Regrets, I've Had A Few...

In his interview with Charlie Gibson, President Bush was asked about "do-overs." And Bush said:

I don't know -- the biggest regret of all the presidency has to have been the intelligence failure in Iraq. A lot of people put their reputations on the line and said the weapons of mass destruction is a reason to remove Saddam Hussein. It wasn't just people in my administration; a lot of members in Congress, prior to my arrival in Washington D.C., during the debate on Iraq, a lot of leaders of nations around the world were all looking at the same intelligence. And, you know, that's not a do-over, but I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess.

Josh Marshall, over at Talking Points Memo had this to say about that:

Of course, Bush made the decision to overlook all the good intel -- not to mention the claims of those poor forgotten inspectors -- saying that Saddam wasn't really a threat at all, or certainly not one requiring the response Bush himself ordered.

One overlooked thing about this is that not only Bush, but many supporters of the war -- Dems and liberal hawks included -- also have a vested interest in pretending that the good intel never existed and those inspectors never said what they said. Those inconvenient historical facts reflect rather badly on them, too. With so many opinion-makers having vested interests of their own in telling the story this way, history has been tidily rewritten, and Bush is able to make this claim without a peep of objection from his big-time network interviewer.

Or, as Senator Jay Rockefeller pointed out in his press release at the unveiling of his Senate Committee's Phase II report on Pre-war Intelligence:

Before taking the country to war, this Administration owed it to the American people to give them a 100 percent accurate picture of the threat we faced. Unfortunately, our Committee has concluded that the Administration made significant claims that were not supported by the intelligence. In making the case for war, the Administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent. As a result, the American people were led to believe that the threat from Iraq was much greater than actually existed.

It is my belief that the Bush Administration was fixated on Iraq, and used the 9/11 attacks by al Qa’ida as justification for overthrowing Saddam Hussein. To accomplish this, top Administration officials made repeated statements that falsely linked Iraq and al Qa’ida as a single threat and insinuated that Iraq played a role in 9/11. Sadly, the Bush Administration led the nation into war under false pretenses.

There is no question we all relied on flawed intelligence. But, there is a fundamental difference between relying on incorrect intelligence and deliberately painting a picture to the American people that you know is not fully accurate.

Let me translate that last sentence: they were lying.

But Bush gets to rewrite history (with Charlie Gibson's help, of course) in saying that the intelligence was wrong. No sir, you were just lying about all the intelligence. There's a difference.

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