Bush was very upset about what had happened to his two crewmen. Later, during one of
his Skull and Bones "Life History" self-exposures, Bush referred to Lt. White, the Skull
and Bones member who had gone to his death with the Barbara II: "I wish I hadn't let him
go," said Bush, according to former Congressman Thomas W. L. (Lud) Ashley, a fellow
Skull and Bones member and during 1991 one of the administrators of the Neil Bush
legal defense fund. According to Ashley, "Bush was heartbroken. He had gone over it in
his mind 100,000 times and concluded he couldn't have done anything....He didn't feel
guilty about anything that happened....But the incident was a source of real grief to him.
It tore him up, real anguish. It was so fresh in his mind. He had a real friendship with this
man," said Ashley. [fn 10]
Bush later wrote letters to the families of the men who had died on his plane. He received
a reply from Delaney's sister, Mary Jane Delaney. The letter read in part:
You mention in your letter that you would like to help me in some way. There is a way,
and that is to stop thinking you are in any way responsible for your plane accident and
what has happened to your men. I might have thought you were if my brother Jack had
not always spoken of you as the best pilot in the squadron. [fn 11]
Bush also wrote a letter to his parents in which he talked about White and Delaney: "I try
to think about it as little as possible, yet I cannot get the thought of those two out of my
mind. Oh, I'm OK- I want to fly again and I won't be scared of it, but I know I won't be
able to shake the memory of this incident and I don't believe I want to completely." [fn
12]
As Bush himself looked back on all these events from the threshold of his genocidal
assault on Iraq, he complacently concluded that the pagan fates had preserved his life for
some future purpose. He told Hyams:
There wasn't a sudden revelation of what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, but there
was an awakening. There's no question that underlying all that were my own religious
beliefs. In my own view there's got to be some kind of destiny and I was being spared for
something on earth. [fn 13]
After having deliberately ignored the relevant dissenting views about the heroism of his
patron, Hyams chooses to conclude his book on the following disturbing note:
When flying his Avenger off the deck of the San Jac, Bush was responsible for his own
fate as well as his crewmen's. As president he is responsible for the fate of all Americans
as well as that of much of the world.
And that is precisely the problem.