"At this stage, only a blind Bush partisan would have absolutely no reservations about our military action in Iraq. I certainly do not align myself with those who insist that America has mired itself in a Vietnam-style "quagmire." (Let's see how things are in another five years before making that particular comparison.) But I do harbor some uneasiness. I am quite disappointed with the Bush administration's seeming reluctance to realize that the failure (thus far) to find weapons of mass destruction is something that gives even hawks like me the willies. Is our intelligence really that faulty? If so, what are we going to do about it? If, on the other hand, there really were WMDs over there at some point (a safe bet in my book), then where are they now? It would be nice if the president would just talk to Americans one evening from the Oval Office and address this issue head-on, but that's apparently too much to ask. Too bad, because silence from the White House on this issue fosters skepticism among the public at large, and I fear that the burden of proof we will have to meet when the next Saddam comes along will be simply unattainable." (Emphasis added.)
Karl Rove, today:
At the time, we in the Bush White House discussed responding but decided not to relitigate the past. That was wrong and my mistake: I should have insisted to the president that this was a dagger aimed at his administration's heart. What Democrats started seven years ago left us less united as a nation to confront foreign challenges and overcome America's enemies.
