Tag Archives: George H. W. Bush

Former U.S. national security adviser Scowcroft is dead at 95

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Brent Scowcroft, a pragmatic three-star general who served as national security adviser to Republican U.S. Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush and later criticized President George W. Bush’s Iraq war policies, died on Thursday. He was 95.

Scowcroft, a member of the presidential commission that investigated the biggest scandal of Ronald Reagan’s presidency and an architect of the 1991 Gulf War under the elder Bush, died of natural causes, according to a statement on Friday from a spokesman for the Bush family.

Scowcroft reached the rank of Air Force lieutenant general during a 29-year military career and was an influential voice on U.S. national security for decades. He was a cautious internationalist – he called himself a realist – closely aligned with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

Scowcroft served as chief military aide to Republican President Richard Nixon during a time when the United States was looking to extricate itself from the Vietnam War, then became Ford’s national security adviser from 1975 to 1977 and George H.W. Bush’s national security adviser from 1989 to 1993.

“He’s just marvelous and he never asks for one ounce of credit,” the elder Bush said of Scowcroft after the Gulf War was won in March 1991.

Scowcroft, a soft-spoken man with the manner of a genial Westerner, remained close to Bush and co-authored a 1998 book with him. But he took exception to his son George W. Bush’s “unilateral” approach to world affairs as president.

Scowcroft was a key adviser to the elder Bush during the 1991 Gulf War in which U.S. forces, along with a coalition of allies, expelled Iraqi troops that had invaded oil-rich neighbor Kuwait in August 1990..

The war ended with Bush’s team opting to leave Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in power after Iraq’s forces were quickly swept out of Kuwait. Twelve years later Bush’s son ordered an invasion of Iraq that ousted Saddam and led to his execution but left American troops fighting a messy war in Iraq from 2003 to 2011.

Scowcroft, in a PBS interview five years later, explained the first Bush administration’s decision not to send U.S. forces to Baghdad in 1991 to overthrow Saddam.

“It was never our objective to get Saddam Hussein. Indeed, had we tried we still might be occupying Baghdad. That would have turned a great success into a very messy, probable defeat,” Scowcroft said.

‘FAILING VENTURE’

Before the younger Bush launched his Iraq war in 2003, Scowcroft publicly opposed it, doubted the U.S. justifications for it and called it an unwise diversion from the fight against terrorism following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States by al Qaeda.

In 2004, Scowcroft called Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan a “failing venture” and faulted Bush for becoming “mesmerized” by hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

In 2005, Scowcroft said the continued American presence in Iraq was inflaming the Middle East. He advocated handing over the U.S. operation in Iraq to NATO or the United Nations.

His criticisms were particularly stinging, considering he was a mentor to Condoleezza Rice, who served Bush as national security adviser and then secretary of state. Scowcroft had served under Bush as chairman of the president’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board but was removed in 2005.

During Ford’s presidency, Scowcroft closely advised the president, alongside Kissinger, on the 1975 evacuation of the last U.S. forces in Vietnam. The chaotic scene in Saigon – with helicopters plucking people off rooftops – became a symbol of America’s debacle in Vietnam that left 58,000 U.S. troops dead.

In 1987, Scowcroft was one of three members of the Tower Commission that investigated the biggest scandal of Republican Reagan’s presidency – the sale of arms to Iran in exchange for U.S. hostages in Lebanon, with proceeds diverted to fund “contra” rebels in Nicaragua in violation of U.S. law.

Born on March 19, 1925, in Ogden, Utah, Scowcroft graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in 1947 and later earned a doctorate in international relations from Columbia University. His career as a military pilot ended in 1949 when his P-51 Mustang crashed in New Hampshire, breaking his back.

He taught Russian history at West Point and headed the U.S. Air Force Academy’s political science department before taking a series of jobs at the Pentagon in the 1960’s.

Scowcroft had one daughter with his late wife, Marian.

(Reporting by Will Dunham; Additional reporting by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Chris Reese and Dan Grebler)

Former President George H.W. Bush dead at 94

FILE PHOTO: Former U.S. President George H.W. Bush speaks at the World Leadership Summit in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates November 21, 2006. REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo

(Reuters) – Former U.S. President George H.W. Bush, who presided over the end of the Cold War and routed Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi army, died on Friday at the age of 94, a family spokesman said.

Bush, the 41st president of the United States, lived longer than any of his predecessors. His death at 10:10 p.m. Central time was announced in a statement issued by longtime spokesman Jim McGrath. No further details about the circumstances of his death were immediately available.

He was the father of former President George W. Bush, who served two terms in the White House from 2001 through 2008, and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who unsuccessfully sought the 2016 Republican nomination for president.

The elder Bush, a Republican like his sons, also served as vice president for eight years during Ronald Reagan’s two terms as president, before being elected to the White House himself.

He defeated former Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, the Democratic nominee, in the 1988 presidential campaign, and lost his 1992 re-election bid to Democrat Bill Clinton.

Bush’s death came seven months after that of his wife, former first lady Barbara Bush, to whom he was married for 73 years.

