UNMASKED:

THE GEORGE W BUSH THE PRESIDENT DOESN'T WANT THE WORLD TO SEE

With less than 50 days to the US polls and a 10-point lead over John
Kerry, George W Bush's re-election as President looks a breeze.
Despite his dodgy past, he has successfully sold himself as a 'hero'
War President and defender of traditional US values. How did he do it?
Bush's people have run riot over Kerry's record, so what about the
President's?

Is President George W Bush, who weaves a narrative about himself as a
man of God, actually a charlatan? Is he really a wolf in sheep's
clothing? Is his faith a sham? Is he more bad boy than born again?
More playboy than penitent?

This past month has seen John Kerry, Bush's Democratic rival for the
White House, take one almighty pasting from the Republican right wing
over accusations that he exaggerated his military record in Vietnam.
Kerry, a many times decorated navy Vietnam veteran, said the smear
campaign was orchestrated by a Bush team desperate to divert attention
from the woeful state of the US economy and the running sore of Iraq.

But this week it's Bush's turn to line up for a beating. But where
Kerry has a single questionable question mark hanging over his past,
Bush's charge sheet for alleged wrongdoing has got it all - sex,
drugs, cowardice, cruelty; his alleged failings and foibles are
imperial in stature.

These are the issues being debated as a result of further revelations
into the shrouded past of the President.

His Military Record

President Bush has wrapped himself in the Stars and Stripes since the
horror of September 11. His presidency has pushed a simple message:
America is in danger and he's the man to keep the people safe; he'll
take the fight against the terrorists abroad and he's proud of the
USA's troops.

If that is the case, why is Bush mired in a scandal about his
Vietnam-era service, or lack of, with fresh allegations that he was
able to sneak out of serving his country overseas because his daddy
was famous, powerful and rolling in cash?

Bush joined the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam war as a
pilot and never left the country. He even cut short his military
commitment in 1973. In 1989, he told a local newspaper in Texas: "I
regret not having gone to Vietnam." He went on to say that "I did my
time" and "I did my duty".

Despite Bush's claims, his service in the home-based National Guard is
highly questionable. CBS Television's acclaimed 60 Minutes programme
interviewed Ben Barnes, a former speaker of the Texas House of
Representatives, who said that he pulled strings for a Bush family
friend to get George Jr into the National Guard so he could avoid
service in Vietnam.

"I was a young, ambitious politician," Barnes said, "doing what I
thought was acceptable, that was important to make friends S I would
describe it as preferential treatment.

"I was maybe determining life or death and that's not a power that I
want to have. I've thought about it an awful lot. You walk through the
Vietnam memorial and, I tell you, you'll think about it a long time."

CBS also produced documents which allegedly showed that in 1973,
Bush's superior officer complained of being pressurised to
"sugar-coat" an annual officer evaluation for Bush even though the
future President had not been at the base for the year in question.
His opponents accuse him of going awol - absent without leave.

According to airforce records, Bush did not meet his military
commitments. On July 30, 1973, shortly before he moved from Houston,
Texas, to Harvard to take an MBA course, he signed a document that
declared: "It is my responsibility to locate and be assigned to
another reserve forces unit or mobilisation augmentation position. If
I fail to do so, I am subject to involuntary order to active duty for
up to 24 months."

Bush didn't sign up with a National Guard unit when he moved to New
England - but nor did he get drafted as a punishment. In May 1968,
Bush signed a "statement of understanding" that he would "achieve
satisfactory participation", including attendance at 24 days of annual
weekend duty and 15 days of annual active duty at home. The document
also said that Bush would face two years in Vietnam for
"unsatisfactory participation".

Bush performed no service for an entire six-month period in 1972 and
for a period lasting almost three months in 1973, yet Bush's unit
certified in late 1973 that his service had been "satisfactory". His
opponents say this was favouritism shown to a wilful rich boy.

Retired army colonel Gerald A Lechliter, who has studied Bush's
military records, says: "He broke his contract with the United States
government - without any adverse consequences. And the Texas Air
National Guard was complicit in allowing this to happen. He was a
pilot. It cost the government a million dollars to train him to fly.
So he should have been held to an even higher standard."

