Don Henley, lead singer of the rock group The Eagles, is surprised that he has been allowed to openly criticise US President George Bush whereas others have been attacked for their negative comments.

Contactmusic.com reports that Henley compared Bush to a chimpanzee and has been spared but other artists like The Dixie Chicks were slammed when they said they were ashamed to hail from Bush's home state of Texas.

He said: 'Where other people might not be able to get away with it - like our friends the Dixie Chicks, bless their hearts - we get away with it. I've said some outrageous things about Bush in the press. Every time I do an interview and they ask me who I would like for President this time I say, 'Any of the front-runners would be fine with me, because frankly a f**king chimpanzee would be an improvement.' I've said that numerous times in the press and nothing has come of it.'

He also claims he is surprised that the rightwing country community has tolerated the band's pro-left wing lyrics.

He added: 'The fact that we can go play the Country Music Awards and get a standing ovation when we've just put out an album with songs like 'Long Road Out of Eden' and 'Frail Grasp on the Big Picture' on it, which talks about politics and religion in a very what one might call leftist sort of way, is really sort of a mystery to me. But we get away with it. I don't know if people just ignore that part of it because they love the old stuff so much - maybe we've just made such a deep inroad into their hearts and minds that they forgive us when we do something that offends them.'