The Bush Faux Mea Culpa

From the Bush interview today:

"I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess."

Different that Hussein really did build weapons? Different that al Qaeda was really in Iraq? Why would he wish that? I think he means he wished he listened to what was really happening.

The fact is that the US intelligence community was telling Bush and Cheney that:

* it was more likely than not that Iraq had no usable weapons of mass destruction;

* that Iraq likely lacked the ability to create them;

* that Iraq lacked the means to deliver any such weapons against US targets;

* that Iraq had no operational links to Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups of global reach capable of attacking the US with such weapons;

* and that Iraq was unlikely to attack the US in any case since it stood to gain nothing from doing so.

And of course by the time of the 2003 invasion, the UN weapons inspectors like Hans Blix had pretty much confirmed that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction or the means to make them, which is of course why Bush pushed to invade before the inspectors could conclude their work.

Meanwhile Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell and other principals of the Bush administration were busily and loudly telling deliberate, elaborate, repeated, sickening lies to the American people, the US Congress, the United Nations Security Council and the entire world about what they knew at the time to be nonexistent "Iraqi WMD" and nonexistent "links between Saddam and Al Qaeda", with Cheney proclaiming that Iraq had "reconstituted nuclear weapons" and Rice warning about "mushroom clouds".

But Bush is not a total idiot. He's more dangerous than that. Dumb enough to be led by others whose intentions are not pure, but smart enough to know how to really sell the shinola he's been told to sell.

Worst. President. Ever.

Source: Washington Monthly Comments