Neocons throwing Bush under the bus on Iraq

Rats desert a sinking ship. This was just too predictable:

According to Perle, who left the Defense Policy Board in 2004, this unfolding catastrophe has a central cause: devastating dysfunction within the administration of President George W. Bush. Perle says, "The decisions did not get made that should have been. They didn't get made in a timely fashion, and the differences were argued out endlessly.… At the end of the day, you have to hold the president responsible.…

To David Frum, the former White House speechwriter who co-wrote Bush's 2002 State of the Union address that accused Iraq of being part of an "axis of evil," it now looks as if defeat may be inescapable, because "the insurgency has proven it can kill anyone who cooperates, and the United States and its friends have failed to prove that it can protect them." This situation, he says, must ultimately be blamed on "failure at the center"—starting with President Bush.

Frank Gaffney: "[Bush] doesn't in fact seem to be a man of principle who's steadfastly pursuing what he thinks is the right course. He talks about it, but the policy doesn't track with the rhetoric, and that's what creates the incoherence that causes us problems around the world and at home. It also creates the sense that you can take him on with impunity."

"Cakewalk" Kenny Adelman: "The most dispiriting and awful moment of the whole administration was the day that Bush gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to [former C.I.A. director] George Tenet, General Tommy Franks, and [Coalition Provisional Authority chief] Jerry [Paul] Bremer—three of the most incompetent people who've ever served in such key spots. And they get the highest civilian honor a president can bestow on anyone! That was the day I checked out of this administration. It was then I thought, There's no seriousness here, these are not serious people. If he had been serious, the president would have realized that those three are each directly responsible for the disaster of Iraq."

Michael Rubin: "Where I most blame George Bush is that through his rhetoric people trusted him, people believed him. Reformists came out of the woodwork and exposed themselves." By failing to match his rhetoric with action, Rubin adds, Bush has betrayed Iraqi reformers in a way that is "not much different from what his father did on February 15, 1991, when he called the Iraqi people to rise up, and then had second thoughts and didn't do anything once they did."

Richard Perle: "Huge mistakes were made, and I want to be very clear on this: They were not made by neoconservatives, who had almost no voice in what happened, and certainly almost no voice in what happened after the downfall of the regime in Baghdad. I'm getting damn tired of being described as an architect of the war. I was in favor of bringing down Saddam. Nobody said, 'Go design the campaign to do that.' I had no responsibility for that."

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2006/12/neocons200612?printable=true&currentPage=all

And Perle expected better? Perle is the same guy who a few years ago said so condescendingly of Bush:

"The first time I met Bush 43, I knew he was different. Two things became clear. One, he didn’t know very much. The other was he had confidence to ask questions that revealed he didn’t know very much. Most people are reluctant to say when they don’t know something, a word or a term they haven’t heard before. Not him."

He expected to convince this guy to start a war and then trust him to manage it right when it was obvious to him from the start that "he didn't know very much" about the world?

These guys are too shrewd to have discounted the liklihood of an insurgency and a quagmire. Plenty of knowledgeable and credible people predicted this. It's just that no one wanted to hear it.

I'm pretty sure they knew all along that if circumstances required it they would throw the administration under the bus and wash their hands of responsibility for the war they sold with lies. And sure enough here they go.

All that mattered to these guys was to get the war rolling and get us committed. Once in there they knew it would be a "you break it you buy it" situation and that with U.S. prestige on the line, we would be hooked.

That is all they wanted, which is why we rushed in with so little forethought or preparation. Get us committed and the rest can be made up on the fly...

Nice work Mr. Perle, Mr. Adelman. Nice work.