HOW COULD IT BE OTHERWISE? :

Like Father, Unlike Son (WILLIAM SAFIRE, September 2, 2002, NY Times)

Brent Scowcroft has long been the alter ego of Bush-past. The advocate of our mistaken flinch at the end of "the mother of all battles" was co-writer of the former president's memoirs. By urging in The Wall Street Journal that we wait until Saddam attacks us, Scowcroft fired the opening shot in the Bush alumni's war on George W.'s announced intention to liberate the Iraqi people.

James Baker was Bush-past's chief of staff and later his secretary of state. Lukewarm about military response to Saddam's aggression, he joined with the Soviet Union's Yevgeny Primakov to propose a last-minute compromise. After grumpily mismanaging the 1992 Bush re-election campaign, Baker regained Bush family confidence by successfully managing the 2000 Florida recount. Last week, after checking with Bush-past, he called for delay until the U.N. takes the inspection route again, which the current president believes is a recipe for risky inaction.

Yesterday Larry Eagleburger, the elder Bush's diplomat who persuaded Israel to grin and bear Saddam's missile attacks, weighed in against Bush-present's policy on "Meet the Press." Only when proof is presented that Saddam is ready with nukes (Eagleburger does not consider germs and poison gas on missiles to qualify as weapons of mass destruction) would he approve a pre-emptive strike.

That's quite an Old Bush Guard lineup against the Bush now in the White House. And few doubt that this trio's view is echoed by the current secretary of state, who was the elder Bush's chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Gen. Colin Powell promised to "kill" Saddam's army but then killed our victory instead by quitting too soon.

One would merely note that the first paragraph of the obituary of each of these men will note the role he played in the "successful" war on Iraq. To ask them to step forward now and acknowledge that their crowning achievement was in fact a failure, and that the war needs to be finished ten years later, is to ask more than most humans are capable of. Posted by Orrin Judd at September 2, 2002 8:18 AM