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Bush: My Biggest Regret Was Failure Of Iraq Intelligence
TPM Election Central —
... As if right on cue, Barack Obama's successful national security presser today, in which he declared that the "buck stops with me" and took full responsibility for his presidency's vision, is cast in an even more positive light by the deeply pathetic interview that his predecessor just gave to ABC News. ...
"I Was Unprepared For War"
Swampland —
... And the President ends up carrying a lot of people's grief in his soul during a presidency. One of the things about the presidency is you deal with a lot of tragedy -- whether it be hurricanes, or tornadoes, or fires, or death -- and you spend time being the Comforter-in-Chief. But the idea of being able to serve a nation you love is -- has been joyful. In other words, my spirits have never been down. I have been sad, but the spirits are up.
Read the whole thing here.
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Bush Goes Out Dodging
Matthew Yglesias —
Harry Truman famously said of his responsibilities as President that “the buck stops here.” No president makes all his decisions — or even any of them — completely on his own. But a responsible president needs to take responsibility for the policies and actions of his administration.
An irresponsible President, by contrast, says stuff like this to ABC News:
BUSH: I don’t know — the biggest regret of all the presidency has to have been the intelligence failure in Iraq. A lot of people put ...
An Observer Of His Own Presidency
The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan —
... Perhaps the most striking aspect of president George W. Bush is his inability to actually take responsibility for anything. I'm not sure quite where this comes from - daddy, drink or denial, or some gruesome combination of the three - but check this out: ...
The Rude Pundit — ... So it was that outgoing President Bush sat down with ABC's Charlie "Weeble-Shaped" Gibson for one of what will surely be an endless series of exit interviews. What's fascinating about the interview, other than the usual parade of Carroll-esque non sequiturs, obvious statements spoken as if they're great revelations, and general rambling bullshittery, is how often Bush comes to the brink of admitting actual, conscious sin and error before veering away. If he was in a confession booth with a good old-fashioned Irish priest, that bad-ass motherfucker of the cloth would be ...
Charlie's Interview with President Bush
Political Punch —
... Charlie's Interview with President Bush December 02, 2008 11:42 AM The esteemed Mr. Gibson sat down with President and First Lady Bush for an interview that ran yesterday on World News . Asked what he was "most unprepared for," the President said, "I think I was unprepared for war. In other words, I didn't campaign and say, 'Please vote for me, I'll be able to handle an attack.' In other words, I didn't anticipate war. Presidents -- one of the things about the modern presidency is that the unexpected will happen." Asked his biggest regret, Mr. Bush said, "the biggest regret ...
Charles Gibson Interviews President Bush:
The Volokh Conspiracy —
The transcript is here . The most interesting part -- and also the part that has drawn the most press attention -- is the discussion of the role of intelligence failures in the invasion of Iraq: GIBSON: You've always said there's no do-overs as President. If you had one? BUSH: I don't know -- the biggest regret of all the presidency has to have been the intelligence failure in Iraq. A lot of people put their reputations on the line and said the weapons of mass destruction is a reason to remove Saddam Hussein. It wasn't just people in my administration; a lot of members in ...
Rove: We Wouldn't Have Invaded Iraq If We Knew The Truth About WMDs
The Huffington Post | Full News Feed —
... And yet, his remarks stand in contrast to those offered by the president himself, both recently and in the past. In an interview that aired last night with ABC's Charlie Gibson, Bush declared that the greatest regret of his presidency was "the intelligence failure in Iraq." But he claimed it was "hard... to speculate" as to whether or not he would make the same decision to invade with the correct information. ...
Rove: We Wouldn't Have Invaded Iraq If We Knew The Truth About WMDs
Politics on HuffingtonPost.com —
... And yet, his remarks stand in contrast to those offered by the president himself, both recently and in the past. In an interview that aired last night with ABC's Charlie Gibson, Bush declared that the greatest regret of his presidency was "the intelligence failure in Iraq." But he claimed it was "hard... to speculate" as to whether or not he would make the same decision to invade with the correct information. ...
Is our presidents learning?
Lawyers, Guns and Money —
I suppose everyone has a punch-the-wall-with-your-face moment in this interview. Here's mine: GIBSON: You said you were not going to be in the business of nation-building. And so much of what you had to do was nation-building. BUSH: Well, what I said was, in the course of a debate, I said the military shouldn't be used to build nations. In this case, it turns out the military, in my judgment, was needed to remove threats to our security, and after that removal, the military, as well as our diplomatic corps, needed to help rebuild after tyrannical ...
The Bush Legacy Project
Political Animal —
THE BUSH LEGACY PROJECT.... George W. Bush recently took a lackadaisical attitude when it comes to his role in history, telling ABC News, "I don't spend a lot of time really worrying about short-term history. I guess I don't worry about long-term history, either, since I'm not going to be around to read it, but, look, in this job you just do what you can." Putting aside whether the president actually believe this -- Adam Serwer makes the case that " ...
Bush and Rove Launch 'Legacy' Project
The BRAD BLOG —
... Bush was up first, on Monday night, with the interview with ABC's Gibson, but notice how Bush whiffs on the revisionist script when he is supposed to second-guess the decision to invade: ...
No More Mister Nice Blog — ... I'd love to charge Bush with a "bottomless capacity for self-pity," but I just don't think it's that exactly -- he just wants us to feel sorry enough for him that we'll absolve him of responsibility for anything that went wrong on his watch. He certainly doesn't seem to have found presidentin' to be very exhausting; quite the country, as he explained to ABC's Charlie Gibson: ...
Cheney, Iraq, and 'wrong' intel
Political Animal —
CHENEY, IRAQ, AND 'WRONG' INTEL.... It's not entirely surprising that Bush and Cheney still refuse to take responsibility for their tragic Iraq misjudgments, and continue to spin what transpired when it came to the Iraq-related intelligence, but that doesn't make it any more palatable. Last month, it was the president, lamenting the " intelligence failure in Iraq ," and wishing the "intelligence had been different." Bush, of course, conveniently overlooked the inconvenient details, such as the entirely accurate intelligence that he ignored because it didn't tell him what he ...
No More Mister Nice Blog — ... -- which, judging from the fact that as late as last month Bush was still blaming the acrimony of the past eight years on the 2000 post-election battle over Florida, sure seems to me like a shot at Al Gore and those who challenged the Florida results ... although this, like the other lines I've quoted, is ambiguous enough to elicit a "Who, me?" if you asked Bush or his speechwriters if it was intended as a dig at the Democrats. ...
David Fiderer: The Levin Report Prompts A Second Look At Other Bush-Era Whitewashes
Politics on HuffingtonPost.com —
... Yet on December 1, 2008, Charlie Gibson asked Bush, "If the intelligence had been right, would there have been an Iraq war?" Bush responded with an obvious and transparent lie, "Saddam Hussein was unwilling to let the inspectors go in to determine whether or not the U.N. resolutions were being upheld." Willfully blind, Gibson offered no follow up. ...
