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WASHINGTON, March 14 (Xinhuanet) -- Three years after
the U.S.-led invasion, the Iraq war is dominating George W. Bush's presidency
and defining his legacy, the USA Today newspaper reported Tuesday.
As Franklin Roosevelt is remembered most for his
leadership during World War II and Lyndon Johnson for Vietnam, presidential
scholars and some of Bush's own advisers predicted that history would judge Bush
by his decision to order a preemptive attack on Iraq in March 2003, and by the
long-term consequences of America's first war of the 21st century, the
front-page report said.
Many of the president's signature programs and
proposals, such as No Child Left Behind, individual investment accounts in
Social Security, and tax simplification, have either been overshadowed, beaten
back, or shelved.
And the "comprehensive conservative" he described in
2000 has been replaced by a wartime president arguing the need to stay the
course in a conflict that lasted longer and cost more than Most Americans
imagined when it began, according to the report.
The administration was expecting to move on to other
issues in Bush's second term like Social Security reform and the "ownership
society," but all that had been pushed aside because of Iraq, political
scientist Steven Schier was quoted as saying.
Nearly two-thirds of Americans said the Iraq war
would be what Bush was most remembered for, according to a USA Today/CNN/Gallup
poll taken last Friday and Saturday.
The invasion of Iraq has shaped not only what the
president has done in office - including not only what the president hopes will
spark democracy across the Arab world - but also what he's been unable to do
because of the war's demands, the report said.
"There's no question the president's legacy will be
dominated by Iraq," March McKinnon, a top adviser in Bush's presidential
campaign, was quoted as saying. Enditem |