A tongue in cheek piece from Al Kamen today:
Reporters keep whining about how the Bush administration insists it has never made a mistake, never changed policy and so on. But over the weekend, none other than Iraq viceroy L. Paul “Jerry” Bremer admitted to making a most regrettable mistake.
News reports surfaced last week about statements Bremer made at a Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation conference on terrorism on Feb. 26, 2001, more than six months before the World Trade Center attacks.
“The new administration seems to be paying no attention to the problem of terrorism,” he said. “What they will do is stagger along until there’s a major incident and then suddenly say, ‘Oh, my God, shouldn’t we be organized to deal with this?’ “
Sounds pretty prescient. Bremer, who had chaired the National Commission on Terrorism, said, “That’s too bad. They’ve been given a window of opportunity with very little terrorism now, and they’re not taking advantage of it. Maybe the folks in the press ought to be pushing a little bit.” (Oh, sure, we’ll get right on it.)
But on Sunday, Bremer, said to be a possible secretary of state or national security adviser in a second term, issued a statement saying that his “criticism of the new administration . . . was unfair. President Bush had just been sworn into office and could not reasonably be held responsible for the federal government’s inaction over the preceding seven months.” What’s more, he said, “I regret any suggestion to the contrary.”
That sounds like admitting a mistake. A most terrible mistake, which he attributed to his “frustration,” because the outgoing Clinton and new Bush administrations hadn’t implemented his recommendations. “In fact,” he said, “I have since learned” that the Bush administration was completely, totally on top of this.
That’s more like it.
