Blame It On The Lies

President Bush was interviewed by "What respect Charlie" Gibson, and that was broadcast/released today. The whole thing is somewhat infuriating, in my humble opinion, because President Bush remains deceptive right to the end. Or, maybe he's deceived even himself, and convinced himself that Iraq never let the U.N. weapons inspectors in, as he continues to claim -

GIBSON: You've always said there's no do-overs as President. If you had one?

BUSH: 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.

GIBSON: If the intelligence had been right, would there have been an Iraq war?

BUSH: Yes, because Saddam Hussein was unwilling to let the inspectors go in to determine whether or not the U.N. resolutions were being upheld. In other words, if he had had weapons of mass destruction, would there have been a war? Absolutely.

GIBSON: No, if you had known he didn't.

BUSH: Oh, I see what you're saying. You know, that's an interesting question. That is a do-over that I can't do. It's hard for me to speculate.

"A do-over I can't do"? Why doesn't he just say, "Whoops, my bad!", because what he is saying is just as insulting.

As we've pointed out here before, it was President Bush who told the weapons inspectors to leave Iraq, not Saddam Hussein -

U.N. weapons inspectors climbed aboard a plane and pulled out of Iraq on Tuesday after President Bush issued a final ultimatum for Saddam Hussein to step down or face war. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Monday ordered all U.N. inspectors and support staff, humanitarian workers and U.N. observers along the Iraq-Kuwait border to evacuate Iraq after U.S. threats to launch war.

After failing to secure U.N. authorization to use force to disarm Iraq, Bush gave Saddam 48 hours to step down or face war in a speech Monday night.
…

U.N. weapons inspectors arrived in Baghdad for the first time in four years on Nov. 27, 2002, and resumed inspections two days later. During four months of inspections, arms experts traveled the length of the country hunting for banned weapons of mass destruction.

Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix has said that during those inspections, inspectors never found any "smoking gun."

Of course, Mr. Bush was deceiving us shortly after that, as he "reinvented" the past in his interview with Tim Russert almost one year after the war was started -

You remember U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441 clearly stated “show us your arms and destroy them, or your programs and destroy them.” And we said, “There are serious consequences if you don't” and that was a unanimous verdict. In other words, the worlds of the U.N. Security Council said we're unanimous and you're a danger. So, it wasn't just me and the United States. The world thought he was dangerous and needed to be disarmed.
And, of course, he defied the world once again.

So that's how this dangerous, damaging, and derelict Presidency is ending, with more and more lies being piled up in a pitiful attempt to rehabilitate his record. Or, maybe just to tell himself that he couldn't have been that wrong, could he?