AP Tuesday, March 17, 2009
CALGARY, Alberta -- Former President George W. Bush said he won't criticize President Obama because Obama "deserves my silence," and said he plans to write a book about the 12 toughest decisions he made in office.
Bush declined to critique the Obama administration Tuesday in his first speech since leaving office. Former Vice President Dick Cheney has said that Obama's decisions are threatening America's safety.
"I'm not going to spend my time criticizing him. There are plenty of critics in the arena," Bush said. "He deserves my silence."
Bush said he wants Obama to succeed and said it's important that he has that support. Talk-show host Rush Limbaugh has said he hoped Obama would fail.
"I love my country a lot more than I love politics," Bush said. "I think it is essential that he be helped in office."
Bush said that he doesn't know what he will do in the long term but that he will write a book that will ask people to consider what they would do if they had to protect the United State as president.
He said it will be fun to write and that "it's going to be (about) the 12 toughest decisions I had to make."
"I'm going to put people in my place, so when the history of this administration is written at least there's an authoritarian voice saying exactly what happened," Bush said.
"I want people to understand what it was like to sit in the Oval Office and have them come in and say we have captured Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, the alleged killer of a guy named Danny Pearl because he was simply Jewish, and we think we have information on further attacks on the United States."
Bush didn't specify what the 12 hardest decisions were but said Iraq is better off without Saddam Hussein in power.
Bush was also full of jokes throughout his speech and during a question and answer session with former Canadian Ambassador in Washington Frank McKenna.
He joked that he would do more speeches to pay for his new house in Dallas.
"I actually paid for a house last fall. I think I'm the only American to have bought a house in the fall of 2008," he quipped.
He added that he would do whatever former first lady Laura Bush asked him to do.
He also said his mother is doing well. Barbara Bush was released from a Houston hospital Friday, nine days after undergoing heart surgery.
"Clearly he can't live without her," Bush said of his father and former President George H.W. Bush.
Source: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/03/17/bush-obama-deserves-silence-wont-criticize-new-administration/
