Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Respected and Veteran Reporter Can't Get Her Facts Straight

Veteran reporter Barbara Walters, who has interviewed several heads
of state over the decades apparently has trouble with getting her facts
straight. In an attempt to make it seem like President George W. Bush
admitted that he has regrets about sending troops to Iraq said this:

George Bush is sounding a little more like Barack Obama where
he just did an interview and said he's not sure, his biggest regret,
if he had known there were not weapons of mass destruction, I
don't want to quote. I can never quote exactly but the jest of it
was that he was still not sure he would have invaded. That was
a big decision. George Bush just said this.


First of all, President George Bush didn't invade a darn anything. Our U.S.
military liberated Iraqis from the Saddam Hussein regime and should be
commended for that. However, this is what President Bush actually said.

GIBSON: You've always said there's no do-overs as President. If you
had one?

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.

President Bush said, "I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess."
The term is "I guess" gives me the feeling of ambivalence and I think he's
not sentence explains his ambivalence:

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.


Somehow respected journalist Barbara Walters interpreted President Bush
not wanting to speculate about if history had been different would his decision
to go to war would have been different as "not being sure" and sounding like
Barack Obama, a war critic. Great job, Barbara Walters.