Richard Perle’s version of a mea culpa

* judy via atrios:

"I'm worried about bloggers," she said. "(A post) starts as a rumor and within 24 hours it's repeated as fact."

While she advocates a federal shield law to protect mainstream journalists from divulging their sources, she doesn't favor extending that to bloggers who don't follow the standards and ethnics [I assume this should be ethics] of the journalism industry.

Still, she wouldn't restrict a blogger's right to publish online. She said some bloggers have been invaluable in uncovering government flaws.

"I'm glad to welcome them as long as they agree to the standards," she said.

* truthout (thnx k):

"However, in stating flatly that "impeachment is off the table," incoming Speaker Pelosi and incoming Chairman Conyers appear to have erred rather substantially. Impeachment, of course, is a matter of Constitutional law, not personal discretion on the part of individual lawmakers. The pre-emptive nature of the decision by Pelosi and Conyers stands in sharp contrast to every principle of law enforcement. Congress - whether controlled by Democrats or Republicans - has a solemn duty to uphold and when necessary enforce the law.

If there is some reason that impeachment is not warranted in a given circumstance, it should be stated in that context. But for an individual lawmaker, any individual lawmaker, to presume to preclude impeachment regardless of the circumstances scoffs at the Constitution. The great danger is that individuals in official positions might choose to assume unto themselves the power of the law at their personal discretion. If the last six years have taught us anything, it is that such hubris leads to ruin."

* Fisk:

"I must say that Richard Perle’s version of a mea culpa did take my breath away. Here was the ex-chairman of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee — he who once told us that “Iraq is a very good candidate for democratic reform” — now admitting that he “underestimated the depravity” in Iraq. He holds the president responsible, of course, acknowledging only that — and here, dear reader, swallow hard — “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...’”

Maybe I find this self-righteous, odious mea culpa all the more objectionable because the same miserable man was shouting abuse down a radio line to me in Baghdad a couple of years ago, condemning me for claiming that America was losing its war in Iraq and claiming that I was “a supporter of the maintenance of the Baathist regime.” This lie, I might add, was particularly malicious since I was reporting Saddam’s mass rapes and mass hangings at Abu Ghraib prison (and being refused Iraqi visas) when Perle and his cohorts were silent about Saddam’s wickedness and when their chum Donald Rumsfeld was cheerfully shaking the monster’s hand in Baghdad in an attempt to reopen the US Embassy there.

Not that Perle isn’t in good company. Kenneth Adelman, the Pentagon neocon who also beat the drums for war, has been telling Vanity Fair that “the idea of using our power for moral good in the world” is dead. As for Adelman’s mate David Frumm, well. he’s decided that George Bush just “did not absorb the ideas” behind the speeches Frumm wrote for him. But this, I’m afraid, is not the worst to come from those who encouraged us to invade Iraq and start a war which has cost the lives of perhaps 600,000 civilians.

For a new phenomenon is creeping into the pages of The New York Times and those other great organs of state in America. For those journalists who supported the war, it’s not enough to bash George. No, they’ve got a new flag to fly: The Iraqis don’t deserve us.
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But you get the point. We are preparing our get-out excuses. The Iraqis don’t deserve us. Screw them. That’s the grit we’re laying down on the desert floor to help our tanks out of Iraq."