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Elder Bush criticizes son’s ‘axis of evil’ address

November 5, 2015

President Park Geun-hye and former U.S. President George W. Bush walk together at Cheong Wa Dae, Monday.
(Korea Times photo by Koh Young-kwon)

WASHINGTON (Yonhap) — Former U.S. President George H.W. Bush has criticized his son’s 2002 State of the Union address that labeled Iraq, Iran and North Korea as part of an “axis of evil,” a news report said.

The elder Bush made the criticism in a upcoming biography, saying that his son was served badly by top aides, such as Vice President Dick Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, according to the New York Times.

“You go back to the ‘axis of evil’ and these things and I think that might be historically proved to be not benefiting anything,” Bush was quoted as saying in the biography titled, “Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush.”

The “axis of evil” speech was seen as an effort to build a case for the invasion of Iraq.

The address also raised tensions with North Korea as the communist nation reacted angrily to it. Relations between the two countries deteriorated further later that year as the second nuclear standoff broke out with revelations that Pyongyang had been running a secret uranium enrichment program.

In the biography by Jon Meacham, former editor-in-chief of Newsweek, Bush sharply criticized Cheney and Rumsfeld, saying Cheney had built “his own empire” and asserted too much “hard-line” influence within his son’s White House in pushing for the use of force around the world, and that Rumsfeld was an “arrogant fellow” who could not see how others thought and “served the president badly.”