Bush deserves all the trashing he’s received

Jeff Silverman, Las Vegas

Thursday, May 21, 2009 | 2:04 a.m.

In his Tuesday letter to the Las Vegas Sun, Bob Lewicki called for an end to the trashing of George W. Bush and his administration. Mr. Lewicki wants the “nonsense” to cease. But the trashing of former President Bush will go on because he’s just too easy a target, and I’ll tell you why.

Regardless of the failures, the shortcomings and the criminal acts of any former president, George W. Bush remains the only U.S. president in history to start an unprovoked war of aggression. He played on the anger and the pain of all Americans that came as the result of Sept. 11, 2001, to invade a sovereign nation. In doing so he sent thousands of young men and women to their deaths. Many more soldiers left their arms, legs and their innocence in the blood-soaked sand of a desert thousands of miles from home based on the lies told by the Bush administration.

George W. Bush’s ineptitude and incompetence were made painfully obvious in virtually every policy decision he ever made. When Bill Clinton left office, the U.S. budget was written in black ink. It is now written in Day-Glo red because of the billions of dollars spent every month to finance the war.

The Bush administration has dragged the United States into bankruptcy by using the horror of 9/11 as an excuse to invade Iraq in an attempt to clean up the mess his father started nearly 20 years ago.