In memoir, Bush says he considered dropping Cheney from 2004 ticket
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Former president George W. Bush writes in a new memoir that he briefly considered dropping his vice president, Richard B. Cheney, from his 2004 reelection ticket but said he still considers Cheney a steady adviser who helped him achieve his goals.
The memoir, which was leaked to several news outlets in advance of its formal release next Tuesday, details Cheney's advocacy of war with Iraq. It says he asked Bush at a luncheon whether he was "going to take care of this guy, or not," referring to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
Bush writes that he still considers the war justified and said he believes it left America safer, despite the revelations of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib that prompted Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to offer his resignation privately to Bush. He said he turned Rumsfeld's offer down because he feared the change in leadership would send a bad signal to U.S. troops.
The former president defends his handling of some of the most intense controversies of his presidency, acknowledging at one point that he personally approved the waterboarding, or simulated drowning, of alleged Sept. 11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a practice that the CIA has since forsworn and both President Obama and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. have described as torture barred by international law.
(More here.)
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Former president George W. Bush writes in a new memoir that he briefly considered dropping his vice president, Richard B. Cheney, from his 2004 reelection ticket but said he still considers Cheney a steady adviser who helped him achieve his goals.
The memoir, which was leaked to several news outlets in advance of its formal release next Tuesday, details Cheney's advocacy of war with Iraq. It says he asked Bush at a luncheon whether he was "going to take care of this guy, or not," referring to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
Bush writes that he still considers the war justified and said he believes it left America safer, despite the revelations of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib that prompted Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to offer his resignation privately to Bush. He said he turned Rumsfeld's offer down because he feared the change in leadership would send a bad signal to U.S. troops.
The former president defends his handling of some of the most intense controversies of his presidency, acknowledging at one point that he personally approved the waterboarding, or simulated drowning, of alleged Sept. 11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a practice that the CIA has since forsworn and both President Obama and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. have described as torture barred by international law.
(More here.)
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