Hillary: Bush Not 'Intellectually Curious'

New York Sen. Hillary Clinton said Tuesday that George Bush wasn't "intellectually curious" enough to be president, a limitation, she contended, that had left his administration unprepared to deal with the occupation of Iraq.

"I think it's important to have a president who asks a lot of questions, who is intellectually curious, who seeks out contrary points of view, who doesn't just surround himself with people who see the world the same way he does," she told CNN's "Larry King Live."

"You have to have a decision-making process that pushes a lot of information up, and asks a lot of hard questions," Clinton added. "You don't get that sense from this White House."

The former first lady said that President Bush had failed to heed warnings from outside voices about the dangers of invading Iraq.

"They would, you know, basically ignore the warnings that so many people gave them about what would happen when the oppressive, you know, heavy hand of Saddam Hussein was lifted off," she told CNN.

"It's been bewildering to me, you know, the idea that they would reject out of hand all the planning that was done in the State Department," Clinton complained. "For the life of me, I don't understand how they had such an unrealistic view about what was going to happen."

Even on the question of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, which President Clinton repeatedly warned about during his last three years in office, the New York Democrat suggested that Bush hadn't been skeptical enough.

"I think that in the case of the administration, they really believed [the WMD intelligence]. They really thought they were right," Mrs. Clinton said. "But they didn't let enough sunlight into their thinking process to really have the kind of debate that needs to take place when a serious decision occurs like that."

The former first lady said that during the Clinton administration, her husband had "a totally different approach to decision-making."

"That's not at all what my husband did," she told CNN. "You know, he wanted people to argue in front of him. He wanted people to present different points of view. Because he at the end of the day knew he had to make the decision. I mean, the buck does stop. The president has to make a decision."

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