Bush: The Worst Communicator
ABCNews is running a series on some interesting documents found among released Hussein-era Iraqi government docs. I am not going to react to them in terms of how they affect the decision to go to war, in part because we have no idea how representative 6 or 7 damning documents are out of thousands that we have not yet been shown (a similar problem the Enron jury will soon face). Also, for reasons below in the footnote**.
My main reaction to these revelations was "wow, how badly does the Bush administration suck at communication?" After taking three years of criticism over exactly some of the issues addressed in these documents, and presumably others we have not yet seen, the administration just sat on this stuff and refused to release it? Clinton's folks would have had one of these presented each morning of every day for a year to the press with a little bow around it. I am flabbergasted that there are so many conspiracy theorists who think this administration has some special Karl-Rovian-mad-science to orchestrating events. To me, their PR successes look more like Peter Sellers accidentally avoiding numerous assassins in The Pink Panther Strikes Again.
** In the end, I think the Iraq invasion will be looked at as "worth it" historically if its effects resonate beyond Iraq, e.g. it provides a beacon of democracy around which other democratic elements in the middle east coalesce and grow stronger. If Iraq turns out to be just about Iraq, the world will be well-rid of a nasty dictator but the US will have spent a great deal of its available armed forces and treasure and influence and prestige on a single screwed-up dictatorship, while ignoring tens of others who also brutalize their people and who also support terrorism. Against this definition of success, the recently revealed documents don't do much for me one way or the other. They do, however, strongly effect my opinion of Russia. Why Bush continues to give Putin a pass is beyond me.
