Tuesday, September 04, 2007

After 2008, Bush planning "FAILURE INSTITUTE," to be modeled on "Hoover Institute;" and HOUSED @ S.M.U.?

Yeah, housed on SMU campus near his future house in Dallas...

What's that?
Oh, sorry, it's gonna be called the "Freedom Institute," not the "FAILURE INSTITUTE..."
My bad... [FREE-DUMB?]
Friendly wager: A million pesos says, between now and January '09, Southern Methodist University -- in Texas -- rethinks any agreement(s) they may have signaled to Gee Dub or his agents about housing any
George W. Bush -
Iraq-occupation-history-as-(Dick &)I-saw-it Museum, Think Tank, or Hoover(ville) Institute-like group, association, or whatever...
One Million Authentic Mexican Pesos. Takers, please email.
Thank You, Herb.

UPDATE: Background, from NY Times:
[lost the link, so sorry.]
(Bush was interviewed for new book, by Draper)
First, Mr. Bush said, “I’ll give some speeches, just to replenish the ol’ coffers.” With assets that have been estimated as high as nearly $21 million, Mr. Bush added, “I don’t know what my dad gets — it’s more than 50-75” thousand dollars a speech, and “Clinton’s making a lot of money.”

Then he said, “We’ll have a nice place in Dallas,” where he will be running what he called “a fantastic Freedom Institute” promoting democracy around the world. But he added, “I can just envision getting in the car, getting bored, going down to the ranch.”

For now, though, Mr. Bush told the author, Robert Draper, in a later session, “I’m playing for October-November.” That is when he hopes the Iraq troop increase will finally show enough results to help him achieve the central goal of his remaining time in office: “To get us in a position where the presidential candidates will be comfortable about sustaining a presence,” and, he said later, “stay longer.”
:::
He at times mused philosophically and introspectively, and at others spoke forcefully about his confidence in his own decisions.
:::
Mr. Bush as being keenly interested in what history will say about his term despite his frequent comments to the contrary; as being in a reflective mode as his time at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue dwindles; and, ultimately, as being at once sorrowful and optimistic — but virtually alone as commander in chief, and aware of it.
:::
“I can’t let my own worries — I try not to wear my worries on my sleeve; I don’t want to burden them with that.”

“Self-pity is the worst thing that can happen to a presidency,” Mr. Bush... saying he sought to avoid it. “This is a job where you can have a lot of self-pity.”

Mr. Bush seemed to indicate that he had his down moments at home, saying of his wife, Laura, “Back to the self-pity point — she reminds me that I decided to do this.”

And in apparent reference to the invasion of Iraq, he continued, “This group-think of ‘we all sat around and decided’ — there’s only one person that can decide, and that’s the president.“
:::
In response to Mr. Draper’s observance that Mr. Bush had nobody’s “shoulder to cry on,” the president said: “Of course I do, I’ve got God’s shoulder to cry on, and I cry a lot.” In what Mr. Draper interpreted as a reference to war casualties, Mr. Bush added, “I’ll bet I’ve shed more tears than you can count as president.”

Yet Mr. Bush said his certainty that Iraq would turn around for the better was not for show. “You can’t fake it,” he told Mr. Draper in December.

Mr. Bush conveyed a level of sanguinity with his unpopularity. Mr. Draper recalled that in their last meeting, in May, Mr. Bush pointed outside to his dog, Barney, and said, “That guy who said if you want a friend in Washington get a dog, knew what he was talking about.”

He otherwise addressed his unpopularity as a tactical issue. For instance, in May he said that this fall it would be up to General Petraeus to convince the public that the Iraq strategy is working.

“I’ve been here too long,” Mr. Bush said, according to Mr. Draper. “Every time I start painting a rosy picture, it gets criticized and then it doesn’t make it on the news.”

But he said he saw his unpopularity as a natural result of his decision to pursue a strategy in which he believed. “I made a decision to lead,” he said, “One, it makes you unpopular; two, it makes people accuse you of unilateral arrogance, and that may be true. But the fundamental question is, is the world better off as a result of your leadership?”

Mr. Bush has often said that will be for historians decide, but he said during his sessions with Mr. Draper that they would have to consult administration documents to get to the bottom of some important questions.
Mr. Bush acknowledged one major failing of the early occupation of Iraq when he said of disbanding the Saddam Hussein-era military, “The policy was to keep the army intact; didn’t happen.”

But when Mr. Draper pointed out that Mr. Bush’s former Iraq administrator, L. Paul Bremer III, had gone ahead and forced the army’s dissolution and then asked Mr. Bush how he reacted to that, Mr. Bush said, “Yeah, I can’t remember, I’m sure I said, ‘This is the policy, what happened?’ ” But, he added, “Again, Hadley’s got notes on all of this stuff,” referring to Stephen J. Hadley, his national security adviser.

Mr. Bush said he believed that Mr. Hussein did not take his threats of war seriously, suggesting that the United Nations emboldened him by failing to follow up on an initial resolution demanding that Iraq disarm. He had sought a second measure containing an ultimatum that failure to comply would result in war.
“One interesting question historians are going to have to answer is: Would Saddam have behaved differently if he hadn’t gotten mixed signals between the first resolution and the failure of the second resolution?” Mr. Bush said. “I can’t answer that question. I was hopeful that diplomacy would work.”

It did not, but soon enough, somebody else will make the decisions on Iraq. And then, Mr. Bush said, he would still be pursuing his “freedom agenda” at his institute, modeled on Stanford’s Hoover Institution, where young democratic leaders from around the world would study.
"Freedom agenda?" And a "fantastic Freedom Institute?" Please! How freakin' DUMB. He's gonna keep makin' speeches telling the "history" of his Presidency AS-HE-SEES-IT... HOPEFULLY NOBODY WILL GO, IF HE DOES A THE LECTURE-CIRCUIT.

Another prediction, in the form of a wager: Bush's "ranch," which he mentions above, will be put on sale -- probably towards the end of his Residency -- so he can get a better price, selling it as "the president's ranch". 'Because we all know, it's just a "prop," in Bush's Reagan-imitation "presidency."

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