I never fail to be amazed at the crassness and mendacity, displayed by President Bush, his closest advisers and speech-writers. To stand in front of the Knesset and talk piously about 'appeasement the Nazis and Chamberlain' as if he had even the vaguest notion of who Chamberlain was, and then linking it, albeit indirectly to Obama, is a trick that would probably make even Richard Nixon puke.

One would have thought, given the Bush family history and its involvement in the rise of Nazi Germany, the grandson would leave the subject of who did what to whom during that period, strictly alone. For those who might think I too am engaged in 'guilt by association' innuendo, I suggest a visit to the US national Archives and a little research of the Union Banking Corporation (UBC) and Prescott Bush. While there is no suggestion that Prescott Bush was sympathetic to the Nazi cause, the documents reveal that the firm he worked for, Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH), acted as a US base for the German industrialist, Fritz Thyssen, who helped finance Hitler in the 1930s. The records also show Bush was the director of the New York-based UBC representing Thyssen's US interests and he continued to work for the bank after America entered the war.

A report issued by the Office of Alien Property Custodian in 1942 stated of the companies that "since 1939, these (steel and mining) properties have been in possession of and have been operated by the German government and have undoubtedly been of considerable assistance to that country's war effort". The banks and other assets were seized by the US Government under the Trading with the Enemy act. At the end of the war, the seized monies were given back to UBC. No one knows what profit Bush made of the deal.

Whilst no one is accusing Prescott Bush of treason the eveidence is clear, he was trading with the enemy for the first year of America's involvement in WWII. And there is little doubt he profited greatly from it. Whereas the Grandson cannot be blamed for the actions of his grandfather, it ill behooves him to smear individuals with references to the Nazis.

Finally, one would think that given the power and influence of the Office of the President, it would at least hire an historian or two to check the facts or at least the balance of his speeches.

It is no longer cool in historical circles to denigrate Chamberlain and appeasement. It went out of fashion at least 20 years ago and now merely demonstrates a dismal ignorance of history. The President might have asked Kissinger for an opinion ...... but there again he probably would not have understood the answer.