1115.org

Bush’s “I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess.” comment to Charlie Gibson has received a lot of attention. But I was struck by another aspect of their exchange too.

BUSH: I don’t know — the biggest regret of all the presidency has to have been the intelligence failure in Iraq. A lot of people put their reputations on the line and said the weapons of mass destruction is a reason to remove Saddam Hussein. It wasn’t just people in my administration; a lot of members in Congress, prior to my arrival in Washington D.C., during the debate on Iraq, a lot of leaders of nations around the world were all looking at the same intelligence. And, you know, that’s not a do-over, but I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess.

GIBSON: If the intelligence had been right, would there have been an Iraq war?

BUSH: Yes, because Saddam Hussein was unwilling to let the inspectors go in to determine whether or not the U.N. resolutions were being upheld. In other words, if he had had weapons of mass destruction, would there have been a war? Absolutely.

GIBSON: No, if you had known he didn’t.

BUSH: Oh, I see what you’re saying. You know, that’s an interesting question. That is a do-over that I can’t do. It’s hard for me to speculate.

Bush very clearly still lives in a make-believe world of his own. He clearly believes (or is determined to pretend he believes) that the intelligence available at the time justified the conclusions that a) Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, and that b) these WMD posed an imminent threat to the U.S.

It seems to have completely escaped Bush that the first conclusion was arrived at only by cherry-picking the intelligence and firmly brushing aside all the considerable evidence which called that conclusion strongly into question. It doesn’t seem to have ever penetrated into his little fantasy that the second conclusion was just completely made up out of whole cloth.

But what’s Charlie Gibson’s excuse? Why goes Gibson unquestioningly buy into Bush’s fantasy, and implicitly agree with Bush that the intelligence was wrong, that we had an Iraq war only because the intelligence was wrong?