Bush's Interview With Lehrer

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The relevant question is accountability to what standards? To a standard of how well actual performance matches up to a reasonable estimate of casualties and resources to be undergone, or to an artificial bar set high by those whose only political objective is to damage the president in the public opinion and obscure their own lack of legitimate policy alternatives.

And a second important point in any policy analysis is whether it is better to undergo a certain cost now so as not to have to pay an even higher one in the future when problems are not dealt with at the earliest opportunity.

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Note that each of these analyses requires consideration of casualties before acting, which, Andy's point is, Bush did not do. So it seems that we're all on the same page -- Bush's failure to consider casualties was at least a fundamental blunder (if not morally reprehensible).

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Bush, and other members of his administration, believe strongly in what they are trying to accomplish in Iraq. I personally believe that they are being blinded quite a bit by optomism, but I don't doubt that Bush really believes in what he is trying to accomplish in Iraq.

I suspect he thought this war would have casualties of roughly the scale as the first Persian Gulf war, but that he didn't really manage to develop a good sense of what was to come in Iraq after the invasion.

Also, Bush is very uncomfortable with accountability. Almost any criticism of his policies is deflected as part of "the blame game" or "helps our enemies." I am not sure he is psychologically capable of taking full responsibility for his decisions as president (which is an *immense* burden for every president) without deflecting away most/all of the criticism of him.


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[BluffTHIS!]

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So it seems that we're all on the same page -- Bush's failure to consider casualties was at least a fundamental blunder (if not morally reprehensible).

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We are far from on the same page, which you well know. Bush did certainly consider casualties. What he did not do was put a specific number on something that can only be estimated with a large margin of error at best, just so that critics of the overall policy could say "Aha!" when the number went 1 past such a vague estimate.

[andyfox]

JIM LEHRER: The war has now been going on 2-1/2 years. This week in fact the one-thousandth day went by, and more than 2,100 Americans have died.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Yes, sir.

JIM LEHRER: When you made the decision to go to war, did you expect this kind of casualty rate?

PRESIDENT BUSH: First of all, I knew there would be casualties. I never tried to guess.

JIM LEHRER: Did you ask General Franks or Secretary Rumsfeld, what's the risk here, what's the casualty possibility?

PRESIDENT BUSH: I think everybody understood the risks, Jim. I'll never forget making the decision in the Situation Room, and it affected me. I mean, it was-- I got up out of the chair and walked around the South Lawn there and I thought, you know, I knew the decision I had just made, a decision, by the way, that I had been wrestling with for months, was the right decision in my judgment, or obviously I wouldn't have made it, but also one that would have consequences for Americans and families and members of the soldiers who died.

We run a danger of trying to say the casualties are less than other wars or more than expected. It's just everybody matters, every person matters, and what really matters is having the strategy and the will to make sure any death is not-- is honored by achieving an objective.

JIM LEHRER: But the risk factors that you took into consideration in making the decision did not involve specific numbers that, oh my goodness, this could cost us this many lives? Or how about Iraqi lives? You said this week that 30,000 Iraqis have died.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Yes.

JIM LEHRER: Was that on the table when you made the decision?

PRESIDENT BUSH: I think, well, first of all, I said 30,000, that's because it's kind of the general talk. And I don't know if we know specifically how many died. Nor do I think you don't sit around in a planning session and say, gosh, I wonder how many-- how many people are going to die because of suicide bombers or because of politics or-- I know this, that when we went in we had a plan to target the guilty and spare the innocent and with our precision weaponry and a military that is a humane group of people that we did a good job of that.

But war is brutal, war is death, war is-- and I knew that going in. I just don't remember people, you know, trying to guess.

JIM LEHRER: And you didn't-- what I'm really getting at is these numbers, we know the real numbers on Americans.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Absolutely.

JIM LEHRER: And the speculative number, the approximate number on Iraqis is 30,000. Is that about what you expected? You didn't--

PRESIDENT BUSH: You know, I just--

JIM LEHRER: You didn't think in those terms?

PRESIDENT BUSH: I just--I can't--I really didn't. I mean, I would hope for zero but realistically understand that in war people will die. And I also keep in mind the fact that there's hundreds of thousands who were killed by the tyrant. And what's really important is which I tried to do the other day, is to make sure that this war in Iraq stays in context, that we were dealing with a threat.

[end of interview excerpt]

So the president said that "you don't sit around in a planning session and say, gosh, I wonder how many-- how many people are going to die because of suicide bombers or because of politics" He doesn't "remember people, you know, trying to guess." When asked if he thought in terms of casualties, he said, "I just--I can't--I really didn't. I mean, I would hope for zero but realistically understand that in war people will die."

This is nothing short of shocking. The president claims that in planning sessions for an invasion, a war, and an occupation, you don't sit around and say, gosh, I wonder how many people are going to die.

Well, gosh, that's just criminally incompetent behavior.

