Safire's column today...Admitting Mistakes

[vi5]

Ugh. I love how the first two mistakes which would lead one to believe he thinks are the most greivous, are the anti-war ones. And I love how he caveats his and the right's mistakes with "for now". Pathetic. Not that I would expect anything else, but still.


http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/19/opinion/19SAFI.html

What if, by some miracle, everyone 'fessed up to mistakes made about the surprisingly easy overthrow of Saddam and its unexpectedly bloody aftermath, and mistakes now being made in building democracy?

(1) In London, the amalgam of isolationists, pacifists and anti-Blair leftists — once certain they would spoil a state visit by branding the U.S. president a monster militarist — would generously admit that they had been a noisy minority, and that their discourtesy triggered a reaffirmation by most Britons of the ties between two freedom-speaking nations that lead the world in defeating tyrants.

(2) Gen. Wesley Clark would have to admit that his early reading of the Pentagon war plan on CNN was unduly panicky. Other analysts who feared heavy civilian casualties, masses of refugees, environmental disaster in the torching of oil fields and the mother of all battles in the narrow streets of Baghdad were in egregious error.

(3) Hawkish idealists like me who believed that Iraqi scientists, including "Dr. Germs," would come forward promptly to reveal where supplies of biological weapons were hidden were mistaken, at least for now.

[trumad]

1. torching of oil fields?

Is this guy an idiot or what... The oil fields are getting torched daily. Adn wouldn't several thousand Iraqie casuualties be considered er..."heavy"?

[leesa]

2. So when do we hear O'Really's promised apology and didn't he

say he would work like a dog against the Bush administration if WMDs weren't found?? I think he said he'd be the FIRST to apologise to the antiwar people that he accused of being traitors.

[The Backlash Cometh]

3. What an ego-maniac.

Safire's way of admitting he was wrong is somehow diminished because he says, "You first," and then proceeds to criticize people in England who have yet to be proven wrong.

Safire us a putz.

[Terran]

4. Er, "heavy civilian casualties"...?

Did I miss something? I believe that has come to pass, and is ongoing. An average of 35 dead per day.