George W Bush Opens Up About Veterans, Iraq, And The Healing Power of Art (2017)

There are no erasures or do-overs when it comes to waging war. Bush often described his role as that of “decider,” and there were no more consequential decisions during his presidency than the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq... Bush has said that the hardest part of being in office was reading the casualty reports and seeing the brutal consequences of his policy first-hand: placing calls to sobbing widows, looking into the eyes of Gold Star families, visiting injured soldiers at Walter Reade and Bethesda as they practiced using a prosthetic limb or struggled with PTS. (Bush does not use the...