The unit that Bush was assigned to was known as the Champagne Squadron
because of the number of sons of American millionaires who served in
it. The unit included the sons of former Texas governor John Connally
and former senator Lloyd Bensten, as well as several members of the
Dallas Cowboys American football team.

Retired Lt Col Albert C Lloyd Jr said that by not joining a unit in
Massachusetts, Bush "took a chance that he could be called up for
active duty, but the war was winding down and he probably knew that
the airforce was not enforcing the penalty".

Lawrence J Korb, an assistant secretary of defence in the Reagan White
House, said Bush "gamed the system", adding: "If I cheat on my income
tax and don't get caught, I'm still cheating on my income tax."

When Bush enlisted in the US equivalent of the Territorial Army, he
was given an automatic commission as a second lieutenant and underwent
flight training for 13 months. In June 1970, he began what should have
been a four-year posting with the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron.
However, in May 1972 he moved to Alabama to work on a US senate
campaign on the condition that he trained with the National Guard in
that state.

Nobody has come forward with any memory of Bush serving in the
National Guard while in Alabama or when he returned to Texas in 1973.
In Alabama, Bush was removed from flight status as he failed to take
an annual physical test in July 1972.

His last physical test had been in May 1971. Major General Paul A
Weaver Jr, who retired in 2002 as head of the Pentagon's Air National
Guard, said: "There is no excuse for that. Aviators just don't miss
their flight physicals."

After inspecting Bush's brief record of flying, Weaver said: "I would
not have let him near the airplane." Weaver added: "It appears that
nobody wanted to hold him accountable." Former friends of the Bush
family have said that Bush was sent to Alabama as he kept "getting in
trouble and embarrassing the family".

In May 1973, Bush's superior officers said they could not complete his
annual performance review as he had not been seen at the base in
Houston for 12 months. Terry McAuliffe, chair of the Democratic
National Committee, said that "the President did not serve
honourably".

Memos uncovered by CBS purport to show that Bush's superior officer,
Lt Col Jerry B Killian, felt he was being forced by his own commander,
Brigadier General Walter B Staudt, to go soft on Bush for his
underperformance.

The memo, dated August 1973, shows the political clout that Bush had
and an attempt, opponents say, to embellish his service record. Bush's
father was a Houston congressman at the time of the Vietnam war.

Another Killian memo, headed "Subject: CYA" - a military acronym for
"cover your ass" - reads that Staudt "has obviously pressured
[Major-General Bobby W] Hodges more about Bush. I'm having trouble
running interference and doing my job".

The memo adds that Killian received "a message today S regarding
Bush's [annual officer efficiency report] and Staudt is pushing to
sugar-coat it". Killian also felt that Bush was "talking to someone
upstairs" to engineer a move to Alabama.

Robert Strong, a friend of the late Killian who ran the Texas Air
National Guard offices, said that because of Bush Killian had "found
himself between a rock and a hard place".

CBS reported that the White House did not dispute the authenticity of
these documents. However, some questions have been raised about their
provenance, with typographical experts saying the documents were
produced by computers, not 1970s typewriters.

CBS, however, said it had the documents authenticated by its own
experts. CBS also spoke to Killian's superior, Major-General Hodges,
who said the sentiments in the memos were the same as Killian
expressed to him. However, Marjorie Connell, Killian's widow, said she
didn't believe her husband would have used the words in the memos.

In a reversal of the sniper attacks launched on John Kerry and his
military record by the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth organisation's
adverts on TV, an outfit calling itself Texans for Truth is going to
start running television ads asking if Bush ever served with a unit in
Alabama. The Republicans have already rubbished the planned ads as
unfair and playing dirty.

Cocaine, Booze And Abortions

Being proved to be a little yellow-bellied about fighting in Vietnam
would be mere collateral damage to the Bush campaign compared to the
all-out nuclear holocaust which would ensue if the allegations made
about Dubya's cocaine use and abortion-fixing, in biographer and
muck-raker Kitty Kelly's forthcoming book on the Bush family, stand up
to scrutiny.

Bush's stance as a strongly moral Christian who prizes family values
and Biblical ethics is just as powerful a pull on his supporters as
his patriotism and militarism. Bush has come out as bitterly opposed
to abortion. His acceptance speech for the presidential nomination at
last month's Republican Party Convention in New York City was peppered
with sentiments about the rights of the unborn child and the wrongs of
gay marriage.

