Bush's Disastrous Dollar Policy

Here's the transcript of Bush's interview with Patrick Poivre d'Arvor of French TF1 Television.

Bush spoke warmly of Sarkozy, whom he described as "a man of deep values. He's got a lot of energy. He's a lot of fun to be around, plus he's a serious man and he wants to -- he's like me, he wants to solve problems: Here is a problem; let's go solve it."

But Poivre was more interested in grilling Bush about Iraq, Iran and the perversion of the American Dream.

Poivre: "So to a certain extent, you did contribute to giving greater power to Iran, because it no longer is facing its hated enemy on the other side. So now is there a true threat in Iran, and are you ready now to invade Iran as you did with Afghanistan and Iraq? So it is indeed true that Vice President -- is it true that Vice President Cheney has a plan for that?"

Bush: "I don't know where you're getting all these rumors -- there must be some weird things going on in Europe these days -- because I have made it abundantly clear, now is the time to deal with a true threat to world peace -- that's Iran -- and to do it diplomatically and peacefully. And that's what I'm going to spend a lot of time on with President Sarkozy. But of course we want to solve these problems peacefully. . . ."

Poivre: "But in spite of all your efforts, the United States today have a worse image today than they had seven years ago; people find Americans less likeable pretty much everywhere in the world. Do you have your own share of responsibility, or is this inevitable because the United States is the most powerful country in the world?"

Bush: "Look, first of all, I think most people respect America and they like Americans. They may not necessarily like the President. And so -- but I've always been the kind of person, Patrick, to make decisions based upon what's right, as opposed to trying to be the popular guy. . . ."

Poivre: "In the past we used to say that the American Dream was freedom, but today it seems to be repression, more self-focused society."

Bush: "That's absurd to say the American Dream is repression. Freedom is the absolute we're helping people achieve. . . . I understand people's -- the image may not be as good as one would like, but people respect what America stands for. They may not like the decisions I have made, but I don't see how you can be a leader if you worry about public opinion polls all the time, particularly in a world in which there's a lot of problems that require strong leadership."

Here's video of the French interview.

And here's the transcript of Bush's interview with reporters from the RTL and N-TV German television networks.

Question "Do you think that the nuclear threat that Iran poses right now is larger than the threat Iraq posed about five or six years ago?"