Bolton says Bush made mistakes about Iraq
Bolton, in Salt Lake City to speak at a business conference, met with the Deseret Morning News' editorial board Tuesday to discuss his controversial tenure at the United Nations.
Facing a recalcitrant U.S. Senate, Bush made what's known as an interim appointment of Bolton in August 2005 to the U.N. post. But when Democrats took control of Congress in the 2006 elections, the Senate refused to even consider Bolton's nomination, forcing him from office in December.
Bolton has returned to the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, and is writing a book that will be published Nov. 6 — Election Day.
Titled "Surrender Is Not An Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad," Bolton said his memoir will make the case that basic U.S. foreign policy in a number of areas — especially concerning North Korea and Iran — was really the only proper approach considering all of the external adversaries facing America today.
While not intimately involved in decisions on Iraq, Bolton said his close observation of the situation leads him to some tough conclusions.
"It is what has happened in the last four years that's made our involvement in Iraq unpopular" throughout the world, said Bolton, "not the original overthrow of Saddam Hussein."
"If we had said shortly after that statue (of Saddam) came down in Baghdad, 'Here are the keys to the Green Zone, Iraqis — you have our best wishes and whatever support we can give as we are packing up and leaving, or at least moving out of Baghdad,' then I think public opinion in our country might be different.
"Having overthrown Saddam, we had an obligation — it was a short-term obligation — to provide security until some kind of government of Iraqis could have gotten back up, for us to hold the reins for a short time for them to start forming a government," he said.
But the notion that America had to occupy Iraq or guarantee the country's security for a protracted time, or indeed indefinitely: "I just think that's a mistake."
The U.S. properly acted to protect itself from the external threat of Hussein, Saddam, Bolton said.
However, it is the Iraqis' responsibility to decide for themselves what kind of government they will have, even to the extent of whether Iraq should be broken up into two or more countries, he said.
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