That is the truth, the truth that the commander in chief owes to our troops and to the American people.
Now, I will say to you, it is never easy to discuss what has gone wrong while our troops are in constant danger. But it is essential if you want to correct the course and do what's right for those troops, instead of repeating the same old mistakes over and over again.
I know this dilemma firsthand. I saw firsthand what happens when pride or arrogance take over from rational decision-making. And after serving in a war, I returned home to offer my own personal views of dissent. I did so because I believed strongly that we owed it to those risking their lives to speak truth to power. And we still do.
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Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator who deserves his own special place in Hell. But that was not -- that was not, in and of itself, a reason to go to war.
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The satisfaction that we take in his downfall does not hide this fact: We have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure.
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Now, the president has said that he miscalculated in Iraq, and that it was a catastrophic success. MORE
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The first and most fundamental mistake was the president's failure to tell the truth to the American people.
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He failed to tell the truth about the rationale for going to war, and he failed to tell the truth about the burden this war would impose on our soldiers and our citizens.
By one count, the president offered 23 different rationales for this war. If his purpose was to confuse and mislead the American people, he succeeded.
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His two main rationales, weapons of mass destruction and the Al Qaida-September 11th connection, have both been proved false by the president's own weapons inspectors and by the 9/11 Commission.
And just last week, Secretary of State Powell acknowledged those facts. Only Vice President Cheney still insists that the Earth is flat.
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The president also failed to level with the American people about what it would take to prevail in Iraq. He didn't tell us that well over 100,000 troops would be needed for years, not months. He didn't tell us that he wouldn't take the time to assemble a genuine, broad, strong coalition of allies. He didn't tell us that the cost would exceed $200 billion. He didn't tell us that even after paying such a heavy price, success was far from assured.
And America will pay an even heavier price for the president's lack of candor.
At home, the American people are less likely to trust this administration if it needs to summon their support to meet real and pressing threats to our security.
In the dark days of the Cuban missile crisis, President Kennedy sent former Secretary of State Dean Acheson to Europe to build support. Acheson explained the situation to French President de Gaulle. Then he offered to show him highly classified satellite photos as proof. De Gaulle waved him away, saying, The word of the president of the United States is good enough for me.
How many world leaders have that same trust in America's president today? This president's failure to tell the truth to us and to the world before the war has been exceeded by fundamental errors of judgment during and after the war.
The president now admits to miscalculations in Iraq. Miscalculations: This is one of the greatest underestimates in recent American history.
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His miscalculations were not the equivalent of accounting errors. They were colossal failures of judgment, and judgment is what we look for a president.
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And this is all the more stunning, because we're not talking about 20/20 hindsight, we're not talking about Monday morning quarterbacking. Before the war, before he chose to go to war, bipartisan congressional hearings, major outside studies and even some in his own administration, predicted virtually every problem that we face in Iraq today.
The result is a long litany of misjudgments with terrible and real consequences.
The administration told us we would be greeted as liberators; they were wrong. They told us not to worry about the looting or the sorry state of Iraq's infrastructure; they were wrong. They told us we had enough troops to provide security and stability, defeat the insurgents, guard the borders and secure the arms depots; they were tragically wrong.
They told us we could rely on exiles like Ahmed Chalabi to build political legitimacy; they were wrong. They told us we would quickly restore an Iraqi civil service to run the country, and a police force and an army to secure it; they were wrong.
In Iraq, this administration has consistently overpromised and underperformed. And this policy has been plagued by a lack of planning, by an absence of candor, arrogance and outright incompetence.
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And the president has held no one accountable, including himself.
In fact, the only officials -- the only officials who've lost their jobs over Iraq were the ones who told the truth.
Economic adviser Larry Lindsey said it would cost as much as $200 billion. Pretty good calculation. He was fired.
