You have, I think, the best posts in this thread. Solid overview, and I generally agree with your analysis. It sure reads better than just calling the guy names for doing what most people, unfortunately, would do, whether anyone wants to believe it or not. It’s just a typical, cynical cash-grab from someone who’s decided that framing his experience in a manner any book publisher would consider sexy, so, in a way, it’s more capitalist than disloyal. But I can’t imagine it’s going to do well: the “I told you so” Left will likely decide there’s nothing in there they didn’t already suspect. Is anyone else so thirsty for ‘inside details’ on the Bush White House that they haven’t gotten from people like Tenet & even Greenspan, that they’ll pay for this puh?
What I’ve never seen much of from the administration—and it still puzzles me—is putting forth certain things that might have offset some of the controversy over the ‘lies’ about WMDs. Christopher Hitchens has referenced many times a report issued by David Kay that included mention of Iraq’s continuing efforts to purchase materials from North Korea, specifically meetings involving Hussein’s agents as late as February 2003, in Damascus. Who knows, maybe that’s bogus, but Hitchens, whose steadfast support of the invasion I’ve long admired, has never backed off this. He’s also argued with lefties all day long about how Zarqawi was being aided by Saddam for some time prior to the invasion.
I’ve wondered if the Bush administration decided that winning the argument with the media about ‘lies’ was a futile pursuit and left it alone. Given that there was certainly evidence that Hussein was, at the very least, a REALLY BAD GUY, it seems like an opportunity not just lost, but thrown away, to do one of the most difficult, and necessary, things in politics—change people’s minds.
Instead, they’ve all but admitted that it was a ‘mistake,’ and guys like this adding to that pile makes for a lot of disgust on the issue from this poster.