By Mary Lyon -- World News Trust
He said WHAT? The CNN headline solemnly intoned, “Bush takes responsibility for invasion intelligence.” As the long-suffering butler played by Sir John Gielgud in the 1981 film “Arthur” told Dudley Moore’s rich miscreant title character – “I’ll alert the media.”
Should I be impressed? Umm… can I get back to you on that?
Mighty big of Dubya, actually, to make such a magnanimous gesture. He’s actually taking responsibility? "It is true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong," Bush said during his fourth and final speech before Thursday's vote for Iraq's parliament. "As president I am responsible for the decision to go into Iraq. And I'm also responsible for fixing what went wrong by reforming our intelligence capabilities. And we're doing just that."
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/12/14/bush.iraq/index.html That was big of him, though. Truly. This guy’s miserable track record over the past several miserable years certainly illustrates what a difficult job making that statement actually was for Junior. Bush has spent the first four-and-a-half years of his reign of terror either passively avoiding or actively shirking responsibility for every pooch he’s screwed. Up until this past summer’s end, nothing was ever his fault. He was loathe to admit having made any mistake, and flat-out said so at one memorable press briefing when he was asked that question. Moreover, he’s had armies of defenders, apologists, and excuse-makers fanning out across the country, resolutely deflecting and distracting, blaming the Democrats. Blaming Bill Clinton. Blaming the terrorists. Blaming the so-called yet nonexistent “liberal media.” Blaming the so-called “fringe” focus groups. Blaming the Osama-lovers and goll-durned unpatriotic Commie loony lefties. Blaming people like me -- I’ve had emails questioning why I hate America and why I’m channeling Neville Chamberlain at a time like this. For these four-and-a-half years nothing that happened on his watch, from his directives, because of his policies and his lies, somehow NOTHING has ever been his fault. All roads lead somewhere else -- wherever the buck stops at any given moment. Funny enough, this White House that Dick Cheney did so much to muscle up with unprecedented power -- was somehow still powerless. Fascinating!
It took Hurricane Katrina to start changing that. For the first time since he “took” office, Bush actually was forced to admit he was responsible “to the extent that” the federal government made any mistakes. The wording here was carefully crafted and couched so he still had wiggle-room to separate himself from a straight-on admission of imperfection. At that time, there was such a public uproar about the historic incompetence of THAT “heckuva job” that the only wiggle-room available to him was all talk. The facts clearly showed, as Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco’s reams of released documents have since proven, that the landmark botch job had to be laid squarely at the feet of the Bush-led federal government.
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