Bush gets emotional, defends record in Iraq, home

Bush defends troubled record in farewell address
16 Jan 2009 01:14:49 GMT
Source: Reuters
(Updates with speech)

By Matt Spetalnick and Tabassum Zakaria

WASHINGTON, Jan 15 (Reuters) - President George W. Bush on Thursday defended his actions to avert a collapse of the financial system and protect America from another terrorist attack as he mounted a farewell bid to polish his troubled legacy.

Five days before handing over the presidency to Barack Obama, Bush delivered a televised final address to the American people in which he sought to define a White House record that some historians are already ranking among the worst ever.

But even as he focused on what he saw as his successes, Bush was preparing to leave Obama with unfinished wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a bitter conflict in Gaza, a U.S. economy deep in recession and a U.S. image badly tarnished overseas.

"Facing the prospect of a financial collapse, we took decisive measures to safeguard our economy," Bush said from the White House, referring to a massive government intervention he ordered, counter to his free-market roots. "The toll would be far worse if we had not acted."

Trying to reassure recession-weary Americans, Bush said: "Together, with determination and hard work, we will restore our economy to the path of growth. We will show the world once again the resilience of America's free enterprise system."

Obama has said dealing with the economic meltdown, the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression and one that has sent shockwaves across the globe, will be a top priority.

Bush warned, however, that the gravest challenge facing the incoming president remained the threat of another terrorist attack like the al Qaeda strikes on Sept. 11, 2001.

He acknowledged that some of his actions in response to 9/11 had been controversial but he stood by them and reasserted his with-us-or-against-us doctrine widely criticized overseas.

"There is legitimate debate about many of these decisions. But there can be little debate about the results," the two-term Republican said. "America has gone more than seven years without another terrorist attack on our soil," he said.

Some of Bush's actions after the 9/11 attacks, such as establishing a detention center for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo and approving harsh interrogation methods that human rights groups said amounted to torture, severely damaged America's image abroad. Obama has vowed to close the facility.

"Our enemies are patient, and determined to strike again," Bush said in a brief address from the White House with Vice President Dick Cheney, his Cabinet and several dozen selected citizens in attendance. "Good and evil are present in this world, and between the two there can be no compromise."

POSITIVE SPIN

With the clock ticking down on his presidency, Bush and his aides used his last day of public events before Inauguration Day to try to put a positive spin on his record.

Farewell speeches are a ritual for departing U.S. leaders, but the stakes are especially high for Bush, who will step down with one of the lowest public approval ratings of any president in modern times -- in the mid-20 percent range.

In a final ceremony at the State Department earlier on Thursday, Bush defended his foreign policy -- from the unpopular war in Iraq to nuclear standoffs with Iran and North Korea. "We have made the world freer," he said.

Bush touted security gains in Iraq as vindication for a U.S. troop buildup he ordered there at a time of rampant sectarian violence in 2007.

The Iraq war, launched without U.N. authorization in 2003, undercut U.S. credibility abroad and contributed to a resounding victory by Obama against John McCain, the nominee of Bush's Republican Party, in the November election.

Bush also made clear he saw his failed effort to broker peace between Israel and the Palestinians in his final year as not totally in vain, despite a 3-week-old Israel-Hamas war in Gaza with no end in sight.

He lauded his administration's handling of Iran and North Korea, both of which have faced U.S.-led campaigns to isolate them over nuclear programs. By contrast, Obama has said he would pursue direct diplomacy with America's foes.

On the home front, Bush cited higher public school standards, lower taxes and new prescription drug benefits for the elderly as a few of his accomplishments.

Bush's farewell address carried little of the introspection he showed at his final news conference on Monday when he admitted regrets about no weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq and over the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal.

But Bush, who has said it will be left to history to judge his record, did concede: "I have experienced setbacks. There are things I would do differently if given the chance." (Additional reporting by David Alexander; Editing by Eric Beech)

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By JENNIFER LOVEN, AP White House Correspondent Jennifer Loven, Ap White House Correspondent – Mon Jan 12, 9:37 pm ET

WASHINGTON – With rare public emotion, George W. Bush sat in judgment on his controversial, consequential presidency on Monday, lamenting mistakes but claiming few as his own, heatedly defending his record on disasters in Iraq and at home and offering kindly advice to a successor who won largely because the nation ached for something new.

By turns wistful, aggressive and joking in his final news conference, Bush covered a huge range of topics in summing up his eight years in the White House — the latest in a recent string of efforts to have his say before historians have theirs. Then the White House said he would do it again Thursday night in a final address to the nation.

Reaching back to his first day in office, he recalled walking into the White House and having "a moment" when he felt all the responsibilities of the job landing on his shoulders. Barack Obama will feel that next week, he said, his tone gently understanding.

