ROBERTS ON BUSH….Josh Marshall links today to this New York Times interview with Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Roberts supported the war, but suggests here that in hindsight it wasn’t such a good idea:
But in an hourlong interview on Wednesday morning in his office, Mr. Roberts said he was “not too sure” that the administration would have invaded if it had known how flimsy the intelligence was on Iraq and illicit weapons. Instead, the senator said, Mr. Bush might well have advocated efforts to maintain sanctions against Iraq and to continue to try to unearth the truth through the work of United Nations inspectors. “I don’t think the president would have said that military action is justified right now,” Mr. Roberts said. If the administration had been given “accurate intelligence,” he said, Mr. Bush “might have said, ‘Saddam’s a bad guy, and we’ve got to continue with the no-fly zones and with inspections.’ “
This is crazy. Bush made it as clear as possible before the war, during the war, and after the war that he intended to invade Iraq and oust Saddam Hussein no matter what. Roberts can’t possibly believe that Bush would have changed his mind if only he’d known the intel was skimpy, can he?
I wonder why he said this. Is Roberts just desperately trying to convince himself that his president isn’t completely nuts? Or what?
