Bush Memoir Says He Considered Syria Strike

Former U.S. President George W. Bush says in his new memoir that he considered a U.S. military strike against a suspected Syrian nuclear facility at Israel’s request in 2007.

Ultimately, the former president says, he decided not to order the strike. Israel eventually destroyed the facility, which Syria denied was aimed at developing a nuclear weapons capability.

Mr. Bush’s memoir, “Decision Points,” begins selling at U.S. bookstores on Tuesday.

Media outlets that obtained early copies of the book say Mr. Bush also writes of having “a sickening feeling” about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

But the 64-year-old former president defends his decision to invade Iraq in 2003. He argues that Iraqi citizens are better off without the former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, whom he calls a “homicidal dictator.”

The former president has remained largely out of the public eye since leaving office last year, but will appear in multiple television interviews this week to promote the book.

In a video explaining why he wrote the memoir, Mr. Bush said he wanted to give readers a glimpse of the presidency from his perspective.

In the book he says he considered replacing Dick Cheney after his first term in office to counter the belief that the vice president wielded enormous power in the White House.

Mr. Bush writes that replacing Cheney would “demonstrate that I was in charge,” but he decided to keep him because the vice president helped him “do the job.”

The former president also writes that he personally approved the use of waterboarding, or simulated drowning, during the interrogation of alleged al-Qaida mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Some information in this story was provided by AP.