The Bushes and the Moons

By: Ken Layne

Politics Daily

George W. Bush's seven years in the White House have fueled all kinds of terrible, paranoid conspiracies -- and the greatest, weirdest Bush Conspiracy is the "Exile To Paraguay" tale.

The story goes like this: George W. Bush and/or George H.W. Bush bought hundreds of thousands of acres in Paraguay, adjoining a similar spread owned by the Unification Church's Rev. Sun Myung Moon. Both massive parcels are hidden within a remote South American wilderness atop the world's biggest freshwater aquifer adjoining a secret U.S. military airbase. Oh, and there's a special non-extradition law to protect the Bush/Moon families as they enjoy their old age and run drug/weapons smuggling rings, safe from American justice. And they'll own all the drinking water in the world, or something.

So when George W.'s scandal-plagued little brother Neil Bush rushes down to Paraguay to meet with Rev. Moon's secret cabal, as happened Thursday, even the professional skeptic can be forgiven for wondering just what is up with these people.

Plenty of Bush Family conspiracy theories are entirely real, such as Poppy Bush's repeated calls for the "New World Order." Bush 41 just meant a post-Cold War cooperation of nations, but millions of paranoid Americans interpreted this as proof of the Evil Globalist Regime that will force your dogs to get microchips and sell America to the European bankers. (These conspiracists are completely off base: The government wants your horses microchipped, and America was sold to Chinese bankers.)

Most of the more ordinary Bush 43 conspiracies have already been proven depressingly real, too, like the faked WMD "intelligence" before the invasion of Iraq, the White House plot to fire Justice Department attorneys for political reasons, and Dick Cheney's cozy secret dealings with the Oil Companies.

A truly fun conspiracy theory needs bizarre characters and indecipherable motives. That's what's so great about the "Exile To Paraguay" story, which has been floating around the Internet ever since a Cuban news service posted South American gossip about the Bush Family's massive Paraguayan land grab.

It starts with former President George H.W. Bush's very cozy relationship with the cult leader Sun Myung Moon, who owns two influential conservative news organizations in Washington -- the Washington Times and United Press International. Some of the Rev. Moon's many mysterious businesses and foundations are based in South America, including Paraguay. And G.H.W. Bush has been happy to shill for Moon on a South American jaunt in 1996. The elder George Bush and wife Barbara Bush even sang Happy Birthday to the Mrs. Rev. Moon and helped blow out the candles. (Moon's bizarre Washington and international dealings are detailed in Bad Moon Rising, a new book by investigative journalist John Gorenfeld.)

Fired Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld may have ignited the strange legend when South American media learned of his August 2005 visit to a massive jungle air base in northern Paraguay. The conspiracy got even more traction when First Twin Jenna Bush suddenly turned up in Paraguay -- a year later, in October 2006 -- to hold secret meetings with the U.S. ambassador and the Paraguayan president. The U.S. Department of State actually refuted the Bush-Paraguay conspiracy, which just made it all the more real. Of course they would deny it.

And now we find out that the Bush Family's corrupt little brother was just in Paraguay, with the Rev. Moon's Universal Peace Federation. Neil Bush is the Bush that's usually kept in the shadows. Ever since he helped cause the massive Savings & Loan collapse -- the same S&L corruption scandal that nearly ended John McCain's political career two decades ago -- Neil Bush has kept busy with myriad crooked schemes to make money off the family name.

What was he doing with the Moonies in Paraguay? Conspiracists will be thrilled to learn that he spoke at some seminar titled "Toward a New Paradigm of Leadership and Government in Times of World Crisis."

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