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Afternoon Topic: Bush Regrets He Was Seen as “Anxious for War” — Record shows he’s Not a “Man of Peace.” |
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Bush has never been accused of being too introspective, and Scott McClellan’s book emphasized how Bush is not only unreflective, but doesn’t want to hear dissent once he has made a decision. So in the twilight of his presidency, when he looks back, what does Bush regret? In an interview with The Times he explains:
President Bush has admitted to The Times that his gun-slinging rhetoric made the world believe that he was a “guy really anxious for war†in Iraq…
In an exclusive interview, he expressed regret at the bitter divisions over the war and said that he was troubled about how his country had been misunderstood. “I think that in retrospect I could have used a different tone, a different rhetoric.â€
Phrases such as “bring them on†or “dead or aliveâ€, he said, “indicated to people that I was, you know, not a man of peaceâ€.
Right. His rhetoric must have confused us, because if it weren’t for his tone, then the world might understand that he is really, “a man of peace.” Or maybe not.
The counter to Bush’s claims that he was misunderstood and is not someone who wanted to go to war, is the report by the Senate Intelligence Committee. The analysis was reported out of the Committee by a bipartisan 10-5 vote. It is long and comprehensive and while I have yet to read the whole thing, there is a nice summary on the Committee’s website.
The Committee’s report cites several conclusions in which the Administration’s public statements were NOT supported by the intelligence. They include:
Ø     Statements and implications by the President and Secretary of State suggesting that Iraq and al-Qa’ida had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al-Qa’ida with weapons training, were not substantiated by the intelligence.Â
ÂØ     Statements by the President and the Vice President indicating that Saddam Hussein was prepared to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups for attacks against the United States were contradicted by available intelligence information.ÂÂØ     Statements by President Bush and Vice President Cheney regarding the postwar situation in Iraq, in terms of the political, security, and economic, did not reflect the concerns and uncertainties expressed in the intelligence products.ÂÂØ     Statements by the President and Vice President prior to the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iraq’s chemical weapons production capability and activities did not reflect the intelligence community’s uncertainties as to whether such production was ongoing.ÂÂØ     The Secretary of Defense’s statement that the Iraqi government operated underground WMD facilities that were not vulnerable to conventional airstrikes because they were underground and deeply buried was not substantiated by available intelligence information.Â
Ø     The Intelligence Community did not confirm that Muhammad Atta met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in 2001 as the Vice President repeatedly claimed.Â
This of course is not surprising. It has long been documented in other ways that the Bush Administration ignored or cherry-picked the findings of the intelligence community to rationalize their own behavior. So if you look at the way the President and the rest of the Administration tried to justify an invasion of Iraq, not at the cowboy rhetoric, but just at the case that was being made as to why awar with Iraq was supposedly “necessary,” from the WMD, to connections to Al Qaeda, to the rosy scenario as to the Iraqi response to an American invasion, there is a conclusion that one could easily make… that this was a guy really anxious for war.
