Bush: The Dog Ate My Intelligence Failure

I don't know -- the biggest regret of all the presidency has to have been the intelligence failure in Iraq. A lot of people put their reputations on the line and said the weapons of mass destruction is a reason to remove Saddam Hussein. It wasn't just people in my administration; a lot of members in Congress, prior to my arrival in Washington D.C., during the debate on Iraq, a lot of leaders of nations around the world were all looking at the same intelligence. And, you know, that's not a do-over, but I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess.

George W. Bush, President of the United States, January 20, 2001 - January 20, 2009
(Interview with ABC News Charlie Gibson, December 1, 2008)

"...But I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess."  Gibson then asks Bush "If the intelligence had been right [i.e., that Saddam had no WMD], would there still have been an Iraq war?"   Bush demurs: "it's hard for me to speculate."  Whereas we all know that Saddam was toast no matter what: WMD or no, Bush was going to invade Iraq.

Compare Bush's "regrets" over faulty information on WMD to this from Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Defense Secretary in the first term, who said right after the invasion that Saddam's supposed possession of WMD was simply "the one reason everyone could agree on" and was chosen as the main justification for "bureaucratic reasons."

As Greg Sargent puts it in TPM Election Central

For Bush to blame the failure of intel for his decision to invade is not a concession at all, and it is not an admission of failure on his part. Rather, it is the opposite of these things. It is an evasion of responsibility for what happened.

I think the good people at CartoonStock should come up with a Bush version of "The Dog Ate My Homework."  And the US mainstream media should cease and desist from granting self-serving interviews to a man who appears to have nothing better to do, while the edifice that he took charge of crumbles around him in his last 50 days.