The former president, who served as a U.S. naval aviator during World War Two, had attended his wife’s funeral in Houston in a wheelchair and wore a pair of colorful socks festooned with books, in honor of his late wife’s commitment to literacy.

(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Robert Birsel and Tom Hogue)

Barbara Bush remembered for her dignity and wit at Houston funeral

The hearse carrying former first lady Barbara Bush passes through members of the Texas A&M Corps of Cadets as it nears her husband's presidential library at the university in College Station, Texas, U.S. April 21, 2018. Smiley N. Pool/Pool via REUTERS

By Erwin Seba

HOUSTON (Reuters) – Former first lady Barbara Bush was remembered at her funeral on Saturday as a formidable but caring figure whose devotion to her family was matched only by her commitment to public service.

Former U.S. President George H. W. Bush looks at the casket of his late wife, former first lady Barbara Bush with his daughter Dorothy "Doro" Bush Koch during the visitation at St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Houston, Texas, U.S. April 20, 2018. Mark Burns/Office of George H.W. Bush/Pool via REUTERS

Former U.S. President George H. W. Bush looks at the casket of his late wife, former first lady Barbara Bush with his daughter Dorothy “Doro” Bush Koch during the visitation at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church in Houston, Texas, U.S. April 20, 2018. Mark Burns/Office of George H.W. Bush/Pool via REUTERS

“She was our teacher and role model in how to live a life of purpose and meaning,” one of her four sons, former Florida governor and 2016 presidential candidate Jeb Bush, told the crowded Houston church.

He then drew laughs with a nod to Bush’s famously sharp tongue: “She called her style a benevolent dictatorship, but honestly, it wasn’t all that benevolent.”

Some 1,500 mourners, including governors, senators and former U.S. presidents, gathered at a televised but invitation-only service at the church to pay tribute to the matriarch of one of the country’s most prominent political dynasties, who died on Tuesday at age 92.

Bush, the wife of the 41st president of the United States, George H.W. Bush, and the mother of the 43rd, George W. Bush, was lauded as an inspiration both to the country and her loved ones, a woman who leavened a strong sense of decency and honor with a self-deprecating wit she employed to great effect.

“She was candid and comforting, steadfast and straightforward, honest and loving,” said the historian and author Jon Meacham, who wrote a biography of George H.W. Bush and was one of three eulogists whom Barbara Bush herself selected before her death.

“Barbara Bush and George Bush put country above party, the common good above political gain and service to others above the settling of scores,” he said.

Former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, current first lady Melania Trump, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former first lady Michelle Obama were all on hand for the service.

President Donald Trump, who clashed with the Bush family during his 2016 campaign, did not travel to Houston. The White House said this week he wanted to avoid disrupting the service with added security.

Pallbearers escort the casket of former first lady Barbara Bush after funeral services at St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Houston, Texas, U.S., April 21, 2018. David J. Phillip/Pool via Reute

Pallbearers escort the casket of former first lady Barbara Bush after funeral services at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church in Houston, Texas, U.S., April 21, 2018. David J. Phillip/Pool via Reuters

In a Twitter post, Trump said his “thoughts and prayers are with the entire Bush family.”

Former President Jimmy Carter was overseas and unable to attend.

Barbara Bush’s longtime friend, Susan Baker, the wife of former Secretary of State James Baker, described her in a eulogy as a “tough but loving enforcer” whose 73-year marriage to her husband was a real-life fairy tale.

George H.W. Bush would write a letter to his wife on each wedding anniversary, Jeb Bush said, before reading aloud one such letter from 1994, a year after his father left the White House.

“I was very happy on that day in 1945, but I’m even happier today,” he read, as his 93-year-old father squeezed his eyes shut and wept. “You have given me joy that few men know … I have climbed perhaps the highest mountain in the world, but even that cannot hold a candle to being Barbara’s husband.”

To honor his late wife’s commitment to literacy, the former president wore to the funeral a pair of colorful socks “festooned with books,” Bush spokesman Jim McGrath tweeted, adding that Barbara Bush had raised more than $100 million for the cause.

As the service ended, Bush’s grandsons bore her casket out of the church, with George W. Bush pushing his father in a wheelchair directly behind it.

Barbara Bush was buried on the grounds of the George H.W. Bush Library and Museum at Texas A&M University in College Station, next to her daughter, Robin, who died of leukemia at the age of 3. The motorcade carrying her body traversed George Bush Drive and Barbara Bush Drive on its way there.

More than 700 Texas A&M cadets lined the driveway to the presidential library grounds as the cortege passed, the Houston Chronicle reported. When the last vehicle entered the property, the gates were closed ahead of the private ceremony, the newspaper said.

Members of the public had a chance to pay their respects on Friday, when Bush lay in repose at the church. George H.W. Bush, seated in a wheelchair in front of the casket, greeted mourners in turn with a handshake.

(Reporting by Erwin Seba in Houston; Additional reporting by Keith Coffman in Denver; Additional reporting and writing by Joseph Ax; Editing by Matthew Lewis and Daniel Wallis)