Former US President Bush defends legacy in new memoir

George W. Bush, all but invisible since he left the White House nearly two years ago, reclaimed the spotlight yesterday with the release of a new memoir defending his “war on terror” and the Iraq invasion.

Decision Points appears a week after the momentous November 2 US elections saw congressional Republicans make a surprising recovery after falling out of favour with US voters following the eight often tumultuous years of Mr Bush’s Administration.

Mr Bush will be as ubiquitous over the next few weeks as he has been scarce since handing over the keys to the White House to Barack Obama in January 2009, with a whirlwind schedule of media appearances to promote his book, which has a print-run of some 1.5 million copies.

In the hefty, 500-page Decision Points, Mr Bush wrote of his errors in the Iraq campaign and the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, which international intelligence reports strongly suggested Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had obtained.

“No one was more shocked or angry than I was when we didn’t find the weapons. I had a sickening feeling every time I thought about it. I still do,”Mr Bush wrote, according to an excerpt of the book released by NBC television. Asked by NBC if he considered apologising for the mistakes, the former President said he has not.

“Apologising would basically say the decision was a wrong decision,” Mr Bush said at the start of a barrage of interviews that will also see him sit down with talk show supremo Oprah Winfrey and conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh.

“I don’t believe it was the wrong decision. I thought the best way to handle this was to find out why. And what went wrong. And to remedy it.” He insisted “the world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power, as are 25 million people who now have a chance to live in freedom” in Iraq.

Decision Points covers 14 separate decisions Mr Bush made while in the White House, offering analysis about how he reached them in an effort to shed further light on his presidency.

The book begins with the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, which drastically reshaped his foreign and military policy, and ends with the economic meltdown during his waning days in the White House.

Scrutiny of the Bush presidency will continue with former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s memoir due in January and Mr Cheney’s a few months later.

Mr Bush confesses that he did not respond as effectively as he could have during the Hurricane Katrina crisis, which some critics viewed as the low point of his presidency.

He called his New Orleans flyover a “huge mistake” and acknowledged he should have stopped in Louisiana to tell local officials and victims of the disaster “I hear you”.

He said the photographs now seared in public memory showing the President looking out the window of Air Force One on a flight back to Washington made him seem “detached and uncar”.

“This was a problem of perception, not reality,” Mr Bush said in his book. “My heart broke at the sight of helpless people trapped on their rooftops waiting to be rescued.”

Among the more personal aspects of the book, Mr Bush describes in detail his earlier battles with alcoholism, which he overcame when he was 40 years old.

During the middle of his book tour, Mr Bush is to attend a November 16 groundbreaking ceremony for the George W. Bush Presidential Centre at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

The centre will be the official repository for thousands of documents related to his presidency, as well as a reunion site for hundreds of veterans of his Administration.

Mr Bush told NBC in the exclusive broadcast airing late on Monday that one of the worst moments of his presidency occurred when rap superstar Kanye West criticised his Administration’s lethargic response to Hurricane Katrina as being driven by racial bias.

“He called me a racist,” the former President told NBC of Mr West’s characteristically bombastic statement at a fundraising concert, just days after Katrina hit the Gulf coast, that Mr Bush “doesn’t care about black people”.

“It’s one thing to say, ‘I don’t appreciate the way he’s handled his business.’ It’s another thing to say, ‘This man’s a racist.’ I resent it,” said Mr Bush.

“It was one of the most disgusting moments in my presidency.”

Waterboarding of terrorists ‘prevented British deaths’

Former US President George W. Bush defended his decision to allow “waterboarding” of terrorist suspects, claiming it prevented deadly attacks in Britain in an interview published this week.

Mr Bush claimed information obtained using the interrogation technique – which simulates drowning – helped prevent planned attacks on London’s Heathrow airport and Canary Wharf.

“Three people were waterboarded and I believe that decision saved lives,” the former leader said. “Their interrogations helped break up plots to attack American diplomatic facilities abroad, Heathrow airport and Canary Wharf in London, and multiple targets in the US.”

The ex-commander in chief said it was “damn right” that he had authorised use of the controversial method on Al-Qaeda’s 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Britain regards waterboarding as torture and last month the country’s Secret Intelligence Service chief, John Sawers, described the use of torture as “illegal and abhorrent”.

Britain was a close ally of the US when Mr Bush decided to invade Iraq in 2003, a relationship which provoked much anger among the UK public.

“It doesn’t matter how people perceive me in England,” Mr Bush responded. “It just doesn’t matter anymore. And frankly, at times, it didn’t matter then.”

Mr Bush revealed that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair was prepared to sacrifice his own job and his entire government in order to assist America in their invasion. With a possible parliamentary vote of no confidence looming on the eve of war, Mr Bush had advised the British leader to reconsider his support.

“Rather than lose the government, I would much rather have Tony and his wisdom and his strategic thinking as the Prime Minister of a strong and important ally,” Mr Bush reasoned.

Mr Blair replied: “I’m in. If it costs the government, fine.”