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December 1, 2006

ABC News

’Leaked’ Memo Lets Bush Blame Maliki

The President Is Still Skirting Responsibility for Iraq

by Rachel Maddow

Now that Donald "Stuff Happens" Rumsfeld is out of a job in Washington, there is no one left in the Bush administration who can claim with a straight face that things are going well in Iraq.

They're still putting their spin on war news, and the president is still mouthing sound bites about "completing the mission," but everyone knows that things are going poorly and there needs to be a change of course.

The president admitting that things are going poorly in Iraq, however, is not the same as the president admitting responsibility for things going poorly in Iraq.

In other words, if there's going to be blame assigned, it's time to find someone convenient to assign it to. When the White House this week leaked a supposedly secret assessment by National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley about Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Kamel al-Maliki, didn't it seem odd that there was no expression of outrage about the leak?

Q: Was the president irritated by the leaking of the memo?

Senior Administration Official: Let me put it this way, you're never happy about having classified information show up anywhere.

Q: Do you suspect there will be an investigation to try and

…

Senior Administration Official: The focus is not on figuring out how a memo got into the paper.

The focus is not on figuring out how a memo got into the paper? All of a sudden? This from the guys who launch criminal investigations into newspapers for reporting leaks? No "treason" allegations for The New York Times this time?

Of course not.

The Hadley memo seems too well-timed -- and too politically obvious -- to be anything other than a deliberate political leak by the White House.

The memo details Hadley's "concerns about Maliki's government," and questions Maliki's "capabilities" as a leader.

The Hadley memo is setting up Maliki to take the blame for the disaster that is Iraq. Blaming Maliki takes the focus off President Bush, even though Bush's decision to invade Iraq without a postwar plan started Iraq down this disastrous road in the first place.

Blaming Maliki also takes the focus off what most Americans see as the central issue in Iraq: American troops. How many should be there now? What is their mission? And how long should we plan to stay?

If President Bush accepts responsibility for the Iraq disaster, then he also needs to answer our questions about our troops.

But if the president doesn't accept responsibility for the Iraq disaster and instead blames the insufficient "capabilities" of the Iraqi prime minister, then the tough questions Americans want answered about American blood on Iraqi soil can be shrugged off yet again.

Maliki is not the reason that Iraq is in the state it's in today; George W. Bush is. The so-called "Pottery Barn Rule" still applies -- you break it, you own it. We broke Iraq into a thousand pieces when Bush chose to invade Iraq under false pretences, without international support, and without a post-invasion plan.

The Bush administration may have hit upon a comfortable, familiar political tactic in diverting blame to someone else for its own failings, but this hamhanded ploy to try to make Maliki the fall guy for the Iraq disaster isn't fooling anyone.

Rachel Maddow is a host for Air America Radio

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