According to this site, the Iraq correspondent Richard Engel’s book has some pretty startling words from the Commander-in-Chief in it. Try a few of these on for size:
- “This is the great war of our times. It is going to take forty years,’” [Bush told Engel]. Bush said in forty years the world would know if the war on terrorism, and conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, had reduced extremism, helped moderates, and promoted democracy.
- Bush admits to Engel that going to war was a decision based on his personal instinct and not on any long-range strategy for the Mideast: “I know people are saying we should have left things the way they were, but I changed after 9/11. I had to act. I don’t care if it created more enemies. I had to act.”
- Bush tells Engel that the election of Hamas was actually a positive development because it pressured Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas to make reforms: “I think the election of Hamas was a good thing. It proved to Abbas he was failing. I told Abbas, ‘You lost the election because you aren’t providing for your people, jobs, education, what people want.’ Now they know they have to compete.”
Looks like there will be lots to chew on in there. And we’ve got at least 35 or so more years to chew on it.
