Bush Has Regrets

Toward the end of a subdued, 50-minute news conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair — dubbed by some The Lame Duck Summit — Bush uncharacteristically did not hesitate when asked about mistakes he had made since the March 2003 invasion.

“Saying ‘bring it on’”, he said, in reference to an ill-advised taunt to Iraqi insurgents in the summer of 2003.

“The kind of tough talk, you know, that sent the wrong signal to people. You know, I learned some lessons about expressing myself in maybe a little more sophisticated manner ... ‘wanted dead or alive,’ that kind of talk.”

He also said the U.S. has been paying for the 2004 Abu Ghraib prison scandal “for a long period of time.” (source)

It just simply amazes me that to this day, President Bush still does not understand human nature and basic logic.

This is the problem in a nutshell. Countries resent having the hell bombed out of their land and having their economy destroyed, and having their country invaded by foreign troops, and having innocent members of their society killed, when their country had nothing to do with what happened to our country on September 11, 2001! Why are we so surprised at the outcome of this?

Honestly, it’s like having some troops enter your home, shoot two of your family members, and then turn around and wonder why you are so pissed at them. Are we really that stupid?

And did it ever occur to Bush that Abu Ghraib might have happened because of his “kind of tough talk”? Nothing happens in a vacuum. When you have a President saying this, that’s kind of a green light to the troops, wouldn’t you think? Not to mention that half the time Donald Rumsfeld talks about “the insurgents”, he’s actually talking about everyday ordinary Iraqi citizens who are not insurgents. He confuses both of them and talks about them interchangeably, just like they are one and the same. To Rumsfeld, I honestly think they are.

But what do we expect from this administration? The President after all, seems to be able to break or bend just about anything in the Constitution that he likes.