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Ewen MacAskill and Chris McGreal in Washington, The Guardian, Nov 8, 2010
George Bush – ‘Whatever the verdict on my presidency, I’m comfortable with the fact that I won’t be around to hear it’. Photograph: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images
George Bush ordered the Pentagon to plan an attack on Iran‘s nuclear facilities and considered a covert attack on Syria, the former president reveals in his memoirs.
Bush, in the 497-page Decision Points, a copy of which was obtained by the Guardian in advance of its publication in the US tomorrow, writes of Iran: “I directed the Pentagon to study what would be necessary for a strike.” He adds: “This would be to stop the bomb clock, at least temporarily.”
Such an attack would almost certainly have produced a conflagration in the Middle East that could have seen Iran retaliating by blocking oil supplies and unleashing militias and sympathisers in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon.
Bush also discussed with his national security team either an air strike or a covert special forces raid on an alleged Syrian nuclear facility at the request of Israel.
The book, which is published in the US tomorrow, seeks to rebuild Bush’s reputation, giving his side of the story on the most controversial issues of his presidency, which include Iraq, Afghanistan, hurricane Katrina, the Wall Street meltdown and torture at Guantánamo.
Peace and Justice Post 
November 10, 2010 at 10:00 am |
George Bush’s memoirs play like a made-for-TV motion picture l Hadley Freeman…
The more normal our leading politicians attempt to sound in their autobiographies the loopier they appearThere has always been a pathetically tragic quality to the man that is George W Bush. Not Shakespearean tragic, no. More like a cheap, poorly conce…
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