The buck stops, um, with
Daniel RadoshThe buck stops, um, with that guy. So Bring 'Em On Bush has boldly decided to deal with the Niger nuke fallout by saying, in effect, "I just read whatever they put on the teleprompter." That many on the left believe this about him anyway does not make it true. We ought not accept Bush's chickenshit defense just because it makes him look bad. Indeed, it seems likely (knowing Karl Rove the way we do) that the White House is prepared to take its hits for passing the buck now for the sake of broader gains down the line. Sen Pat Roberts lays the groundwork in his statement today: "I am very disturbed by what appears to be extremely sloppy handling of the issue from the outset by the CIA. What now concerns me most, however, is what appears to be a campaign of press leaks by the CIA in an effort to discredit the president." You see, the CIA has been among the leading critics of the Pentagon's pro-war (oops, pre-war) intelligence. The agency has dismissed the worst WMD scenarios, and the Saddam-Qaida connections. So of course the White House wants to discredit the CIA, and in the Niger incident they've found a way to do it. Bush would rather look like a dupe than a liar.