Another Bleak Milestone

"President Bush should tell us the truth - that after thousands of lives lost and perhaps trillions of American taxpayer dollars, Iraq remains crippled by violence and corruption, still light years from building a stable government or a lasting peace."

Bush's War

Barry Garron writes in the Hollywood Reporter: "The Civil War isn't called Lincoln's War and World War II isn't Franklin D. Roosevelt's War. So what gives 'Frontline' and producer Michael Kirk the right to call the invasion of Iraq ' Bush's War?'

"The answer is soon obvious in this exhaustive two-part, special, which claims to present a 'definitive' analysis of the five-year-old war. Practically from the moment the World Trade Center was struck, the Bush administration sought a pretext to invade Iraq. Facts that argued against an invasion were discredited or ignored and new 'facts' were invented.

"In dozens of interviews and with meticulous fact-gathering, 'Frontline' makes a convincing case for two important aspects of the war. First, it was primarily orchestrated by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Bush was only 'the decider' insofar as he signed off on their plans, often paying no heed to Secretary of State Colin Powell and others.

"Second, practically every plan, idea, assumption and strategy advanced by Cheney and Rumsfeld was incorrect, once Saddam Hussein's regime was toppled. The level of incompetence uncovered by 'Frontline' is stunning."

Tony Perry writes in the Los Angeles Times: "Some of the best lines belong to Tom Ricks, Pulitzer Prize-winning military reporter for the Washington Post. Here's Ricks on Cheney:

"'Dick Cheney is the Moby Dick of the Bush administration. And it's all very mysterious and it only occurs between him and President Bush, but you get a sense that as soon as the meeting's over, he sits down with the president and says: "OK, here's what you need to take away from this." '"

On Public Opinion

In Thursday's column, Cheney Doesn't Care What You Think, I wrote about the vice president's interview in which he responded to ABC News reporter Martha Raddatz's observation that Americans overwhelmingly oppose the war in Iraq by saying: "So?"

Former Republican congressman Mickey Edwards writes in a Washington Post op-ed that he's finally had it with Cheney: "Cheney told Raddatz that American war policy should not be affected by the views of the people. But that is precisely whose views should matter: It is the people who should decide whether the nation shall go to war. That is not a radical, or liberal, or unpatriotic idea. It is the very heart of America's constitutional system. . . .

"If Dick Cheney believes, as he obviously does, that the war in Iraq is vital to American interests, it is his job, and that of President Bush, to make the case with sufficient proof to win the necessary public support.

"That is the difference between a strong president (one who leads) and a strong presidency (one in which ultimate power resides in the hands of a single person). Bush is officially America's 'head of state,' but he is not the head of government; he is the head of one branch of our government, and it's not the branch that decides on war and peace.

"When the vice president dismisses public opposition to war with a simple 'So?' he violates the single most important element in the American system of government: Here, the people rule."