Bush the “worst”, “dictator-toppling engineer” – Iraqis say

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: Local residents of different Iraqi provinces termed U.S. President George W. Bush’s terms in office as “the worst” in the history of U.S. presidencies due to his foreign policy, namely Iraq, while others believe he attained a “great achievement” by toppling former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. In the Iraqi capital Baghdad, Abu Ahmed, a civil servant, said Bush was like “a dark cloud hanging over the Iraqis. His image will remain chiseled in the minds of the Iraqi people for all the tragedies he caused them”. “I wish that the Obama administration turns out to be better than its predecessor so that the Iraqis can heave a sigh of relief after a tough period they experienced with the worst U.S. administration ever,” Abu Ahmed told IraqiNews.com news agency. Faris Hassan, a worker in al-Bayaa neighborhood, said the Iraqis have bidden farewell to Bush’s time, which was so bad for them, with their shoes. Journalist Muntadhar al-Zaydi, a correspondent for al-Baghdadiya TV, had hurled his shoes at Bush during a press conference he held jointly with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in Baghdad in December 2008. “We should not be thinking very high of the new Obama administration. They are all having the same unchanged ideological track of controlling Iraq’s wealth,” Hassan said. In Falluja, the largest city of the predominantly Sunni province of al-Anbar, 110 km west of Baghdad, Hamed Abdullah, a local resident, said Bush’s time was a “dark” one during which Iraq was invaded and devastated. “The same things can be applied to other countries. Bush even destroyed the U.S. economy,” said Abdullah, hoping Obama should be capable of taking right decisions and leave the people of the world alone without interfering in their countries’ internal affairs. Mahmoud Saleh, another local resident of Anbar, said “the wars waged by Bush were unjustifiable. That was a grave mistake he committed, which explains why many European countries reject Bush’s policies that wreaked havoc on the Iraqi people.. In the Kurdish city of Duhuk, 460 km north of Baghdad, Hajar Dawoud, a human rights activist, said “the most prominent things achieved during Bush’s two terms in office were the toppling of the former Iraqi regime, the war on terror and the confrontation of the Taleban Movement in Afghanistan and terrorists in Iraq”. “We can say that Iraq has witnessed a relative stability and legislative elections in Iraq during Bush’s time,” she added. In the oil-rich port city of Basra, 590 km south of Baghdad, Ali Sarhan, an employee, said that Bush was the “engineer behind toppling the worst tyrant of the age, but in the same time he was the cause of an anarchy that overwhelmed Iraq after the fall of the former regime due to the disastrous policies he applied”.   AmR (S)/SR 2