From Pine View Farm

A Night for Extra Law and Order Reruns 2

Please. Just. Go. Away.

President George W. Bush will give a farewell address to the nation Thursday night, billed by the administration as a chance to reflect on his tenure and welcome Barack Obama without fighting old battles one last time.

Afterthought:

Dan Froomkin, responding to a question in his chat earlier today (emphasis added):

Dallas: Hey Dan, The whole “disappointment” that there weren’t weapons of mass destruction in Iraq seems to me to be pretty perverse. I mean, shouldn’t we be glad that Saddam didn’t have weapons of mass destruction? I think the disappointment should be directed towards the decision to go to Iraq based on the false assertion of WMD (or, with Bush spin applied) the intelligence indicating that there were WMD in Iraq when there weren’t. Has that struck you as odd?

Dan Froomkin: Odd, yes. I think it’s Bush shorthand for “I’m disappointed that we were wrong about the WMD.” But even that doesn’t cut it. For one, there is a powerful argument to be made that, as the Downing Street Memo said, the intelligence was being fixed around the policy. And then there’s the fact that he won’t say that, had he known there were no WMD, he wouldn’t have attacked anyway. So what’s he disappointed about?

The answer is that, like the Mission Accomplished banner and not landing Air Force One in Louisiana, he’s just sorry things looked bad. He doesn’t seem to have any genuine regrets at all.

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2 comments

  1. Karen

    January 14, 2009 at 4:33 pm

    I do believe there’s a new Smoking Gun Stupidist Criminals on Thursday night.

     
  2. Frank

    January 14, 2009 at 8:41 pm

    Is that how he’s billing the speech?