Unfortunately, no. That’s what I meant when I said that we had those discussions in the NSC; he decided not to reopen the public discussion. As I recall, he said something to the effect of ‘History will show us to have been right.’ He was loathe to argue policy decisions in the media and he was a helluva lot smarter than the media portrayed him.
While I disagreed with a lot of his policy positions, I genuinely like George Bush. I didn’t spend a lot of time with him, but enough to know that he’s a good man with a great sense of humor (which I saw first hand my second day in the WH), a sense of duty and genuine respect for his employees and their time (he was NEVER late for a meeting and woe be unto anyone else who was), but he was, in my opinion, wrong about some things.
He did a lot of things for the military, veterans, his employees (White House Staff - particularly the lower level staff), his protective detail and others that have never seen the light of day - at the president’s explicit direction. The USSS chief of his protective detail is a good friend of mine and the agents thought a great deal of him. Even the stewards (the men and women who cook, serve, etc.) absolutely loved him and Laura. I grew to know the chief steward, a Navy master chief, and he told me a lot about the things that the president and Mrs. Bush did for them.
I’ll give you one example. The president loved to barbecue. When the president went to his ranch in Crawford, he would take one evening, barbecue for his protective detail and serve them personally as a measure of his appreciation for their service to him. You won’t see a mention of that in any newspaper because he wanted it that way.
I’d never vote for him again, nor for Jeb, but he’s a good guy.
I voted for GW twice. I would do the same thing.
I had serious disagreements with him over amnesty. I think he made a bad decision on Dubai Ports. But his worst decision was not defending himself in the media. They ate his lunch and that of his administration. I heard Cheney, I believe, about a year or so ago saying he now sees it as a mistake. It was more than a mistake. It was frustrating beyond measure.
In any case, I see no problem with Powell saying the spooks had bad info that they passed to him as good info. I can see a Trump listening to that kind of verification of the “No WMDs” meme that became doctrine everywhere eventually, and concluding that deceit took place.
Personally, I believe the deceit was the other direction. We found old WMDs, capability to quickly retool their WMD weaponry, recipes, and connections for precursors. More concerning to me always was the ability to produce small quantities of chemical weaponry and aerosolize it in small containers for terrorist distribution.
I NEVER feared terrorists shipping a major weapons system to the USA and attacking us with missiles or artillery. I was more concerned with a Raid can full of Sarin set off at a high school basketball game.