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...about whether relief supplies reach their intended sources in conflict zones have given rise to a whole new way of thinking about humanitarian aid - and caused some to question whether giving aid in times of war does any good at all. (See pictures of Geldof in Africa with President Bush...
...nugget that did make some news was Rove's admission that Bush could never have gotten congressional support for invading Iraq without the threat of weapons of mass destruction. Of course, Rove defends the decision to go to war. But his reason for doing so is laughably thin: everybody thought Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and therefore everybody thought Saddam was a threat. Rove offers a damning list of Democratic politicians acting like politicians - making bellicose statements prior to the war, then criticizing Bush for rushing in when no WMD turned up. Touché. But then he goes...
...good chunk of Courage and Consequence is taken up by the Joseph Wilson affair and the outing of Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as a covert CIA agent - an allotment that is justified from Rove's point of view, since he spent a good chunk of the Bush Administration fighting off an indictment in the case. In July 2003, Wilson wrote an op-ed in the New York Times disputing Bush's claim that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Niger. There was some exaggeration involved, but the bottom line was accurate. There was no uranium deal; Saddam didn...
...June 2003, just before the White House was transfixed by the Wilsons, Bush was told by the CIA that a classic insurgency was under way in Iraq. His Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, refused to acknowledge that. The war was criminally mismanaged for the next four years, until Rumsfeld was fired and David Petraeus was sent to Iraq to clean up the mess. Along the way, the situation in Afghanistan was criminally neglected as well. This remains an astonishing record of incompetence. Rove doesn't mention it at all. (See pictures of Karl Rove and George W. Bush...
Rove's defense of Bush is partially successful: the President emerges as a man who put policy above politics. You can disagree with the policies, but not with Bush's sincere belief in them. And even though the war in Iraq remains one of the worst decisions ever made by an American President, the possibility of stability in Iraq, raised again by the recent elections, makes it, potentially, a mitigated disaster. Rove is less successful in defending himself: the crucial revelation here is that when you make a political consultant your senior policy adviser, spin supplants substance, oppo research rules...