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Bush’s big ‘regret’

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In a valedictory interview with ABC News, President Bush has come closer than ever to acknowledging that the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a mistake -- but not close enough. In Watergate parlance, Bush’s concession is a “modified limited hangout.”

“The biggest regret of all the presidency has to have been the intelligence failure in Iraq,” Bush told Charles Gibson. “A lot of people put their reputations on the line and said the weapons of mass destruction is a reason to remove Saddam Hussein.” Given that Bush previously has acknowledged that there were, in fact, no WMD in Iraq, and that Iraq had no connection with 9/11, the fair inference is that the war was unnecessary.

That impression is strengthened by Bush’s answer to Gibson’s follow-up question. Asked if he would have led the nation to war if U.S. intelligence had concluded that there were no WMD, the president reverted to the annoying equivocation that has characterized his reactions to other administration missteps. “That’s an interesting question,” Bush replied. “That is a do-over that I can’t do.”

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Of course Bush can’t un-invade Iraq, but you don’t have to be capable of time travel to admit that discrediting the principal justification for war also discredits the war itself. Such an admission wouldn’t change the fact that, as even President-elect Barack Obama concedes, U.S. involvement in Iraq can’t be undone overnight. It doesn’t even undermine Bush’s argument that, once in Iraq, he had an obligation to “win.”

It might seem churlish, at this late date, to ask Bush to make a frank confession that a war that has killed more than 4,200 Americans was based on a mistake. After all, other figures in Washington -- including Secretary of State-designate Hillary Rodham Clinton -- were misled about the WMD threat. It’s also possible that Bush believes that to admit he erred in invading Iraq would be to endorse the charge by his harshest critics that he deliberately deceived the American people about the threat posed by Hussein.

Still, welcome as his latest remarks are, they fall short of the recognition of reality that would have been cathartic for Bush and for the nation.

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