The pot calls the kettle black

Now that Iraq is viewed as a quackmire by most observers, the people that beat the drums of war loudest are starting to turn on each other.

Here is a letter to the editor of the Washington Post by Richard Perle entitled:

How the CIA failed America

After reading his letter it is worth recalling some of the gems uttered by Richard Perle:

"A year from now, I'll be very surprised if there is not some grand square in Baghdad that is named after President Bush."

"If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don't try to piece together clever diplomacy but just wage a total war, our children will sing great songs about us years from now."

"There is no doubt that, with the exception of a very small number of people close to a vicious regime, the people of Iraq have been liberated and they understand that they've been liberated. "

"I've known Ahmed Chelabi for more than a dozen years. He is a man, in my experience, of absolute integrity and courage, and he would be a great Iraqi leader."

"If Iraq turns out to be the success I'm confident it will be, I think others in the region will look at Iraq and say, Why can't we rid ourselves of a regime that's rather similar in some ways to the Iraqi regime? So the precedential effect of liberating Iraq may assist in bringing about democratic reform elsewhere."

Without this context you might consider Richard Perle a blameless victim after reading his letter. With context you might realize there is plenty of blame to go around for this costly mistake.

Primarily the blame seems to be the firmly held notion that external societies can be redesigned with warfare to suit our ends, and that ghastly means justify those ends. A lot of over-confidence in one's own opinion also seems to have played a role. I suppose one should not discount a lack of sympathy for the suffering of others.

As ugly as the past few years have been, the back-biting, legacy-inflating, egotistical lashings of the Bush administration officials towards each other shall undoubtedly surpass them.