G.W. Bush: Obama 'deserves my silence'

by Mark Silva

Rush Limbaugh may want Barack Obama to fail.

And Dick Cheney may say the new president has put the nation at greater risk with his approach to foreign policy.

But former President George W. Bush, in his debut on the speaker's circuit, isn't saying anything of the kind about his successor.

"I'm not going to spend my time criticizing him,'' the former president said Tuesday in Calgary - the Canadian oil capital and so-called "Texas of the North'' -- delivering his first speech since leaving office in January. "There are plenty of critics in the arena,'' Bush said. "He deserves my silence.''

. Bush plans to write a book about the 12 toughest decisions he made in office. He wants Obama to succeed in office, sayng it's important that Obama have his predecessor's support.

"I love my country a lot more than I love politics," Bush said. "I think it is essential that he be helped in office."

At an invitation-only event titled a "Conversation with George W. Bush,'' the former president attracted close to 2,000 guests who paid $3,100 per table at the event in Canada. Bush received two standing ovations from a predominantly business crowd.

About 200 people protested outside the event; four arrested. Some protesters threw shoes at an effigy of Bush, in a nod to the Iraqi journalist who tossed his shoes at the former president during a December news conference in Baghdad.

""He shouldn't be able to go anywhere in the world and just present himself as a private citizen," protest organizer Peggy Askin said. "We do not have any use for bringing war criminals into this country. It's an affront."

"While Bush is unpopular in Canada,'' the Associated Press notes, "he is less so in oil-rich Alberta, the country's most conservative province and one sometimes called the Texas of the North. "This is my maiden voyage. My first speech since I was the president of the United States and I couldn't think of a better place to give it than Calgary, Canada," Bush said.

In the book he plans about his 12 toughest decisions, he said, "I'm going to put people in my place, so when the history of this administration is written at least there's an authoritarian voice saying exactly what happened...

"I want people to understand what it was like to sit in the Oval Office and have them come in and say we have captured Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, the alleged killer of a guy named Danny Pearl because he was simply Jewish, and we think we have information on further attacks on the United States," Bush said.

Bush also delivered some humor in his premier as a retired president - suggesting that he will need more engagements such as this to pay for his new house in Dallas - "I actually paid for a house last fall,'' he quipped. "I think I'm the only American to have bought a house in the fall of 2008.''

The event's organizers declined to say how much Bush was paid to speak at the gathering. Bush appeared to enjoy himself. "I'll sit here all day," he said in a question-and-answer session. "I'm flattered people even want to hear me in the first place."

The Associated Press reported from Calgary.