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Bush family conspiracy theory

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The Bush family conspiracy theory is a conspiracy theory believed in by some people which links several generations of the family of President George W. Bush, including Florida Governor Jeb Bush, their brother Neil Bush, father and ex-President George H. W. Bush, grandfather Prescott Bush, and great-grandfather George Herbert Walker[?] to secretive multinational corporations and government organizations and to figures such as dictators.

This conspiracy theory often refers to the alleged secret organization as the Bush League, Bush Buddies, or Texas Taliban. The first is a pun on the baseball term "bush league" - rank amateurs unfit to play in the major leagues. It also exploits resonance with the phrase "in league with the Devil[?]", and the meaning of "league" as a conspiracy or secret society.

A variety of allegations have been made, trying to link the Bush family and their associates to various forms of intrigue or alleged wrongdoing. As the Bushs are a politically and economically powerful family, it is natural that they have connections to other political figures, many of whom have unsavory reputations. Many people, from a wide variety of viewpoints that range from pro-Bush, anti-Bush or neutral, consider the particular points cited by these conspiracy theorists to be paranoid and not linked to each other in a meaningful way.

Supporters of this theory often link the following:

Businesses associated with Prescott Bush were confiscated during World War II under the Trading With the Enemy Act[?].
George H. W. Bush, a member of the Skull and Bones society, was head of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1976-77. (Bush's membership in the Skull and Bones society was the subject of several Doonesbury cartoons.)
Ayatollah Khomeini dealt with George Bush and/or his operatives dealt with to arrange the Iran-Contra deal and allegedly the October Surprise, on behalf of U.S. Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan
Saddam Hussein, was provided with weapons and funding during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, during the Reagan administration[?].
Osama bin Laden, then a minor Mujahedeen leader in Afghanistan, is reputed to have been a CIA agent who made use of CIA resources and US-funds to bolster the morale of radical Islamists after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Dick Cheney was G.H.W. Bush's Defense Secretary, and G.W. Bush's Vice-President.
The Carlyle Group is an investment group[?] which includes both the Bush family[?] and bin Laden family[?] (one of the richest in Saudi Arabia).
Bush's Defense Advisor Richard Perle apparently has a nickname, amongst friends, as "The Prince of Darkness".
Bush often appears to have a complete disregard for the validity of international law.
Bush has reportedly stated:
- "The job of the President would be easier, if I were a dictator!"
- "There ought to be limits to freedom!" (May 21, 1999 -- gwbush.com (http://www.gwbush.com/multimedia.shtml)]

Critics of the theory allege that its proponents mispresent events as part of the theory. For example,

that G.H. Bush was vice-president during the Reagan Administration does not automatically link Bush to Saddam's acquisition of weapons and funding during the Iran-Iraq War. Most vice-presidents have little role in the working of an administration and often have little practical influence over policy or decision-taking.
G.H. Bush's was head of the CIA from 1976 to 1977. Osama bin Laden's period as an alleged CIA agent occurred a decade later, when Bush was president. Presidents are, because of their workload, not involved in the hiring of CIA agents. Also considering that at any point CIA has thousands of agents acting worldwide, it seems unlikely that USA Presidents are personaly associated with all of them.
Many people work in a number of administrations. That Dick Cheney worked in the administrations of G.H. and. G.W. Bush is neither unusual nor does it automatically indicate a conspiracy. He also served in the administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.
Many people internationally are associated with the Carlyle Group. As it is a large international investment group, it would be surprising if the Bush and bin Laden families were not in it or in some other group together. Former British Prime Minister John Major is also associated with it. The bin Laden in fact have also disowned Osama bin Laden, who is an opponent of organisations such as the Carlyle Group, which he has accused of embodying international economic imperialism.
Many presidents have said "The job of the President would be easier, if I were a dictator" or something similar, including Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. In those cases the comment was made tongue-in-cheek. There is no evidence that Bush was intended it is any other way.
While proponents of the conspiracy link Bush family members to a range of groups, from Nazis to Ayatollah Khomeini, Saddam Hussein to the Carlyle Group and the Bin Laden, there is nothing linking any of these groups together other than alleged (and in many cases circumstantial) connections to some member of the Bush extended family. There is no association between Khomeni and German Nazis, Khomeini and Saddam were in fact mortal enemies who led their countries to war against each other, Khomeini and the bin Laden family had no association, and the bin Laden family has long disowned Osama bin Laden. The United States has so far failed to find any links between Saddam and Osama bin Laden in Iraq.

As a result, critics of the Bush family conspiracy theory see it as a string of unconnected claims which have at most pure circumstantial evidence but which contains no hard evidence of any longterm conspiracy.

Works that allege deliberate misdeeds by the Bush family include: