Et tu, Richard Perle? said David Rose in Vanity Fair. As Iraq slips deeper into chaos, even the neoconservatives who conceived the war are bailing out, and are accusing President Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, et al., of bungling the operation so badly that it's no longer winnable. Chief among the defectors is former Bush advisor Richard Perle, the 'œmuch caricatured 'Prince of Darkness'' who first sold the president on the idea of spreading democracy throughout the Middle East. Perle now says that he wouldn't have pushed for war if he'd known that the occupation would be so horribly managed. 'œYou have to hold the president responsible,' Perle says. Bush's former speechwriter, David 'œAxis of Evil' Frum, agrees, saying that the president's inability to absorb complex ideas 'œis the root of, maybe, everything.' Former White House advisor Kenneth Adelman, who famously predicted that Iraq would be a 'œcakewalk,' goes further. He calls Bush and his national security advisors 'œamong the most incompetent teams' since World War II. 'œNot only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws,' Adelman says, 'œbut together they were deadly, dysfunctional.'
Of all the dirty tricks in this political campaign season, said David Frum in National Review Online, Vanity Fair's release of this article just days before the midterm elections is the dirtiest yet. I spoke at length to Vanity Fair for an article I was told would appear in the January issue of the magazine. While I did utter the quotes attributed to me, I also explained that my fundamental stance on Iraq hasn't shifted an inch since 2003: 'œThe war was right, victory is essential, and defeat would be calamitous.' My words, too, were taken out of context, said Richard Perle, also in National Review Online. Whatever mistakes have been made, 'œit would be a catastrophic mistake to leave Iraq' before the nation's security forces can defend its elected government.
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