Dowd: Bush "left buck in deer country," passes blame; JK must "make sale"

[DeepModem Mom]

New York Times:

OP-ED COLUMNIST
Send In the Gowns
By MAUREEN DOWD

Published: July 15, 2004

....When the British report came out yesterday declaring that Saddam Hussein had no significant W.M.D., or perhaps no W.M.D., Tony Blair accepted "full personal responsibility" for "the way the issue was presented and, therefore, for any errors made."...Mr. Bush, by contrast, took full personal irresponsibility.

Mr. Bush must have left the buck in deer country because the White House keeps passing the blame to the same C.I.A. that Dick Cheney and his Pentagon henchmen leaned on to supply the rationale they needed for the war they were determined to launch....

***

Many voters think that the president and vice president are unjustifiably putting lives at risk by going to war with a false premise and creating more terrorists. But many voters are apparently dithering because they are too wary of the alternative to boot out Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney.

The nub of this election is that John Kerry has so far failed to convince voters that he'll do what Mr. Bush promised to do and hasn't: go after Osama and Al Qaeda and destroy them. Unless Mr. Kerry can make that sale, Americans face not a false dilemma, but a real one.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/15/opinion/15DOWD.html