"The Rise of the Vulcans," published in 2004, is an excellent book about the most important people involved in the Bush Administration's defense and foreign policy. It paints a portrait of Rumsfeld as a bureaucrat, Cheney as a paranoid, Powell as a nonentity, Rice as a cipher, and Wolfowitz as nut. Richard Armitage comes across as a stand-up guy--the only one in the group with whom you would want share a couple of beers or a foxhole. (Aside from Powell, he's also the only on in the group who's ever been in a foxhole--figuratively if not literally.)
It was disappointing, then, to learn that Armitage was the one who had outed Valerie Plame as a CIA agent. Is it now refreshing to hear Armitage call it a blunder. The Times quotes Armitage today as follows:
It was a terrible error on my part. . . . There wasn’t a day when I didn’t feel like I had let down the president, the secretary of state, my colleagues, my family and the Wilsons. I value my ability to keep state secrets. This was bad, and I really felt badly about this.
When was the last time, if ever, that anyone with any connection to the Bush administration voluntarily admitted error and expressed remorse?
Comments