Laura Bush speaks out on shoe-throwing incident

WASHINGTON — President Bush may have been amused by the shoe-throwing incident in Iraq, but first lady Laura Bush was not.
"As a wife, I saw it as an assault, and that's what it was," she told USA TODAY during an interview at the White House on Thursday. "So I didn't laugh it off."


SHOE-THROWER: Journalist asks for pardon

A month before returning to private life, Bush said she will continue her public advocacy of women's rights in Afghanistan and democracy for Burma. A self-described "ambassador" for her husband's policies over the past eight years, Bush praised her husband's record in Iraq and Afghanistan. She said she will be an active defender of those actions "because they are worth defending."

"Fifty million people are free from tyranny because of the United States, because of my husband's policies," Bush said. "These are very, very important, world-changing happenings, and they're for the best."

On Iraq, she said, "Do people really wish Saddam Hussein were still there? I don't think so."

Bush said she has seen the tape of her husband ducking the two shoes thrown by an Iraqi journalist. "Of course, he's very quick," she said. "That's one of things I saw — he's such a natural athlete."

Asked whether she worries about her husband's security, she said, "Not really." But she added, "Any spouse of a president who lives here thinks at some time a little bit about the safety of their loved ones."

Afghanistan and Burma have been high on Laura Bush's agenda and will continue to be after Jan. 10. Bush said she will work with her husband's Freedom Institute, part of his presidential library at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Bush said she has "met a few publishers" about a book deal, though nothing is final. "If I write a book, it will be about things that happened in the White House, and my take on it," Bush said.

And will she try to get back at her husband's critics? "That's not really my personality," she said.

Bush dismissed some of the public portrayals of her and her husband, such as in the Oliver Stone film W and in the bestselling novel, American Wife. She said she had neither seen the movie nor read the book. The film and the book "really didn't have anything to do with me, or the president for that matter," she said.

Such portrayals are "just a fact of life for people who live in this house," Bush said. "The next couple that move here are going to find that out, too."

The first lady said talks with Michelle Obama have been mostly about family. "We've talked about how the house is a home," she said. "I know that's her first priority right now, is to make it a home for her little girls."

Bush said she and her husband have the same "West Texas values" they brought with them in 2001, but they have grown and weathered difficult storms.

"Fortunately, we are really strong, tough people," she said. "We are. And this job requires it."
USAtoday