"More than five years after the fact, former President George W. Bush is admitting that having a photograph taken of him peering out the window of Air Force One at the Katrina-caused wreckage of New Orleans was a 'huge mistake.' "
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" 'Damn right.'
That's what former president George W. Bush told CIA officials when they came to ask him for permission to waterboard alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed, according to a Washington Post report on the 43rd president's forthcoming book, "Decision Points."
President Obama and the current Justice Department have tightened their view on waterboarding, characterizing it as an act of torture that is prohibited by international stricture, and, while the Post reports that there may someday be legal repercussions for those who directly authorized torture, the Obama administration has shown little interest in pursuing action against Bush and others, such as Dick Cheney, who have openly supported and admitted using the interrogation tactic."
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"When Crown Publishing inked a deal with George W. Bush for his memoirs, the publisher knew it wasn't getting Faulkner. But the book, at least, promises "gripping, never-before-heard detail" about the former president's key decisions, offering to bring readers "aboard Air Force One on 9/11, in the hours after America's most devastating attack since Pearl Harbor; at the head of the table in the Situation Room in the moments before launching the war in Iraq," and other undisclosed and weighty locations.
Crown also got a mash-up of worn-out anecdotes from previously published memoirs written by his subordinates, from which Bush lifts quotes word for word, passing them off as his own recollections. He took equal license in lifting from nonfiction books about his presidency or newspaper or magazine articles from the time. Far from shedding light on how the president approached the crucial "decision points" of his presidency, the clip jobs illuminate something shallower and less surprising about Bush's character: He's too lazy to write his own memoir."
UPDATE (h/t Dave Miller):
Interesting to read this today. It must be a conservative value--stealing other people's work and passing it off as one's own. We've seen this done on certain rightwing blogs, (our friend, The Sleuth, has uncovered these cheaters and frauds) When called on it, the bloggers say it's not plagiarizing it's FLATTERY!
Apparently former President Bush believes in this sort of "flattery," as well. That or he's not smart enough to come up with his own text--like the conservative bloggers we caught doing the same thing.
h/t HuffPost
UPDATE II: Read Digby and more about Bush's plagiarizing for his memoire.
