Honesty at Last

John Derbyshire on Iraq:

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Since the Iraq war was obviously a gross blunder, is it time for those of us who cheered on the war to offer some kind of apology? Here we are—we, the United States—in our fourth year of occupying that sinkhole, and it looks pretty much like the third year, or the second. Will the eighth year of our occupation, or our twelfth, look any better? I know people who will say yes, but I no longer know any who will say it with real conviction. It’s a tough thing, to admit you were wrong. It’s way tough if you’re a big-name pundit with a reputation to preserve. For those of us down at the bottom of the pundit pecking order, the stakes aren’t so high. I, at any rate, am willing to eat some crow and say: I wish I had never given any support to this fool war.

I am spared major embarrassment not only by the slightness of my own reputation, as by the fact that while I supported the invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of the regime, I never thought much of the nation-building exercise that followed. It took me a while to figure out that the administration actually believed all the guff about “establishing democracy in the Middle East,” but once it had sunk in, and the party enthusiasms of the 2004 election season had subsided, I was calling for withdrawal. (The first time I gave over a column to it was, I think, in mid-September of 2004.) I wish I had done so earlier. And, yes, I’ll admit, I wish I hadn’t supported the invasion in the first place.

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DTH

Where are the Newt's in the Republican Party?

It has nothing to do with criticising the president for the sake of party politics, it has everything to do with being objective and keeping the president and his administration honest, that's part of what has made america succeed.

video

COLMES: Then he said when it came out a little while ago that there was some wiretapping he said it only applies to international communications. And now we're finding something else. So it just seems we’re not getting a consistent story here, are we?

GINGRICH: No. You're not.

COLMES: Why not?

GINGRICH: Look, I'm not-Alan, I’m not going to defend the indefensible. The Bush administration has an obligation to level with the American people. And I'm prepared to defend a very aggressive anti-terrorist campaign, and I'm prepared to defend the idea that the government ought to know who’s making the calls, as long as that information is only used against terrorists, and as long as the Congress knows that it’s underway.

But I don’t think the way they've handled this can be defended by reasonable people. It is sloppy. It is contradictory, and frankly for normal Americans, it makes no sense to listen to these three totally different explanations.

Leaker in the Administration

If Lewis Libby is to be believed . . .

"A former top White House aide testified that President George W. Bush authorized leaking classified intelligence in 2003 in the face of criticism of his Iraq policy from a former ambassador, according to court papers made public on Thursday."

The debt ceiling. Who needs it?

NEW YORK (FORTUNE) - For the fourth time since he became president in 2001, George Bush has sent his Treasury secretary to Capitol Hill, hat in hand, to ask for an increase in the federal debt ceiling (currently $8.18 trillion).

As lawmakers hem and haw, the Treasury Department is raiding the civil service retirement trust fund to pay the government's bills. If Congress fails to act before it goes on recess next week, it's possible that the United States will default on its obligations -- rocking global financial markets and possibly leaving Americans stuck with higher interest rates for decades to come.

Outrageous, isn't it? But which is the most outrageous part: That the current president and Congress don't seem interested in even trying to balance the federal budget, or that the United States regularly risks default because of an arbitrary ceiling that bears no relation to the nation's ability to service its debts or its true long-term fiscal obligations?

Bush Is a Damn Liar

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Bush didn’t ask a single question during the final briefing before Katrina struck on Aug. 29, but he assured soon-to-be-battered state officials: “We are fully prepared.”
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Bush declared four days after the storm, “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees” that gushed deadly floodwaters into New Orleans. But the transcripts and video show there was plenty of talk about that possibility — and Bush was worried too.
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How do the Bush worshippers spin this one, I wonder? More than half of the country has known Bush is a liar for a while now. This is incontrovertible proof for the minority who were still (willfully) blind to that.

Such tragic incompetence.

DTH