The Bush Family: Father, Son, Freud and Oedipus

Of George W.'s decision to go to war against Iraq, they write that his father shared many of the concerns of his own former national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, who in the summer of 2002 warned of the dangers of military intervention in Iraq and a ''virtual go-it-alone strategy.'' They write: ''As the prospects of war continued to grow throughout 2002, family members could see the former president's anguish. When his sister Nancy Ellis asked him about the war, he responded: 'But do they have an exit strategy?' ''

The Schweizers quote one unnamed relative as saying that George W. Bush sees the war on terrorism ''as a religious war'': ''He doesn't have a p.c. view of this war. His view of this is that they are trying to kill the Christians. And we the Christians will strike back with more force and more ferocity than they will ever know.''

For that matter, the authors argue that the post-9/11 demands of office were a perfect match with George W.'s personality: ''Because of his addictive personality, it was the sort of presidency that suited him well. Unencumbered by domestic issues, with their detail and ambiguity, he was now free to speak naturally in a way that reflected the way he viewed the world: black and white, good and evil. Life had been for him a struggle to conquer those things that had a bad hold on him; the struggle between good and evil was something that he had experienced in his own life.''

THE BUSHES: Portrait of a Dynasty By Peter Schweizer and Rochelle Schweizer