Out of My Mind

From the AP, 15 December:

President Bush said Wednesday the responsibility for invading Iraq based in part on faulty weapons intelligence rested solely with him, taking on the issue in his most direct and personal terms in the 1,000-plus days since the war's first shots.

''It is true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong,'' Bush said. ''As president, I'm responsible for the decision to go into Iraq.''

Again, the intel was pretty adequate til it reached the White House and the administration aparatchiks (and, what the Hell, let's add the water carriers in -- the running dog lackeys of -- the MSM, particularly Judy Miller).

And what does W have to say in explanation about that?

Nothing. Of course.

In other words, it's quite lovely that he apologised about another bogus reson for the war, while still, you know defending it, but when is he going apologise for having the intel cooked? Let alone apologise for the war? And, for that matter, all the gratuitous harm done Iraq prior to the war i.e. the sanctions for which the wingnuts deserved most of the blame?

Meanwhile, the AP missed this, as reported in the Wall Street Journal (sub req'd):

While nodding to prewar mistakes in information and analysis, Mr. Bush also used his speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars to declare that he was responding to flaws in the system that led to those problems. "I'm also responsible for fixing what went wrong by reforming our intelligence capabilities. And we're doing just that," he said, referring to his recent appointment of a national intelligence czar.

Uhh, such a simple solution: the guilty should do the ethical, moral thing. That is, everyone responsible in the administration for cooking the intel should resign. From the president on down.

Meanwhile, the fourth 'graph in has the money quote -- see why I love the WSJ so much, the rest of the MSM should be able to run stuff like this, early in an article, on page 1:

"It is true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong," the president said in a speech yesterday. "As president, I'm responsible for the decision to go into Iraq." While Mr. Bush has previously conceded such errors and has always taken responsibility for going to war, his comments were unusual for their candid linkage of the two issues, barely a year after a 2004 campaign in which he admitted to no significant first-term mistakes when asked if he had made any.