
were mortally punctured, but his business career was just starting
to take off. After all, his father was now president and there
was a global network of connections to exploit.
In 1989, a few months after the expiration
of Silverado, Neil was offered the chance to run another company
that had been created just for him, Apex Energy. The $2.3 million
in start up funds came courtesy of Bush family confident Louis
Marx, heir to the Marx toy fortune. Bush pulled down $150,000
a year as CEO. Within two years, Apex Energy took a nosedive
into bankruptcy.
But Neil Bush moved on, this time to
TransMedia Communications, a cable TV venture headed by Bill
Daniel, a longtime funder of Neil's father's political campaigns,
who had been lobbying furiously for the deregulation of the telecommunications
industry. For his services, Neil was remunerated to the tune
of $60,000 per year, even though TransMedia's president, Dick
Barnes, later admitted that the younger Bush knew nothing about
the cable business.
It was around this time that Neil struck
up a friendship with Nigal Fares, son of Issam Fares, then deputy
Prime Minister of Lebanon and another longtime friend of the
Bush family. Fares hired Neil to negotiate global deals involving
the sale of covers for oil storage tankers. This partnership
inaugurated Neil's lucrative ventures in the Middle East, leading
to fruitful relationships with oil sheiks from Qatar to Dubai,
Kuwait to Saudi Arabia.
But Neil didn't just dabble in oil. He
also looked for opportunities to cash in on the new opportunities
in the booming markets of Asia. In 1994, he started a company
called InterLink with Tom Bridewater, a Utah tycoon and rightwing
politician. The plan called for Neil to act as an intermediary
to help grease deals between US and Asian companies. According
to his recent divorce settlement, Neil earned from $180,000 to
more than a $1 million a year from InterLink alone. In fact,
it is alleged that Neil was paid $1 million to arrange a private
meeting in New York City with Taiwan's president Chen Shui-bian.
The charge was leveled by James Soong, leader of Taiwan's opposition
party. Bush admitted to meeting Chen, but denied that he received
any money from the Taiwanese leader. Meetings between officials
of the US and Taiwanese governments have been prohibited since
1979, when the US normalized relations with Beijing.
The windfalls kept coming his way. On
July 19, 1999, Neil experienced one of his greatest triumphs.
He made $171,000 in a single day by buying and selling shares
of the Kopin Corporation, a display panel company, which on that
very afternoon announced a surprise deal with Japanese electronics
giant, JVC, causing the stock to soar. While Neil denies profiting
from any insider knowledge, the exquisitely timed transaction
has all the hallmarks of a Martha Stewart-style deal in reverse.
Instead of stemming losses, Neil Bush made a quick killing. Kopin
had been one of Interlink's early clients and Neil had recently
arranged a deal where Telecom Holdings, a Hong Kong company,
invested $27 million in Kopin. As a reward, Neil received stock
options in the newly beefed up firm. It was merely a coincidence,
Neil told the Associated Press earlier this year, that he exercised
those options on that July morning and sold them later in the
same afternoon, following the momentous JVC deal. Just another
fortuitous coincidence.
Neil Bush's escapades across Asia came
to the attention of the Grace Semiconductor Management Company,
which recruited Bush onto its board of directors. Despite the
fact that Neil admitted he knows nothing about semiconductors,
the Chinese company recompensed Bush with $2 million in stock
and $10,000 per board meeting. Grace is controlled by Taiwanese
tycoon Winston Wong and Jiang Mianheng, son of Jiang Zemin, former
president of China.
Another of Neil's rich friends is Jamal
Daniel, a Syrian-American multimillionaire. When Neil and Sharon
griped that their family didn't get to spend very much time in
Kennebunkport, Daniel shelled out $380,000 to buy them a cottage
next to the Bush compound.
Jamal Daniel also put Bush on retainer
for his Crest Investment firm, paying him $60,000 a year to help
broker deals in the Middle East. One of Daniel's most recent
ventures is New Bridge Strategies, a kind of financial influence
peddling outfit whose main endeavor these days is to help companies
win contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq. What one brother
destroys, another rebuilds.
In May of 2002, Neil Bush found himself
alone in his hotel room in Dubai, where he was trying to secure
financing for his new company Ignite! Learning, an educational
software company geared to exploit his brother's No Child Left
Behind education strategy. Neil sat before his laptop computer
and pounded out a long email to his wife of 23 years, informing
her that he wanted a divorce. Oddly, given his track record financial
coups, Neil's ungentlemanly missive wallows in concerns about
the family's frail bank account.
"Your comments at our pool-side
dinner with the kids that you and I should race to see who could
make a million dollars faster, your belief expressed in different
ways that I have not made enough money, your belief that it was
easy to make money, and that Jamal Daniel's plotting or Dad's
influence will be the magic answer to our financial woes all
cause me consternation and reflect the bitterness and anger that
has come from the loneliness you described Friday," Neil
wrote. "It is very clear that we are failing to meet each
other's core needs. We're almost out of money and I've lost my
patience for being compared to my brothers, for being put down
for my inability to make money, and tired of not being loved.
I'm sure you have felt abandoned and a deep sense of loneliness."
Of course, in his e-confessional Neil
Bush didn't feel compelled to come clean about the sexcapades
with the Asian hookers or reveal the fact that he'd fallen in
love with Maria Anderson, the wife of Houston oil baron, Robert
Andrews, a woman Sharon Bush would later denounce in public as
"Neil's Mexican whore."
At the very moment Neil hit the send
button on this brutal adieu, he was sending Maria breathlessly
written love letters, pining for the time when they would be
both be freed from the shackles of their marriages.
"My heart is breaking with solitude,"
Neil wrote his lover. "I can't wait to be free to dedicate
all of my passion to love you. I hurt to have you in my arms,
to make love with you and be a part of your life." Yet another
testimonial to Bush family values.
