That the American war in Iraq has been characterized by arrogance, mendacity, and incompetence is beyond dispute. Exhibit A. Exhibit B.
Hendrik Hertzberg summarizes John McCain's relationship with the Iraq debacle in the context of the train wreck that is "The Straight Talk Express":
He plumped for lobbying reform but has lobbyists running his campaign. He opposed enacting Bush's tax cuts for the rich but supports extending them indefinitely. He supported a "patients' bill of rights" but refuses to treat health care as itself a right. He voted against banning same-sex marriage in the Constitution but favors banning it state by state. He once disdained the likes of Reverend Jerry Falwell (who blamed AIDS on God's alleged hatred of a "society that tolerates homosexuals") but now embraces the likes of Reverend John Hagee (who called the Roman Catholic Church "the great whore"). He was for starting the Iraq war but against the way it was being fought; now he's for the way it's being fought but against discussing whether it should have been started.
Touche, but he might have mentioned too, at the very least, McCain's evolving position on immigration reform.
By following the Hertzberg link, you will see that he is on his way to taking up the subject of Condoleezza Rice, who, he notes, seems immune to the opprobrium that has attached to Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Gonzales, and the rest of the boys. Why is that? As Russell Baker points out, she has plainly failed. In the Frontline documentary (Exhibit A above) it is revealed that, in the run-up to the war, Colin Powell, the secretary of state, had to contact Rice to secure an audience with the president. In the realm of theory it should have been the task of the national security advisor to make sure that the president heard a variety of views, including especially those diverging from his own. But Rice seems to have regarded it as her job to keep the boy-man from being exposed to anything that might upset him. That she was an academic whose area of expertise was the Soviet Union shows how forward-looking the new Bush administration was in 2000.
These guys (and gal) were not up to the job.
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