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Bush's "Biggest Regret" by John M. Curtis Copyright
December 2, 2008
Speaking
in an interview with ABC News, President George W. Bush admitted he was
“unprepared for war” and his “biggest regret” was faulty intelligence about
Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.
Sept. 11 was both a blessing and a curse for Bush, whose administration
was only nine months old when Osama bin Laden attacked New York’s World Trade
Center and the Pentagon. Bush won a
bitterly contested, controversial election in the Supreme Court, already taking
his approval ratings down well-below 50%.
After Sept. 11, his approval ratings shot up to 90%, related to his
post-Sept. 11 management of the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history.
While Bush has
Bush’s lobbying efforts paid off passing House Joint Resolution 114 Oct.11, 2002 in the U.S. Senate, authorizing him to go to war in Iraq. Despite the best efforts of Dr. Hans Blix and his team of U.N. weapons’ inspectors, Bush had Secretary of State Colin L. Powell present the administration’s best evidence against Saddam in the U.N. Security Council Feb. 5, 2003 only one week after Bush’s State of the Union address, certifying that Saddam tried to buy Yellowcake uranium from Niger. Powell’s convincing case about Saddam’s mobile germ labs turned out to be fake, forged by a mentally unstable Iraqi defector living in Bavaria called “Curveball.” Powell knew at the time of his U.N. presentation that the CIA or any other reputable intelligence agency couldn’t verify “Curveball’s” claims, leaving his case about Saddam's WMD to the U.N. Security gravely in doubt. Bush now says his “biggest regret” was faulty intelligence about Iraq’s alleged WMD program. Yet Bush refused to say whether, knowing then what he knows now, he would not have gone ahead with the Iraq invasion. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney relied heavily on defense intelligence generated at the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans where Douglas Feith Jr., now a professor at Georgetown, concocted the phony stories about Iraq’s nuclear and biological weapons. When Blix was proven correct after the invasion, the White House refused to take responsibility for bringing the nation to war without a compelling national security threat. White House officials switched gears, citing the 2004 Charles Duelfer Report from the bipartisan Iraq Study Group that indicated Saddam would reconstitute his WMD program if given the chance, the excuse for preemptive war. Seeking to revise history, Bush continues to blow smoke, telling ABC News he regrets the intelligence failure. “The biggest regret of all the presidency has to be the intelligence failure in Iraq,” continuing the myth that he was given faulty intelligence. Bush chose to ignore the best evidence given to him by Blix and instead relied on Feith’s fable about mobile germ weapons labs, despite having the CIA, German Intelligence and Briton’s MI6 tell him the intelligence was not reliable. Bush knew at his Jan. 26, 2003 State of the Union that the CIA couldn’t verify reports about Saddam trying to buy Yellowcake from a West African country. One week later, Powell pitched “Curveball’s” case to the U.N. Security Council, despite warnings from German Intelligence. Powell lives today with his own regrets, pitching the White House case Feb. 5, 2003, knowing it could not be verified any reputable source. When Barack announced his new national security team in Chicago today, featuring designees Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Atty. Gen. Eric Holder, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, National Security Advisor former Marine Gen. James Jones and Homeland Security Secretary Ariz. Gov. Janet Napolitano, he doesn’t want to make the same mistakes. Bush’s mistake didn’t involve faulty intelligence, it involved Vice President Dick Cheney ordering Feith’s office to cherry pick intelligence at the Pentagon. Barack’s biggest threat to accurate intelligence stems from the shaky barrier between civilian and military intelligence with former Director of National Intelligence Michael V. Haden. Unlike Bush, Obama must keep a wall between civilian and military intelligence. Bush got the intelligence he asked for to justify the Iraq invasion. Bush’s abysmal approval ratings at around 25% stemmed from a spin overdose during the last eight years, contributing to Sen. John McCain’s shellacking on Election Day. As his presidency ends, Bush continues to revise history, insisting he was misled by faulty intelligence. Whether admitted to or not, Bush knew he and Cheney ordered the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans to manufacture intelligence to justify the Iraq War. He and his White House spin machine spent the last six years concocting more excuses than ExxonMobil for raising gas prices. Voters spoke loudly on Nov. 4, rejecting Bush’s tired excuses about Iraq and the deteriorated U.S. economy. Even today, he talks about “dishonoring the dead” and not throwing the white flag. Bush colossal miscalculation in Iraq cost over 4,200 lives, thousands of disabilities and pushed the country into recession. He needs to apologize, not make more excuses. John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He's editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet/a> and Operation Charisma. |
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