According to Neil, the two met in 2001
when Maria was working as a volunteer in Barbara Bush's office,
but things didn't start to get amorous between them until January
of 2002 when they found themselves together at a Houston fundraiser
for Jeb Bush. A few weeks later Neil showed up at the Andrews's
$4 million mansion, known to the neighbors as Swankienda. He
came on a mission to raise money for his new project, Ignite!
Robert Andrews was an oil tycoon who had made his millions largely
through a fruitful alliance with one of Mexico's most notorious
moguls, Carlos "Slim" Helu, the billionaire who controls
the Grupo Carso conglomerate that includes TelMex.
That spring day, Neil walked away with
$100,000 from Robert Andrews for his company and a new companion.
As his mother said, Neil's quite the smooth talker. A few weeks
later, Maria and Neil absconded to Mexico together, ostensibly
to search out new investors for Ignite! They returned with a
lucrative production deal courtesy of Slim Helu and a pledge
to seek divorces from their respective spouses. Neil soon fired
off his parting email to Sharon and, upon returning to Texas
from Dubai, moved into a Houston apartment owned by his Syrian
business partner, Nijad Fares. In a harmonious display of their
new fidelity, Neil and Maria filed for divorce on the same day,
August 26, 2002.
When Sharon Bush learned of the affair
with Maria Andrews, she launched a pre-emptive battery that would
have impressed the Iraq war planners. First, she announced plans
to write a tell all book about the Bush clan, hinting darkly
about revealing the truth of the Silverado scandal and George
W. Bush's boozing and carousing. Then she let slip the fact that
she had been spilling family secrets to Kitty Kelly, who has
been desperately trying to complete her exposé of the
Bush family before the 2004 elections.
Then Sharon turned her sights on her
rival, the vivacious Maria Andrews. She infamously confronted
the couple at a Houston smoothie shop where Maria and Neil were
dining together and called her Neil's "Mexican whore."
Then she made allegations that Neil and Maria had been sleeping
together for several years and that Maria's youngest child had
not fathered by Robert Andrews but by Neil. Andrews struck back
with an $850,000 libel suit, but Sharon won the first round when
a Texas judge approved her demand for DNA samples from Andrews
and the child. And so it goes.
The Neil v. Sharon Bush divorce papers
provide the most titillating bedtable reading since the footnotes
of the Starr Report. For example, the divorce depositions detail
Neil's dalliances with prostitutes in Asia. While Neil was doing
Interlink business in Thailand and Hong Kong, he enjoyed the
exotic experience of hearing an urgent knocking on his hotel
room door. Upon opening the door, Neil was confronted by a beautiful
young woman who said she wanted to have sex with him. On at least
three difference occasions, Neil accepted the hospitality of
his hosts. He admitted to the sexual encounters in his bizarre
deposition during his divorce proceedings. The deposition was
released earlier this year. Here's a sample of the back and forth
between Bush and his wife's lawyer:
Marshall Davis Brown (lawyer for Sharon
Bush): Mr. Bush, you have to admit that it's a pretty remarkable
thing for a man to just got to a hotel room door and open it
and have a woman standing there and have sex with her.
Neil Bush: It was very unusual.
Marshall Davis Brown: Were these prostitutes?
Neil Bush: I don'tI don't know.
Neil's lawyer, John Spalding, counterattacked
by charging that Sharon Bush tried to manipulate her husband
through the use of voodoo spells. Spalding claims that Sharon
clipped strands of Neil's hair and wove them into a bizarre doll
that she hid under his bed.
Sharon tartly dismissed such allegations
has lawyerly hokum. She admitted to collecting strands of Neil's
hair, but not for the purpose of practicing the dark arts of
Haiti. Instead, Sharon confessed that she wanted to have Neil's
hair tested for the presence of cocaine. "He was looking
thin and acting weird," Sharon said. Apparently, a taste
for fine powder runs deep in the Bush family.
On March 6, Neil and Maria finally tied
the knot. The wedding ceremony took place in Jamal Daniel's palatial
home in Houston. Most of the Bush clan was their toast the new
couple, although George and Laura discreetly made other plans
for the weekend. After a brief honeymoon, the couple will into
Maria's new home, a multi-million dollar mansion just down the
road from Bar and Gampy.
In the charmed world of Neil Bush, it
doesn't matter what you do or even how badly you botch the job,
it all works out very well in the end.
Roger Clinton eat your heart out.
Jeffrey St. Clair is co-editor of CounterPunch and author of Been
Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature.
Weekend
Edition Features for March 20 / 21, 2004
Jeffrey St. Clair
Empire of the Locusts
Gary Leupp
The Yassin Assassination: Prelude to an Attack on Syria
William A. Cook
The Yassin Assassination: a Monstrous Insanity Blessed by the
US
Faheem Hussain
Some Thoughts on Waziristan: Once and Always a Colonial Army
Elaine Cassel
Is Playing Paintball Terrorism?
Larry Birns / Jessica
Leight
Disturbing Signals: Kerry and Latin America
John Ross
Bush Tells the World: "Drop Dead"
John Eskow
A Memo to Karl Rove from the Hollywood Caucus
Alan Maass
Who Are the Real Terrorists?
Joe Bageant
Howling in the Belly of the Confederacy
Dave Zirin
Reasonable Doubt: Why Barry Bonds is Not on Steroids
Craig Waggoner
Who Would Mel's Jesus Nuke?
The Kerry Quandry
Joel Wendland
Marxists
for Kerry
Josh Frank
Scary,
Scary John Kerry
Matt Vidal
Spoilers, Electability and the Poverty of American Democracy
Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Hamod, Guthrie, Davies and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Say a Little Prayer
Keep CounterPunch Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|