George W. Bush, Scapegoat

Did you catch the President on "60 Minutes" last night? I admit, I didn't, because when I turned it on some damn football game was on, and I didn't stick around to see when it would finally air.

But I did read the official CBS transcript. And I found something that I thought was very revealing.

Here's the section I found interesting:

BUSH: Yeah. [General] John Abizaid, one of the planners, said in front of Congress, you know, he thought we might have needed more troops. My focus is on how to succeed. And the reason I brought up the mistakes is, one, that's the job of the commander-in-chief, and, two, I don't want people blaming our military. We got a bunch of good military people out there doing what we've asked them to do. And the temptation is gonna find scapegoats. Well, if the people want a scapegoat, they got one right here in me 'cause it's my decisions.

Can anybody guess what I find so revealing about that statement? Come on. Think real hard.

Bush thinks that he's a scapegoat for how badly the war in Iraq is going. Now I suppose it's possible, knowing this particular commander-in-chief, that he doesn't know exactly what scapegoat means, but I suspect that he does and used the word correctly.

Here are the apposite dictionary definitions of "scapegoat":

• 2 a: one that bears the blame for others
• b: one that is the object of irrational hostility.

In other words, Bush really feels that none of this is his fault. He is either the one taking the blame for the mistakes of others or he is the object of irrational hostility. But he's not the one who should really be held accountable for what's going on over there.

In other words, he still doesn't get it. He either doesn't get or he is unwilling to admit that if this war is a complete disaster it is his fault. He is still unwilling to accept reality. He is still, after all this time, in denial about that reality.

He may not be using the same cliches that he once used (we don't hear anymore those famous words "complete the mission"), but he still thinks that we can win this war when it's been obvious for at least a year and a half that it's over and we've lost.

And he's still willing to throw 20,000 more troops down the rathole that Iraq has become as a direct result of his actions and decisions -- no matter what he thinks.

Tom Moran