George W. Bush, all but invisible since he left the White House nearly two years ago, reclaimed the spotlight Tuesday with the release of a memoir defending his "war on terror" and the Iraq invasion. "Decision Points" appears a week after the momentous November 2 US elections saw congressional Republicans make a strong recovery after falling out of favour with US voters following the eight often tumultuous years of Bush's administration.
Bush will be as ubiquitous over the next few weeks as he has been scarce since handing over the keys to the White House to Barack Obama in January 2009, with a whirlwind schedule of media appearances to promote his book, which has a print-run of some 1.5 million copies.
In the hefty, 500-page "Decision Points," Bush wrote of his errors in the Iraq campaign and the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, which international intelligence reports strongly suggested Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had obtained. Asked by NBC if he considered apologising for the mistakes, the former president said he has not.
"Apologising would basically say the decision was a wrong decision," Bush said at the start of a barrage of interviews that will also see him sit down with talk show supremo Oprah Winfrey and conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh.