Now he tells us

February 1, 2007

In an otherwise unremarkable interview with the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, the president explained a bit about how he came to realize his strategy in Iraq wasn’t working.

WSJ: Was there a moment in the war when you said we have to make a major change in the way we’re doing things in Iraq?

GWB: Yes, there was.

WSJ: When was that?

GWB: September/October.

WSJ: Why?

GWB: Violence. It looked like it was uncontrollable.

Now, there are a couple of things wrong with this, not the least of which is the fact that “September/October” is not a “moment” (though, for a man who sees three years of costly war as a “comma,” maybe his timing is a little off).

The more serious problem is what Bush and his top aides were saying in “September/October,” when they insisted we didn’t need to make a major change.

TP gives us the rundown:

QUESTION: Are we winning?
BUSH: Absolutely we’re winning. … We’re winning and we will win, unless we leave before the job is done. And the crucial battle, right now, is Iraq. [10/25/06]

BUSH: But I believe that the military strategy we have is going to work. That’s what I believe. [10/25/06]

QUESTION: But just to be clear: When the commanders on the ground tell the president, in the large picture, we are stepping closer to chaos, he believes that can also be a picture of winning?
SNOW: Yes. [11/1/06]

BUSH: We’ve got a lot going for us. We got a strategy that helps us achieve victory, and we got a military that is the finest military any country has ever assembled. [11/3/06]

In September and October, to suggest that the current strategy was failing was to be a defeatist. To argue for a major change in policy was to be foolish, if not dangerous. All the while, however, according to the president, he was convinced that the criticisms were absolutely right. How convenient for him to acknowledge that now.

This is no small admission. Bush is effectively admitting, on the record, that he was blatantly lying before the midterm elections, in all likelihood for partisan political purposes.

How in the world does anyone still find the president credible?

Your military can be as fine as you want, but when you keep using it when you shouldn’t be fighting, that starts not to matter.

D’oh!

  • The Carpetbagger asks:

    How in the world does anyone still find the president credible?

    Easy answer:

    NO ONE WHO HAS BEEN PAYING ATTENTION DOES.

    A pity so few actually are paying attention.

  • There are a lot of people who get their opinions on the military and its missions from TV personalities like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly, apparently. When they keep fucking up over time it becomes apparent to even a regular guy like me that they’re listening to these sources instead of the sources they should be listening to, that regular people don’t have.

    That’s when regular people realize you’re all a cluster-fuck and have to be reined in, and you get the November elections that just past. Realize it, quick. Fix your actions.

  • I’m sure George meant that he just now realized that he realized it back Sept/October. It takes a little while for his realizations to be realized.

    Bush tries to act like any changes of mind he has is already old news. Then next he tries to pretend he was always of that opinion.

  • How in the world does anyone still find the president credible?

    I believe the presence of an additional chromosome is the most likely explantaion….

  • “Bush is effectively admitting, on the record, that he was blatantly lying before the midterm elections, in all likelihood for partisan political purposes.”

    He also said around that time that Rumsfled wasn’t going anywhere. After the election he said he gave that answer on Rumsfeld to get reporters to move on to other questions. You don’t even need the word “effectively” so say he admitted lying on that.

    He’s like ‘Yeah, I lied. So?’ He doesn’t care. Nobody’s shocked about it either. It’s so much what we’ve come to expect, there doesn’t even have to be a pretense of truth anymore. So the fig leaf fell off. There was never much holding it in place to begin with.

  • If Bush is remotely serious (i know – he isn’t) he should not be a Rethug, but rather an unreconstructed 60s hippie. After all, good anti-war leftists have long said that the problem with all war is the “uncontrollable violence.”

  • The thing is, the quotes from Think Progress are no surprise. Even if most people couldn’t give direct quotes and cite sources from memory, even if they may have dressed it up in slightly different language, everyone-but-everyone knew that the plan was “more of the same” until after the election. I get the impression that “let us preview the questions, no followups allowed” is a condition of the vast majority of all communications between the executive branch and the media. For that matter, it’s probably not just the executive branch, but whatever.

