Margaret, Margaret, MargaretShe's always carried the water for the Democrats, but with
the current column Margaret Carlson takes it a bit too far.
President George W. Bush pushed back hard against his critics in a Veterans Day speech at the Tobyhanna Army Depot in Pennsylvania.
Bush reprised the address at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska on Nov. 14, three days later, just as Senate Republicans were gearing up to attach an amendment critical of the Iraq war to a defense bill.
Neither speech got him much. What Bush did in both instances was engage in deception to defend himself against charges of deception.
There's been no Senate investigation exonerating the administration on prewar intelligence. The Senate investigators specifically kicked the question of the who and the why of intelligence failures down the road as too politically radioactive. As best as I can understand the liberal take on the
Senate Intelligence Committee report, it's that the administration kept sending back the intelligence briefings until they got what they wanted. Not that they told the CIA what they wanted to hear; just that they did a little shuffling of the papers and said, no, that's not it.
But nobody can read the
Intelligence Committee's report and come away from it thinking that the administration's critics are right. Joe Wilson gets a thorough drubbing from the panel, as I
pointed out here.
What Bush's latest effort reflects is the exhaustion and fear of a White House staff that would let the president go public with so feeble and transparent a case. With one top aide indicted and the leak investigation continuing, staffers are no longer willing to work behind the scenes to smear, deride, and muzzle critics, even family friend Brent Scowcroft. So Bush has to do his own dirty work, personally, in broad daylight.This is how deluded Carlson is; the president defending himself against scurrilous lies is doing "dirty work". In Margaret's world, Joe Wilson is no doubt an honest teller of truth to power.
