Regret-Me-Not

By Eugene Robinson
WashPost
Friday, December 5, 2008

Remember that long-ago news conference when George W. Bush couldn't think of any mistakes he had made? Unbelievably, he still can't.

When ABC's Charles Gibson, interviewing Bush at Camp David, asked the president what one "do-over" he'd like to have, this was Bush's reply:

"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."

Fellow sufferers from Bush Derangement Syndrome, mind your blood pressure. Just seven more weeks. Hang in there, because there are two more snippets from the interview that I have to quote.

When Gibson asked whether there would have been an Iraq war if Bush had known that Hussein had no WMDs, Bush replied: "You know, that's an interesting question. That is a do-over that I can't do. It's hard for me to speculate." And when Gibson asked Bush to name his greatest accomplishment, he got this response: "I keep recognizing we're in a war against ideological thugs and keeping America safe."

(More here.)