DeWine was misled, but can't admit it

[Algorem]

http://www.cleveland.com/news/esullivan/index.ssf?/base/opinion/1160037430226810.xml&coll=2

Thursday, October 05, 2006
Elizabeth Sullivan
Plain Dealer Columnist

...Anyone listening would have been hard-pressed to believe DeWine was about to vote for a Tonkinlike authorization for war without requiring additional plans, more troops, a wider range of allies and further consultations with Congress.

Yet that is just what DeWine did -- joined by 76 other senators and 296 members of the House. These votes were not just Congress' biggest abdication of responsibility after 9/11, they also represented a willful suspension of disbelief about what the president and his team were up to.

DeWine said at the time that he had met personally with the president as he weighed his vote, and was "convinced President George Bush will do absolutely everything he can to avoid war."...

Today, DeWine must know that the president misled him when he said or implied that war against Iraq would be a last resort. He surely knows the horror stories he spun that day -- and more -- have come true as a result of the White House's disastrous mismanagement. Yet he and the majority still are unwilling to call the president's bluff, to admit the war has gone disastrously wrong, repeal the Iraq war resolution and demand a change in Pentagon management.

[waiting for hope]

1. Ohhh, let the

backpedaling begin!