It turns out that Pat Robertson told his story about warning the president about casualties before – on the air on Hardball. Here’s the transcript:
CAMPBELL BROWN (Guest host): I want to ask you how you feel about the war in Iraq. And if God is calling this war a disaster, does that mean that he is actually opposed to it?
PAT ROBERTSON: Well, I don’t think God’s opposed to the war, necessarily, but it was a danger sign. I felt very uneasy about it from the very get-go. Whenever I heard about it, I knew it was going to be trouble. I warned the president. I only met with him once. I said, You better prepare the American people for some serious casualties. And he said, Oh, no, our troops are, you know, so well protected, we don’t have to worry about that.
No one in the administration denied it then, did they? And this statement is more convincing than the crude idea that the president predicted “no casualties.” You know what? I believe Robertson. Either Bush believed the casualties would be minimal (and, by any historical standard, they were low in the war phase); or he didn’t and was just spinning a supporter. All this shows is that Bush really did believe the “cakewalk” stuff, and had no inkling of the possibility of an insurgency. (But we knew that already from the aircraft carrier embarrassment.) It also reveals Bush’s gut-instinct as a war-leader: never, ever make war seem hard or difficult or risky. Always talk up the war, because you don’t have the strength to tell the public what the war will really cost and what it really entails. That’s why he’s been so unimpressive when things went wrong. He has no internal mechanism to deal with trouble or failure, except denial, arrogance or an attack on his critics. Just what you need in a commander-in-chief, no?
BUSH AND LIFE: Here’s something I didn’t know: after steady declines under Clinton, abortion rates have been increasing under Bush.
THE LIBERAL HAWK DILEMMA: An interesting survey in the Chicago Tribune. This holds for more libertarian hawks – “eagles” – like me. If our policy mix is one of fiscal conservatism, cultural liberalism and foreign policy hawkishness, then Bush presents an awful problem. He hasn’t only been a reckless spender and borrower, he has moved the GOP into the permanent position of the spend-and-borrow party. On domestic issues, he has simply failed to live up to his promise to be a moderate or a uniter. (When I read my endorsement from 2000, it reads like another candidate altogether.) His social policy is indistinguishable from James Dobson’s. On foreign policy, he grasps the enemy we face; and he has some important achievements. But he’s also clearly screwed up badly. What he will do to the Supreme Court is anyone’s guess. But, on the basis of his first four years, my bet is whomever the religious right wants. Gulp.
The Dish 