The Washington Post has the goods today on Richard Perle and Wesley Clark being questioned on Iraq at the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Perle being the NeoCon and Clark being the military vet.
Rep. Walter B. Jones Jr. is a conservative Republican from North Carolina who voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq. So it jarred all the more yesterday when Jones turned his fury on Richard N. Perle, the Pentagon adviser who provided the Bush administration with brainpower for the Iraq war.
“It is just amazing to me how we as a Congress were told we had to remove [Saddam] . . . but the reason we were given was not accurate,”
He then asked why the Administration had not apologized.
Perles response:
There is reason to believe that we were sucked into an ill-conceived initial attack aimed at Saddam himself by double agents planted by the regime. And as we now know the estimate of Saddam’s stockpile of weapons of mass destruction was substantially wrong.
How dispicably insulting.
It is often said that the “honourable” thing to do in cases where you are proven mistaken is to apologize.
It is clear this administration, or at least Richard Perle, has no honour. In fact, they do the opposite of apologizing… instead they continue to cling and make excuse after excuse for their incompetance and arrogance.
General Clarke was a little more magnanimous when saying “I told you so”:
Chairman Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.)… pressed Clark to acknowledge that the Iraq invasion should get some credit for signs of democracy in the region…. The chairman likened President Bush’s Middle East policies to those of President Ronald Reagan in Eastern Europe.
“Reagan never invaded Eastern Europe,” Clark retorted.
Enough said.
Update
I just re-read Richard Perles response… and it dawned on me that he’s actually implying that Saddams security/intelligence services are apparently more capable than the CIA and NSA combined. He’s saying that the policy of the American Adminisrtration was influenced by a foreign, hostile government.
If it’s true… well, the incompetence required to allow for such a feat is staggering.
If it’s not true… then he’s simply a bald-faced liar.
Doesn’t make you feel all warm and fuzzy knowing people like this are creating policy for the most powerful country in the world?
P.S.
I just discovered that my browser does support spellchecking within form fields. Woohoo!