NOTE FROM JOHN: Remember, this is the suck-up neo-con Washington Post editorial board that has been just this side of the Atilla the Hun since Katherine Graham died, especially on the whole Iraq thing. I seem to remember a Post editorial a while back about how only a partisan would believe that Bush would intentionally lie about the WMD - oh how times change (can someone find that editorial?). Now for Joe's analysis:
And they have been supporters of his foreign policy. Not today:
Mr. Bush didn't explain how a war meant to remove a tyrant believed to wield weapons of mass destruction turned into a fight against Muslim militants, a transformation caused in part by his administration's many errors since Saddam Hussein's defeat more than two years ago. The president also didn't speak candidly enough about the primary mission the United States now has in Iraq, which is not "hunting down the terrorists" but constructing a stable government in spite of Iraq's sectarian divisions and violent resistance from the former ruling elite. It's harder to explain why Americans should die in such a complex and ambitious enterprise than in a fight with international terrorists, but that is the case Mr. Bush most needs to make.and
Once again, however, the president missed an opportunity to fully level with Americans, even though some of the hard truths he elided have been spelled out by his aides and senior military commanders. The insurgency, they have said, is not growing weaker; most likely, said Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, it will never be defeated by American troops, and it will continue for many more years.The whole editorial is a series of how Bush "didn't explain" and "didn't speak candidly" and "missed an opportunity" and "didn't answer the worrying questions" and "the president's evasion of the hardest facts"...they're right. It's just something to see the Post pile on like this.