[adios]

It's obvious that Bush is dodging the question which is no excuse IMO. It's painfully obvious that he came to the decision that casualties would be far less than what they've turned out to be for the U.S. and Iraq.

[MMMMMM]

Andy, I'm afraid I see little or nothing wrong with this. As the President bespoke, the U.S. military took tremendous pains to avoid collateral damage (and in fact did minimize collateral damage to an extent not seen before in any conflict of this magnitude). If Bush et al did not sit around speculating at length upon the number of potential Iraqi dead, it was probably because there was no need to, as it was clear that far fewer Iraqis would be killed than in the first Gulf War, and further yet clear that it would be far fewer than the number Saddam had slaughtered. So, why try to guess it further than that? Just the above was sufficient to compartmentalize the matter, and there was more pressing business to attend to, and it wasn't going to change the decision about going to war.

I think what is going on here is that the opponent(s) and detractor(s) are Monday-morning quarterbacking and trying to find anything to seize upon to make the administration look bad as regards the war. I think the answer "far fewer than in Gulf War 1" is sufficient for the question anyway. Also, the depth and ferocity of insurgency was not fully expected, and that has caused casualties to mount. If the insurgency had been less ferocious and had not been joined by foreign fighters, deaths on both sides would have been significantly fewer.

No point in Monday morning quarterbacking this one, in my opinion; and had they then known before the war that around 30,000 Iraqis would be killed they still would have proceeded. Nothing much would have changed had they guessed" Thirty thousand!" So all in all, rather than a matter of criminal negligence, I view this as a tempest in a teapot, and an after-the-fact attempt to make Bush look bad.

And yes we should have had more ground troops and been better prepared for an insurgency, and could have saved lives thereby; but that's not what Lehrer is drilling Bush about or trying to get at.

[andyfox]

"there was more pressing business to attend to, and it wasn't going to change the decision about going to war."

I believe you've hit the nail on the head here with your second clause. They were going to war no matter what.

But I can't imagine anything more pressing than the number of casualties we would sustain in going to war. They thought Hussein has WMDs, biological and chemical weapons. You mean to tell me they went in suspecting this and not considering how many of our forces would be killed? Sorry, but I find that shocking and inexcusably derelict.

But this is a president and an administration that is certain everything it does is right and we should just trust them to do it correctly. That's essentially what the president said today at his press conference about his decision to ignore the FISA law. He claims that the Congressional authorization to use force gave him the right to wiretap without reporting to the FISA court. He also claims the Constitution gives him that right.

This is not a man to be trusted.

[BluffTHIS!]

The president was given an opinion by the Attorney General that his proposed actions were legal (yes the same one who said some forms of "torture" are also legal). That, along with the fact that he informed the Congressional oversight committees beforehand, shows that he therefore exercised due diligence in the matter before proceeding. Those are the actions of a man worthy of trust.

And if the courts do not overturn his actions, nor Congress remove his authority he is alleging, then that Attorney General's opinion, regardless of the fact he is a political appointee, will have been shown to be correct.

[MMMMMM]

Er, Andy, my hasty mistake...I was only responding to the part about Bush not having much considered the potential Iraqi death toll--hence my comment that since it would be far lower than Golf War 1, that was enough to know, as war was a given.

As for US casualties, I think they took lots of precautions, and in fact we suffered very low numbers killed during the war proper ("low" meaning compared to most other wars, of course). The insurgency later claimed a multiple of those numbers, if I'm not mistaken.

I also suspect that there was pretty good confidence on the part of the administration, that the pre-war leaflets and bribes to Iraqi commanders and generals, coupled with the precision strikes, would combine to keep American casualties relatively low. And indeed that turned out to be the case. So even if they didn't plan exact casualty scenarios for American troops, I'll bet they had a pretty good idea that it would go fairly smoothly and well, as wars go--which turned out to be true even despite the fact that Turkey sabotaged our efforts at the last minute by denying land access from the North.

Maybe there was a gap in planning as you say--but if so, I think it might be of less significance than it may appear at first glance.

Regarding the wiretap stuff, I haven't yet really read or absorbed the news, so my comments on that will have to wait.

[andyfox]

I'd be interested to see what exactly the Attorney General said about the legality of the president's actions. And also exactly what he told to the congress. Senator Frist's remark, that he was told what would be proper for the Senate Majority Leader to be told, struck me as quite cryptic.

I wasn't able to find a transcript of what the Attorney General said in an interview he gave to one of the networks today, but I did hear Mark Sheilds, on Jim Lehrer's show say that he felt Gonzalez's argument was that if the president decides to do something, it's legal. (In fact, Shields wondered what the big deal was about the Patriot Act, since, according to Gonzalez, the president can do whatever he wants anyway.)

If Gonzalez's arugment is, as Bush says, that the congressional authrorization to use force in the wake of 9/11 and the Constitution granted him the power to go around the FISA court, I don't get it. I can't imagine that the congress thought that's what they were voting on and I wonder exactly what Article in the Constitution gives the president the right to decide what laws he will honor and which he won't.