Indeed, he was full of supportive words for Obama — the nation's first black president — and talked of being deeply affected while watching people say on television that they never thought they would see such a day, many with "tears streaming down their cheeks when they said it."

"President-elect Obama's election does speak volumes about how far this country has come when it comes to racial relations," Bush said, seeming almost awe-struck.

He brushed off any suggestion that he'd found the job of president too burdensome — or that Obama would find it so. "It's just pathetic, isn't it, self-pity?" he said. "And I don't believe that President-elect Obama will be full of self-pity."

At the same time, Bush showed his skin is not so thick as all that. "Sometimes the biggest disappointments will come from your so-called friends," he advised Obama. Bush's former press secretary, Scott McClellan, released a scathing tell-all book last year that still stings around the West Wing.

Asked one last time by reporters about the major controversies of his presidency, Bush had a ready answer for each:

• On the dismal economy he leaves behind for Obama, Bush said, "I inherited a recession, I'm ending on a recession. In the meantime, there were 52 months of uninterrupted job growth." The 2001 recession began in March, two months into his presidency, but economists agree the seeds were sown long before.

Bush also defended himself against economic attacks from his own party on the huge government bailout of Wall Street financial firms. He said, his voice rising, "If you were sitting there and heard that the depression could be greater than the Great Depression, I hope you would act, too, which I did."

• On the five-year-old Iraq war, the issue that will define his presidency, Bush said history will judge his actions but it is a fact that violence diminished and everyday life became more stable after his decision in 2007 to send an additional 30,000 American troops into the fight.

• He vigorously took issue with critics of the federal response to Katrina, the hurricane that devastated New Orleans. Gesturing and speaking with feeling, he said, "Don't tell me the federal response was slow when there were 30,000 people pulled off roofs right after the storm passed," he said. "Has the reconstruction been perfect? No. Have things happened fairly quickly? Absolutely."

• The president claimed progress toward peace in the Middle East, though any hopes for an accord soon have been dashed by, among other things, a bruising offensive by Israel in the Gaza Strip.

• Most angrily, Bush dismissed "some of the elite" who say he has damaged America's image around the world. "No question, parts of Europe have said that we shouldn't have gone to war in Iraq without a mandate, but those are few countries," he said.

The president's actions after the Sept. 11 attacks — such as establishing the prison for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, approving tough interrogation methods that some say amount to torture and instituting information-gathering efforts at home decried by civil rights groups — were compounded by global outrage at the 2003 invasion of Iraq, particularly later when the alleged weapons of mass destruction that were the main justification for war turned out not to exist.

"In terms of the decisions that I had made to protect the homeland, I wouldn't worry about popularity," he said.

Asked about mistakes, Bush cited a few that he preferred to term "disappointments" — not finding those weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the abuses committed by members of the U.S. military at the Abu Ghraib detention center in Iraq, giving a speech two months after the start of the Iraq war under a "Mission Accomplished" banner on an aircraft carrier, Congress' failure to pass free-trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea, and the negative tone in Washington that belied his 2000 campaign promise to be a "uniter not a divider."

But he offered no evidence he takes personal responsibility for any of those failures. The only two areas where he seemed to acknowledge that errors in judgment had been his were his penchant for cowboy rhetoric, such as saying "Bring 'em on!" to foes in Iraq, and his decision to pursue partial privatization of Social Security immediately after his 2004 re-election.

He said arguing for immigration reform would have been a better use of the political capital he earned through his victory, in part because lawmakers were not yet convinced that Social Security presented an imminent crisis. Over two years of intensive efforts, Bush achieved reform in neither area.

Bush, who watched a Republican drubbing last fall, gave his party advice about how to rise from the ashes. Referring back to the divisive immigration debate, in which conservatives blocked broad changes and raised concern that illegal immigrants would be given amnesty, Bush said the image of his party that resulted was "Republicans don't like immigrants."

"This party will come back. But the party's message has got to be that different points of view are included in the party," he said.

Bush began what he termed "the ultimate exit interview" Monday with a lengthy and gracious thank-you to his core of usual reporters, calling many by name and saying he respects their work even if he often dislikes the product.

Looking to his first day out of office, Bush appeared somewhat flummoxed but also relieved at the prospect of waking up at his Texas ranch next Wednesday with, by his own admission, little idea what to do beyond bringing coffee to his wife.

Monday's news conference offered only one bit of news, and — in these times when Bush has seemed to fade from office a little more each day — even that was overtaken by events.

He said he would ask Congress to release the remaining $350 billion in Wall Street bailout money if Obama wants him to — but that Obama had not yet asked. A mere two hours later, Obama had made his request to Bush, and the White House said the president had agreed.