    Just once, I’d like to see some journalist get a little more enterprising or thoughtful or fed-up than most and break that policy. The odds are against it, obviously, since surprising the president like that would be a risky career move. But it would be a truly great thing to see Bush/Cheney/Rice/whoever fumble around in a blind, persecuted panic for a few minutes on camera, or even just (more likely) outright lie about what actually happened.

  • The Carpetbagger asks:
    How in the world does anyone still find the president credible?

    My problem is that we still have a large number of DEMOCRATIC Senators and Congressmen who take him at his word. Assuming that W is a rational man who will not act irresponsibly is how we got into this mess. I am trying to keep the hostile rhetoric to a minimum but to assume that this President is any different from your average adolescent caught in a lie is inviting trouble. It would be sadly amusing if people were not dying.
    W is going to bull his way ahead until he is forcibly pulled up short and the Democratic opposition is going to continue to look like a bunch of befuddled donkeys.

  • Cyrus

    If the journalists confront Bush directly they will lose their White House Press Passes. They tell themselves that they are doing what they have to in order to keep bringing us the news but actually they are shilling for the house. “White House Correspondent” is a status title. The vast majority of them like their title a lot more than they like truth, or the USA.

    Why is what Bush and Cheney say always newsworthy but not the provable fact that they are lying.

  • What Art K said.

    The Dems who keep falling for this BS need to be whacked hard upside the head. Hard.

    Obviously Bush could care less if he’s caught lying, just like his buddy Rush Limbaugh, he lies to us “for our own good”.

  • Maybe he just didn’t realize that he’d realized. Like when he asid he didn’t know that he’d said ‘Democrat Party’ in the SOTU. Unless people tell him what he’s saying or thinking, he’s not always aware of it, you know.

  • I get the feeling W equates his obvious lies with “being strong” and not wanting to admit failings or shortcomings of his administration. If he told the truth, that would be like leaving Iraq and any hint of failure, lack of confidence, lack of “stomach” or anything other than utter hubrisis a sign of weakness in his mind. Strength is all about image and if the image falters than one becomes weak and the weak, we all know, get crushed.

    Bush is a hologram of “strong” talk and images. It’s part of his complex web of pathologies that have developed synergy and make Bush the abomination of a president that he is.

  • he’s the decider so when he sez ‘september/october’, he deciderered whenever he damned well pleased. respect his authoritaaah!

    lying sack of shit, he is.

  • THE BIGGER ISSUE HERE is that it is evidence of the fact that Bus was playing politics with national security and the lives of American troops and was too busy lying to the American people about how the war was going to begin developing a different strategy that would get us out of this huge effing mess!

  • Comment 16 – johnny d

    Shrub has been playing politics with the Iraq war from Day 1. By my best guestimate, day 1 goes back to nov/dec 2001.

    Nothing has changed.

  • If the journalists confront Bush directly they will lose their White House Press Passes. They tell themselves that they are doing what they have to in order to keep bringing us the news but actually they are shilling for the house. “White House Correspondent” is a status title. The vast majority of them like their title a lot more than they like truth, or the USA.

    Wellll… yes, like I said, “odds are against it” and “risky career move.”

  • Now wait a minute….. wasn’t it in September/October that the mantra from Shrub and Co. was “Stay the Course! Stay the Course?” That, and accusing the Democrat Party of “Cut and Run! Cut and Run.”

  • BS alert: A careful reader might conclude if Bush just said the Shias, often called Shiites, had looked into the abyss of a civil and pulled back, but they didn’t . . . then Bush just said the Shiites are in a civil war now. Even if Bush doesn’t say it explicitly. And while Bush’s advisors now may want to make him appear as if he was on top of things earlier than people thought, the new Bush looks like a liar.

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