posted by tbogg at 11:04 PM

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The whole truth

Bill Safire, who has somehow hung onto his job long after he passed the point of relevance, wants some folks (including himself!) to fess up to the American public because mistakes have been made:

What if, by some miracle, everyone 'fessed up to mistakes made about the surprisingly easy overthrow of Saddam and its unexpectedly bloody aftermath, and mistakes now being made in building democracy?

(1) In London, the amalgam of isolationists, pacifists and anti-Blair leftists — once certain they would spoil a state visit by branding the U.S. president a monster militarist — would generously admit that they had been a noisy minority, and that their discourtesy triggered a reaffirmation by most Britons of the ties between two freedom-speaking nations that lead the world in defeating tyrants.

(2) Gen. Wesley Clark would have to admit that his early reading of the Pentagon war plan on CNN was unduly panicky. Other analysts who feared heavy civilian casualties, masses of refugees, environmental disaster in the torching of oil fields and the mother of all battles in the narrow streets of Baghdad were in egregious error.

3) Hawkish idealists like me who believed that Iraqi scientists, including "Dr. Germs," would come forward promptly to reveal where supplies of biological weapons were hidden were mistaken, at least for now.

(4) SecDef Donald Rumsfeld would freely admit that he did not anticipate the disappearance of Saddam's intact Republican Guard and the formation of a Baathist terrorist insurgency that would kill coalition soldiers and drive out U.N. and other relief agencies. On the same day, SecState Colin Powell and spymaster George Tenet would admit that their bureaucracies' resistance to the pre-invasion training in Europe of Iraqi expatriate volunteers to perform police and anti-guerrilla duties was unfortunate.

...and it goes on and on and on.

And yet.

Some people are missing...

Being the helpful type, I thought I'd give Bill a hand:

(11) George Bush will admit that he's an empty shell of man who is easily manipulated by others. He started an unnecessary war because he is an incurious shallow man who enjoys the perks of power after a lifetime of failure and disappointment to his family. He will also confess that he feels no remorse for the deaths, American or Iraqi, that he causes on a daily basis because it is easier to convince himself that he is doing a good thing than to ponder anything more complex than a baseball boxscore or what he is having for lunch.

(12) Karl Rove will own up to the fact that he advised George W Bush to go to war against Iraq under the guise of fighting against terrorism because it was the only way that Bush could hope to be re-elected since he comes up painfully short in all other issues facing Americans these days.

(13) Condi Rice will admit that she has been a complete failure at her job when it comes to providing Presidential counsel. In her defense she will point out that, on the rare occasions when she has been correct, she has been overruled by #'s 12 & 14.

(14) Dick Cheney will come out of his undisclosed location and confess to being behind the whole boondoggle with the grand convergence of his gaining closure for not finishing off Saddam under the previous Bush administration, paying off all his buddies from Halliburton who took him under their collective wings and made a poor boy from Wyoming richer and more powerful than he ever dreamed, as well as continuing his advisory role to George Bush as they make their contributors wealthier and wealthier at the expense of the American taxpayer.

That ought to about do it.