Opinion

Bush 41 criticisms no big surprise

Posted November 23, 2015 11:00 pm

Former President George H. W. Bush's critical assessments of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld in their roles as vice president and secretary of defense should come as no surprise.

Five years before those two convinced President George W. Bush to order the invasion of Iraq, the elder Bush had explained in Time magazine the hazards of such action: "Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different, and perhaps barren outcome."

Bush 43, Cheney and Rumsfeld ignored Bush 41 and took the U.S. into Iraq under false pretenses, and their actions resulted in an utterly barren outcome, not just for Iraq, but for the entire region. They deserve every criticism that the world may heap upon them.

Donald G. Westlake

Wheaton

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