Beyond Hubris

Tom Brokaw says that HUBRIS, the just-published book by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, "is a bold and provocative book that will quickly become an explosive part of the national debate on how we got involved in Iraq." But apparently not even Isikoff and Corn have been able to bring themselves to call the Bush cabal liars. So what is with the hesitation? The Bush circle had significant intelligence information that precluded an attack on Iraq. They brushed aside that information and unleashed their senseless and devastating war. Right up to the present, they have continued to mouth absurdities, especially the one about a connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11/01. That is not just hubris. It is arrogant looniness.
And the beat goes on, very loudly. Bush spokesman Tony Snow has just announced that democracy "is gaining a footing in Afghanistan and Iraq." What is gaining a footing in Afghanistan right now is a Taleban resurgence and a burgeoning heroin trade that is killing people from Afghanistan to New York and beyond. (And the profits are funding the Taleban.) What is gaining a footing -- well, more a permanence than a footing -- in Iraq right now is civil war, death squads and probably a three-way partitioning of the country.
Behold what George has wrought.
This surely ain't a time for optimism.