The Republican party faithful see the President as a man of moral
rectitude who will keep the liberal barbarians from the gates. But if,
as alleged by Kelly, Bush used class A drugs and arranged for doctors
to "kill" his own baby - as many in the party would regard an abortion
- - that would hole Bush below the waterline and scupper his chances of
re-election.

Kelly - the bitch of biographers who has already assassinated the
characters of such luminaries as the Reagans, Frank Sinatra, Jackie
Onassis and the Windsors - says she spoke to the President's
sister-in-law Sharon Bush, who divorced the President's brother, Neil.

Sharon Bush apparently told Kelly: "The President did coke at Camp
David when his father was President [1989-93] and not just once
either." Camp David is the US presidential retreat. Sharon Bush,
however, is now denying that she made the cocaine claim to Kelly.

Proof of coke use in the late 1980s and early 1990s would mean that
Bush used the drug after his reported conversion to Christianity. If
that was proved to be the case then the one thing that protects Bush
from his hard-partying past - his born-again status and his
repentance for past sins - would fall to bits. The cocaine claim is
therefore political dynamite. Bush has pursued America's so-called war
on drugs with a vengeance. US jails, which now have the highest
population figure ever, are filled with drug users.

Even more damaging is the allegation aired by Kelly in her book, The
Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty, that she has gathered "a
great deal of circumstantial evidence" that the President helped
arrange for a girlfriend to have an abortion in the 1970s.

Kelly says four friends of the woman who had the abortion provided
affidavits to the authoritative US current affairs magazines Time and
Newsweek about the abortion but the magazines did not run with the
story.

Kelly also brings up allegations of George Bush Sr's affair with his
English secretary Jennifer Fitzgerald, which apparently devastated
Barbara Bush, his wife. The book further delves into the sexually
transmitted diseases which have afflicted one of Bush's brothers
following his habitual use of Asian prostitutes.

Sharon Bush told Kelly: "The Bushes don't practise what they preach."
Bush has always been evasive about drugs. During his first
presidential campaign, he said: "The current FBI form asks the
question, 'Did somebody use drugs within the last seven years?' I
will be glad to answer that question and the answer is no."

Kelly quotes a former lieutenant, who refers to Bush not taking his
medical during his Air National Guard days, saying: "There is
circumstantial evidence pointing to substance abuse by Bush during
this period."

The book claims that Bush first used coke at university in the
mid-1960s. Kelly quotes two sources, one of whom says Bush sold him
the class A drug. Another acquaintance of Bush says that after work,
Bush, in his mid-20s, "liked to sneak out back for a joint of
marijuana or into the bathroom for a line of cocaine".

There are even claims that First Lady Laura Bush was a drug dealer in
her youth. She is the darling of the US right, adored for her
schoolmarm demeanour and whiter-than-white aura, and one of the
biggest assets in Bush's attempt to appeal to middle America. But
Kelly says she was the "go-to-girl for dime bags" of grass at the
Southern Methodist University. Kelly quotes a PR executive, Robert
Nash, who says: "She not only smoked dope but she sold dope."

Laura was also involved in a car smash that killed a friend when she
was 17. The accident happened when she ran through a stop sign in her
Chevrolet sedan on a clear night in November 1963, drove into an
intersection and struck the Corvair sedan of 17-year-old Michael
Douglas. No charges were ever filed.

Laura is also supposed to have had to flee her marital home on a
number of occasions because of Bush's apparently abusive behaviour.
However, the police were said to have never been involved.

A friend of Bush, Tobery Macdonald, says: "Poor Georgie. He couldn't
relate to women unless he was loaded." Another "friend" added: "He
went out of his way to act crude. It's quite amazing that someone you
held in such low esteem became President." A third says Bush wasn't
interested in anything except "booze and sports".

In 1976, Bush was found drunk driving down his parents' street in
Washington. When his father challenged him, Bush apparently offered to
fight his dad, saying: "You wanna go mano a mano right here?"

His consumption of alcohol - primarily beer and whisky - turned him
into a belligerent boor. At one society party in Houston, he asked an
older woman: "So, what's sex like after 50, anyway?"

