Neocon PNAC Architect Richard Perle Admits Iraq a Mistake

And now Richard Perle:

"A one-time Pentagon adviser, staunch neoconservative and one of the original architects of the war on Iraq, admitted that the Bush administration has turned the situation in the war-ravaged country and U.S. policy on Iraq into a disaster.

Richard Perle, who in the early days of the Bush administration chaired a Pentagon advisory committee that was instrumental in convincing the president for the need to invade Iraq, told Vanity Fair magazine if he had been able to see how the war would turn out, he probably would not have pushed for the removal of Saddam Hussein.

'I think if I had been delphic, and had seen where we are today, and people had said, 'Should we go into Iraq?,' I think now I probably would have said, 'No, let's consider other strategies for dealing with the thing that concerns us most, which is Saddam supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorists,' Perle is quoted by David Rose in the Vanity Fair article. Also interviewed are two other former Bush insiders, Kenneth Adelman and David Frum.

These accusations by former administration insiders greatly contradict the White House's mantra that all is well in Iraq and that the situation is constantly improving. The former insiders single out the president as the number one cause of the current mess, stating that the lack of a clearly defined policy is to blame.

Perle says: 'The decisions did not get made that should have been. They didn't get made in a timely fashion, and the differences were argued out endlessly.'

And here is the coup de grace from a former insider in what was until recently believed to be an administration built on solid loyalty and a Bush White House practically immune to leaks. 'At the end of the day, you have to hold the president responsible,' said Perle. 'I don't think he realized the extent of the opposition within his own administration, and the disloyalty.'

Responding to the magazine's accusations, a White House spokesman said, 'The president has a plan to succeed in Iraq...'"

Oversight--the job of an opposition party--was denied Americans thanks to the pathology of power among fringe Republican idealogues and enabled by the one-party-rule strategies of Karl Rove.