Where mistakes have been made in this blog, the responsibility rests with me

Wanted to recomend a couple of good if moderately heavy posts on the subject of Iraq. Plus make a light, but, I hope, stinging remark at the expense of a favorite punching bag of the left. I'll divide them up.

The first is from Mark Evanier, who answered an e-mail from a reader of his site, in part, thusly...

Frankly, Greg, I don't know if we should just pull out of Iraq right now. Knowing that is not my job. But I do think that those keeping us there should be open to a possibility being suggested by a lot of folks experienced in military actions and/or geopolitics. It's that our options are coming down to (a) pulling out now and having a certain level of disaster descend on Iraq...or (b) pulling out at some point in the future, having the same or worse level of disaster hit Iraq then, and a staggering number of American lives and dollars lost unnecessarily in the interim. Those who oppose this war now may not have a proposal to make everything in Iraq hunky-dory...but I don't see that those who favor staying having any plan beyond "Let's keep trying all those things that haven't worked at all the way we predicted."

Then I see via Media Matters that the aforementioned Sean Hannity said

Ted Kennedy won't be "happy until" we have "mass slaughter" in Iraq

Which begs the question: What the hell does he think we have now?

Finally we have a post that Mark recommended from one Robert J. Elisberg. This takes on the notion that The President admitted any mistakes in his recent speech, as some are apparently eager to believe he did.

Some excerpts:

Were this in any other context, said by anyone other than the President of the United States who famously once refused to acknowledge any error at all, then hearing someone say -

"Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me."

- wouldn't even register on the "Admit-a-Mistake-o-Meter." It would be a cartoon moment, where a balloon comically whooooosed past our head, and we'd comment, "Sorry, did you say something?"

When a normal, everyday human says -

"Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me."

- it's the equivalent of when someone spits out something horribly obnoxious to you, and only after everyone gangs up on him finally begrudges, "If I said anything that offended you, I'm sorry." You want to respond, "There is no 'if' about it, bucko. You did offend me. Now, apologize correctly or go skulk off into the dark hole from which you came."

See, the basic thing about "admitting a mistake" is that it involves three core features: 1) recognizing the mistake, 2) saying you're sorry, and 3) doing your best to make sure it doesn't happen again. Anything else is just puffery.

President Bush did not "admit a mistake." Period. We all know - all of us - that admitting a mistake requires at least consequence. And you can pick through the President's speech one nit at a time and not find a single consequence. (And I don't mean for the 20,000 soldiers he wants to send to Iraq.) No one was fired in his "admission," no one reprimanded, nobody even sent to their room without dessert. There wasn't even the least sense of personal shame and repentance. The only shocking thing was that the entire Bush War Brain Trust didn't get awarded the President Medal of Freedom. Perhaps they've run out of papier-mâché.