Bush allegedly confronted his alcoholism in 1986 - a decision he says
set him off on the road to being born again. He dried out, joined an
evangelical group and found the Lord.

Kelly's book quotes a family friend saying of Bush: "George has no
humility whatsover about being President. He really thinks he
deserves the office; that it's his by merit, not default. With each
political job he's had, he's gotten worse, more arrogant. Now he's
unbearable." Kelly's book concludes that Bush's faith makes him
invulnerable to self-doubt - just like his political friend and
fellow Christian Tony Blair.

A Caring Christian, A Compassionate Conservative?

America may not have the same sensibilities about the death penalty as
"old" Europe, but there can't be many US citizens who embrace the
killing of their fellow man as gleefully as the President.

Perhaps the most disturbing example of Bush's zeal for the Death House
was shown in 1998 when he was governor of the state of Texas. Karla
Faye Tucker was then facing execution by lethal injection. The former
teen prostitute had committed murder after a three-day drug binge and
later underwent a religious conversion in jail. As a born-again
Christian - just like Bush - many religious leaders wanted her life
spared. Tucker even appeared on Larry King's TV show to discuss her
case. Bush was caught out by a reporter mocking the condemned woman.
Sneering at her, he put on a whiney voice, pouted his lips and
whimpered: "Please, don't kill me." Significantly, Tucker had never
even asked for mercy while on King's show.

Bush later claimed in his biography, A Charge To Keep, that he had a
"restless night" before Tucker's execution and "felt like a huge piece
of concrete was crushing me" as he waited for her to die. Bush said
reading her postmortem was "one of the hardest things I have ever
done", adding that the whole experience left him "heavy of heart".

Bush said he denied her a clemency appeal - which was based on the
fact that her conversion had rehabilitated her - saying: "I have
concluded judgments about the heart and soul of an individual on death
row are best left to a higher authority."

When governor of Texas between 1995 and 2000, Bush presided over more
than 120 executions - that accounts for about a third of the
executions in the entire USA during the same period.

Bush objected to a bill to stop the state executing people with mental
problems. He also vetoed a unanimous bill by the Texas legislature
requiring the appointment of a lawyer to an accused within 20 days.
Most states require a lawyer be appointed within 72 hours.

In Texas, judges appoint lawyers for defendants. The bill which Bush
vetoed would have allowed an independent body to appoint lawyers.
There were concerns that the appointment of lawyers was being
influenced by the fact that lawyers were making campaign contributions
to judges. A survey by the State Bar of Texas found that half of all
judges believed campaign contributions from attorneys were a factor in
judges considering which lawyer to assign to which case.

Dodgy Deals And Insider Trading Allegations

Since his days in Yale, Bush has been strongly anti-intellectual and
rampantly pro-business. Until the age of 30, he didn't really do very
much of anything, but by 1977 he started to use his family's powerful
connections to raise money for an oil business.

He describes his attitude to business as a "bulldog on the pantleg of
opportunity". However, in all Bush lost some $2 million of other
people's money in failed business ventures while still managing to
walk away in 1990 with $840,000. One of his ventures was called
Arbusto, which the President thought meant "bush" in Spanish - it
actually translates as "shrub". Shrub has now stuck as the nickname
for him by his Texan detractors.

The most questionable business venture of Bush's oil career came while
he was with the Harken Energy Corporation. Harken made investments in
the Middle East in the run-up to the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam . At
the time, Bush Sr was the 41st President of the USA and Bush Jr was on
the board of Harken. Harken took a pasting on the stockmarket. In June
1990, Harken consultants said only "drastic action" could save the
company. Bush sold his entire stock in Harken before information about
the dire state of the company was known publicly - despite a legal
requirement on him to notify the Securities Exchange Commission
immediately. Bush didn't report his sale for eight months.

Bush - who now stakes his fiscal reputation on the fact that he loves
to slash taxes and not spend public money unwisely - took a hefty
slice of taxpayers' cash when he later bought the Texas Rangers
baseball team. He persuaded the city of Arlington to finance a new
stadium for his team using public taxes. Arlington contributed $191m
in public subsidies. Bush's stake in the Rangers was later valued at
rising from $640,000 to $15.4m.