Helen Thomas Suffers Whiplash

I took a brief respite from reading or watching any news over the weekend in the secret hope that the status quo would get shaken up and sanity would be restored to the world during this break. What a great Christmas gift that would have been, eh? When I finally settled down to some serious reading, I came across a Helen Thomas editorial, and the crusty old lady didn't let me down. In her latest piece, Thomas accuses Bush of giving her whiplash with his reasons for invading Iraq and remaining there changing all the time.

...at the Woodrow Wilson International Center, Bush tried to justify his attack on Iraq because it was a "threat" that he admits now was based on phony intelligence.

"We removed Saddam Hussein from power because he was a threat to our security, pursued and used weapons of mass destruction," Bush said. "He sponsored terrorists."

But, Bush granted, "much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong." The president hesitantly has come to grips with a fundamental truth that has been long established by independent commissions and congressional committees.

The president continued: "Yet it was right to remove Saddam Hussein from power."

In his own world, Bush apparently doesn't see any clash between those statements. I'm suffering whiplash.

Thomas goes on to give Bush credit for owning up to his mistakes, but she doesn't let him off the hook. She can't - no one can - for the price being paid is too high to justify any excuses.

It is good that he has taken the blame, relieving the historians of making that decision, not that it would have been a tough call for them.

But Bush will never be able to admit that the invasion was a mistake. How could he look into the faces of parents of a killed GI and tell them that their son or daughter died because of his mistake?

Not to mention the Iraqi lives that were lost, the soldiers who had their limbs blown off, or the children who lost their parents to this ill-begotten war.