After five weeks of the air offensive and 100 hours of a ground offensive, Operation Desert Storm ended in late February with Iraq’s defeat and Kuwait’s liberation. Then, after Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein launched an invasion and occupation of Kuwait in August 1990 and threatened to invade Saudi Arabia, Bush organized a military coalition of more than 30 countries who began a U.S.-led air assault against Iraq in mid-January 1991. In December 1989, the United States invaded Panama and overthrew the nation’s corrupt dictator, Manuel Noriega, who was threatening the security of Americans who lived there and trafficking drugs to the United States. He met with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, and in July 1991, the two men signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.īush also authorized military operations in Panama and the Persian Gulf. Bush would be credited with helping to improve U.S.-Soviet relations. He began his time in the White House as Germany was in the process of reunifying, the Soviet Union was collapsing and the Cold War was ending. Presidency: 1989-1993Ī key focus of Bush’s presidency was foreign policy. Bush captured 426 electoral votes and more than 53 percent of the popular vote, to Dukakis’ 111 electoral votes and more than 45 percent of the popular vote. senator from Indiana, Bush defeated Democratic challenger Governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts and his running mate Lloyd Bentsen. The former actor and governor of California selected Bush as his vice-presidential running mate, and the two defeated incumbent Jimmy Carter and Vice President Walter Mondale in the general election.Īfter two terms as vice president under Reagan, Bush became the Republican presidential nominee in 1988. In 1980, Bush ran for the Republican presidential nomination but lost to Ronald Reagan. After Democrat Jimmy Carter was elected president, Bush resigned from the CIA in January 1977. Liaison Office in the People’s Republic of China, where he served until becoming director of the CIA in January 1976. In the fall of 1974, Nixon’s successor, President Gerald Ford appointed Bush as the head of the U.S. Nixon officially stepped down two days later. In that capacity, on August 7, 1974, amidst the Watergate scandal, Bush formally requested that Nixon resign the presidency. ambassador to the United Nations, a role in which he served from 1971 to 1973, when he became chairman of the Republican Party. President Richard Nixon then appointed Bush the U.S. Senate but again was defeated in the general election. House of Representatives, where he served two terms. Two years later, he won a seat in the U.S. Senate seat from Texas but lost in the general election. In 1964, Bush won the Republican nomination for a U.S. He graduated in 1948 then moved his family to Texas, where he began a prosperous career in the oil industry, eventually becoming president of an independent offshore oil drilling company. The Bushes went on to have six children: George, Robin, John (known as Jeb), Neil, Marvin and Dorothy.Īfter completing his military service in September 1945, Bush enrolled at Yale University, where he studied economics and was captain of the baseball team and a member of Skull and Bones, an elite secret society. The couple had met as teenagers at a dance. On January 6, 1945, while on leave from the Navy, Bush married Barbara Pierce in Rye, New York. He later was rescued from the water by an American submarine. He flew 58 combat missions during the war and received the Distinguished Flying Cross for bravery after his torpedo plane was shot down by the Japanese in the vicinity of the Bonin Islands in the Pacific on September 2, 1944.ĭuring that incident, Bush’s plane was hit and set on fire but he continued toward his target, a radio station, and successfully bombed it before parachuting out of his plane. When he received his wings shortly before his 19th birthday, Bush was the nation’s youngest commissioned pilot at the time. Naval Reserve to fight in World War II, which America had entered in December 1941. The younger Bush was raised in Greenwich, Connecticut, and graduated from Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, in 1942.ĭid you know? A car bomb assassination plot against George Bush was foiled in Kuwait in 1993.Īfter graduation, Bush joined the U.S. George Herbert Walker Bush was born on June 12, 1924, in Milton, Massachusetts, to Dorothy Walker Bush and Prescott Bush, a banker who went on to represent Connecticut in the U.S.
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