Bush official portrait caption changed

WASHINGTON, Jan. 14 (UPI) -- The U.S. National Portrait Gallery says it has amended the caption accompanying the portrait of President George W. Bush at the request of a U.S. senator.

The revised biographical caption, requested by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., eliminated the wording, "the (terrorist) attacks on September 11, 2001, that led to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq …" The Washington Post reported Wednesday.

The newspaper said Sanders objected to the phrasing in a letter to the National Portrait Gallery, writing, "When President Bush and Vice President Cheney misled our nation into the war in Iraq, they certainly cited the attacks on September 11, along with the equally specious claim that Iraq possessed vast arsenals of weapons of mass destruction.

"The notion, however, that 9/11 and Iraq were linked, or that one 'led to' the other, has been widely and authoritatively debunked," he wrote.

Gallery director Martin Sullivan ordered that the caption be amended, with new text to be installed Wednesday. The Post said it reads: "… Bush found his two terms in office instead marked by a series of cataclysmic events: the attacks on September 11, 2001; the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq … "