Oh, this is just priceless. The architects of the Iraq War are throwing Bush to the wolves to save their own tattered reputations, claiming the problem wasn’t their idea, but Bush’s total and complete lack of the merest appearance of competency—which, apparently, they never noticed. Sing it, neocons!
Richard Perle: “The decisions did not get made that should have been. They didn't get made in a timely fashion, and the differences were argued out endlessly.… At the end of the day, you have to hold the president responsible.… I think if I had been delphic, and had seen where we are today, and people had said, 'Should we go into Iraq?,' I think now I probably would have said, 'No’…”
Delphic, huh? Well, that’s the best euphemism for “vaguely cognizant of obvious facts” I’ve heard yet!
David Frum: “[I]t now looks as if defeat may be inescapable, because ‘the insurgency has proven it can kill anyone who cooperates, and the United States and its friends have failed to prove that it can protect them.’ This situation, he says, must ultimately be blamed on ‘failure at the center’—starting with President Bush.”
Dayum! Bitch, that’s cold. After G-Dub turned your “axis of evil” speech into the Shit Heard Round the World, all you’ve got to give back is shade?! That’s some serious ice, playa.
Kenneth Adelman: “I just presumed that what I considered to be the most competent national-security team since Truman was indeed going to be competent. They turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the post-war era. Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional.”
Ouch!
Michael Ledeen: “Ask yourself who the most powerful people in the White House are. They are women who are in love with the president: Laura [Bush], Condi, Harriet Miers, and Karen Hughes.”
I don’t even know what that means, but it doesn’t sound good.
Frank Gaffney: “[Bush] doesn't in fact seem to be a man of principle who's steadfastly pursuing what he thinks is the right course. He talks about it, but the policy doesn't track with the rhetoric, and that's what creates the incoherence that causes us problems around the world and at home. It also creates the sense that you can take him on with impunity.”
Snap!
Michael Rubin: “Where I most blame George Bush is that through his rhetoric people trusted him, people believed him. Reformists came out of the woodwork and exposed themselves.”
Is he talking about the Iraq War, or Mark Foley?
Eliot Cohen: “I do think it's going to end up encouraging various strands of Islamism, both Shia and Sunni, and probably will bring de-stabilization of some regimes of a more traditional kind, which already have their problems.… The best news is that the United States remains a healthy, vibrant, vigorous society. So in a real pinch, we can still pull ourselves together. Unfortunately, it will probably take another big hit. And a very different quality of leadership. Maybe we'll get it.”
Fo shizzle.
Mind you, these were the same diseased todgers predicting Iraq would be a cakewalk, that we’d be greeted as liberators, that our troops would be showered with rose petals and sweeties, and that the reconstruction would pay for itself. They were also the ones accusing those of us who were saying before the war that Bush was an incompetent doofus who would make a hash job of this adventure, of being traitorous, unpatriotic imbeciles who didn’t know what we were talking about.
I’ve got only two words for the neocon brigade: FUCK YOU.
Now go die slow professional deaths in obscurity at discredited conservative think tanks, where no one with any sense will ever listen to a word you utter ever again.
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