PRESIDENT George Bush says he regrets the tough talk he used during the Iraq war, wrongly painting himself as a warmonger.In an exclusive interview with Britain's The Times, he expressed regret at the divisions over the war and said he was troubled by how his country had been misunderstood.
"I think that in retrospect I could have used a different tone, a different rhetoric," he told The Times.
"Phrases such as 'bring them on' or 'dead or alive' indicated to people that I was, you know, not a man of peace," he said.
He told The Times that he found it very painful to put youngsters in harm's way.
"I try to meet with as many of the families as I can. And I have an obligation to comfort and console as best as I possibly can. I also have an obligation to make sure that those lives were not lost in vain," he said.
He said that his aim now was to leave his successor a legacy of international diplomacy for tackling Iran.
The interview was published as President Bush arrived in Germany, looking to prod Chancellor Angela Merkel in whirlwind talks to further cut back Berlin's lucrative ties with Iran over its suspect nuclear drive.
Mr Bush, who has just seven more months in office, is on what he has called his last trip to Europe, a June 9-16 swing that is taking him on to Italy, the Vatican, France, and Britain, after a first stop in Slovenia for his final US-European Union summit.
White House aides said Mr Bush would ask Ms Merkel for more help with Afghanistan and to tighten sanctions on Iran over its defiance of international demands to freeze sensitive nuclear work that can be a prelude to an atomic weapon.
The US president and European Union leaders this week to weigh additional sanctions against Tehran and crack down on Iranian banks - one of which, Melli Bank, has branches in Hamburg, London and Paris.
But Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last night openly mocked what he said was Mr Bush's desire for military action against Tehran, saying the US president could not hurt "even one centimetre" of the country.
― Curt1s Stephens, Thursday, 12 June 2008 19:22 (seventeen years ago)