With just three months before the election, it takes some guts for a lawmaker to publicly admit that his support for Bush’s war in Iraq was wrong. It takes even more courage when we’re talking about a Republican from Nebraska.<\/p>\n
And yet, there was Rep. Doug Bereuter (R-Neb.) yesterday, admitting that the Iraqi invasion, in retrospect, was unjustified<\/a> (via the Progress Report<\/a>).<\/p>\n “I’ve reached the conclusion, retrospectively, now that the inadequate intelligence and faulty conclusions are being revealed, that all things being considered, it was a mistake to launch that military action,” Bereuter wrote in a letter to constituents in the final days of his congressional career.<\/p>\n That’s especially true in view of the fact that the attack was initiated “without a broad and engaged international coalition,” the 1st District congressman said.<\/p>\n “Knowing now what I know about the reliance on the tenuous or insufficiently corroborated intelligence used to conclude that Saddam maintained a substantial WMD (weapons of mass destruction) arsenal, I believe that launching the pre-emptive military action was not justified.”<\/p>\n As a result of the war, he said, “our country’s reputation around the world has never been lower and our alliances are weakened.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Bereuter is not just a random lawmaker. He’s a senior member of the House International Relations Committee and vice chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. And now he agrees that Bush was wrong. “Left unresolved for now is whether intelligence was intentionally misconstrued to justify military action,” he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Brave though this may be, Bereuter isn’t exactly risking Republican voters’ wrath with his announcement. He’s retiring this year after 26 years in the House.<\/p>\n Still, it’s encouraging to see conservative Republicans like him admit what is painfully obvious to the rest of us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With just three months before the election, it takes some guts for a lawmaker to publicly admit that his support for Bush’s war in Iraq was wrong. It takes even more courage when we’re talking about a Republican from Nebraska. And yet, there was Rep. Doug Bereuter (R-Neb.) yesterday, admitting that the Iraqi invasion, in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2360\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nAlmost as startling, Bereuter hinted that there may have been intentional deception during the administration’s drive for war.<\/p>\n