Elder Bush praises new technology

Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2003 | 9:19 a.m.

While President Bush preached faith-based compassion and rallied a Nashville, Tenn., audience for a possible war with Iraq on Monday, his father captivated a crowd of wireless communicators in Las Vegas.

For half an hour inside the Islander Ballroom at Mandalay Bay Convention Center, George Herbert Walker Bush spoke to about 600 delegates attending a Cingular wireless convention about the value of having family and friends.

His image projected onto giant screens across the front of the ballroom, former President Bush defended his son's direction of the country, mentioning tax cuts and the defense of America's interests around the world.

Speaking in soothing tones to the Las Vegas audience, Bush recalled his days in Texas oil land, where he made the family's fortune and where he and Barbara Bush began a family that grew to six children.

He compared wildcatters drilling for oil to the communications workers in the room.

"They were good, hard-working men and women, pioneers who took a chance," Bush said.

He recalled that a third of the assets of his company, Zapata Petroleum Corp., were tied up in a quest for new technology -- a similar situation faced by high-tech companies today.

Bush focused on the communications theme of the conference.

Bush, who once famously marveled at a supermarket scanner reading pricing labels, said he was concerned about saving e-mails during his time in the White House.

"You'll be worried some congressional panel will come along and subpoena your records," Bush said. "What that does is send a chill" down the spines of freewheeling computer communicators, he said.

As 41st president, Bush sent American troops to Saudi Arabia in 1990 to protect it from Iraq. After Saddam Hussein refused to withdraw troops from Kuwait, Bush launched the military action called Desert Storm, resulting in the Iraqi withdrawal and independence for Kuwait.

The fall of communism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union handed the United States the unique role of a world superpower, he said.

"The eastern European, central European and Balkan states were fully liberated and started down democracy's path," Bush said.