Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Compare and Contrast
201k, October 13, 2004:
- Mr. Bush never had a viable plan for fighting terrorism. He never had a viable plan for engaging the rest of the world in his war in Iraq. He has no viable plan for getting out of Iraq. He has no viable plan for sustaining the troops levels we now need with a volunteer military.
Simply put, the world is too dangerous a place for us to any longer trust the presidency to the hands of Mr. Bush, who mistakes image control, obfuscations and mule-headed certainty for policy.
- ...the three declassified pages from what is certainly a voluminous report told us what any American with a newspaper, television or Internet connection should already know. The invasion of Iraq was a cataclysmic disaster. The current situation will get worse if American forces leave. Unfortunately, neither the report nor the president provide even a glimmer of a suggestion about how to avoid that inevitable disaster.
It's obvious why Mr. Bush did not want this report out, and why it is taking so long for the intelligence agencies to complete another report, solely on Iraq, that was requested by Congress in late July. It's not credible that more time is needed to do the job. In 2002, the intelligence agencies completed a report on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction in less time. Mr. Bush also made selected passages of that report public to buttress his arguments for war with Iraq, most of which proved to be based on fairy tales.
Then, Mr. Bush wanted Americans to focus on how dangerous Saddam Hussein was, and not on the obvious consequences of starting a war in the Middle East. Now, he wants voters to focus on how dangerous the world is, and not on his utter lack of ideas for what to do about it.
