New York Times to President Bush: Screw You

The editors at the New York Times are kicking President Bush from behind as he prepares to leave office.

We long ago gave up hope that President Bush would acknowledge his many mistakes, or show he had learned anything from them. Even then we were unprepared for the epic denial that Mr. Bush displayed in his interview with ABC News’s Charles Gibson the other day, which he presumably considered an important valedictory chat with the American public as well ....

A few sentences of indignation, then:

After everything the American public and the world have learned about how Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney manipulated Congress, public opinion and anyone else they could bully or lie to, Mr. Bush is still acting as though he decided to invade Iraq after suddenly being handed life and death information on Saddam Hussein’s arsenal.

Bully and lie?

Notice how there's not one word here on all the other intelligence agencies worldwide who independently backed the U.S. position that Saddam Hussein was a threat to international security. Notice how there's no mention that all the postwar reports on Iraq's WMD found Saddam to have been capable to renew a monumental weapons programs in a moment's time, and it will always be the case that the world would never have known the extent of Iraqi disarmament without the U.S. invasion.

To ignore all this to denounce Bush as maliciously dishonest - because he should have magically known the intelligence "to be faulty" - is despicable.

The moral vacuum and political polarization evident on the left today is the real threat to American and international security in the years ahead.

Whatever mistakes this administration made in the last eight years, an absence of moral clarity and granite resolve to see the job through on the ground are not among them.