. . . change his post 911 thinking that any fighting other then special ops stuff would be over in a year to year and a half . . .
Maybe Daddy Bush could tell him, hey, these guys are giving you the best case scenario. These guys meaning Rumsfeld, Condi Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, Colin Powell, etc.
And like a lot of things in life, it might take Daddy Bush plus one other person telling him. Often, it takes two people telling us something before we start to believe it, and maybe that's rational in a certain way. I mean, I don't want to be changing my plans just because one person is telling me something.
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PS and Oh how this promise of "Read my Lips, No New Taxes" has echoed through American politics!!! A promise Bush, Sr. probably didn't need to make in the 1988 election, and then in the Fall of 1990 as part of a budget deal with Congressional Democrats during the ramp up to the first Persian Gulf War, one in which he probably had pretty good reason to break. But that's not exactly the way it played out.