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Sullivan: Don’t Blame Me, I Heckled As Soon As The War Started!

That is the basic sentiment of yet another self-exculpatory statement by Sullivan on the war: I plead guilty too. I bought the democratization line and the WMD threat and was passionately pro-war. My only defense is that within days of the invasion, I started to worry about the troop levels, and the dissonance between what […]

That is the basic sentiment of yet another self-exculpatory statement by Sullivan on the war:

I plead guilty too. I bought the democratization line and the WMD threat and was passionately pro-war. My only defense is that within days of the invasion, I started to worry about the troop levels, and the dissonance between what I had been told and what was actually being done opened up. Then Abu Ghraib; then the refusal to add more troops; well, you get the picture. 

In short, he lacked the vision and judgement to see the profound flaws in the pro-war argument when it mattered and lacked anything resembling resolve and integrity to seriously stand by the enterprise he had so vociferously backed only moments before.  There are names for people like that, and they’re not complimentary.  It is one thing to have really believed the war to be right or believed the administration to be capable and then discovered otherwise on later reflection, and something else to have been as hawkish as they come and then suddenly play the part of arch-dissenter, a part that Sullivan likes to play at in all things.  But it is a title he, who prior to the outbreak of the war was good a lackey as any, does not deserve.

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