Not so Reality Based

BLITZER: Here's what you write. You write, "Current and former military and intelligence officials have told me that the president remains convinced that it is his personal mission to bring democracy to Iraq, and that he is impervious to political pressure, even from fellow Republicans. They also say that he disparages any information that conflicts with his view of how the war is proceeding."

Those are incredibly strong words, that the president basically doesn't want to hear alternative analysis of what is going on.

HERSH: You know, Wolf, there is people I've been talking to -- I've been a critic of the war very early in the New Yorker, and there were people talking to me in the last few months that have talked to me for four years that are suddenly saying something much more alarming.

They're beginning to talk about some of the things the president said to him about his feelings about manifest destiny, about a higher calling that he was talking about three, four years ago.

I don't want to sound like I'm off the wall here. But the issue is, is this president going to be capable of responding to reality? Is he going to be able -- is he going to be capable if he going to get a bad assessment, is he going to accept it as a bad assessment or is he simply going to see it as something else that is just a little bit in the way as he marches on in his crusade that may not be judged for 10 or 20 years.

He talks about being judged in 20 years to his friends. And so it's a little alarming because that means that my and my colleagues in the press corps, we can't get to him maybe with our views. You and you can't get to him maybe with your interviews.

How do you get to a guy to convince him that perhaps he's not going the right way?

Jack Murtha certainly didn't do it. As I wrote, they were enraged at Murtha in the White House.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0511/27/le.01.html



I wonder if folks in the White House realize that this was what Hitler was doing as WWII was turning against Germany. Bad news was ignored. He mustered and moved armies on maps that didn't exist in the field, couldn't exist due to lack of resources. He was impervious to reality.

This administration has previously suggested a pride in its ignoring of reality in favor of dogma and faith. This is the kind of trauma that results.

Will Bush recognize he should leave office at the end of term (or in response to impeachment) if Iraq isn't 'finished?'

Science Fiction Outcome: If Bush doesn't give up power at the end of this term (or in response to an impeachment), the rest of the world will completely isolate (ostracise completely) the US economically, possibly to the point of declaration of war. Yes, cutting off the US economy will be terrible for the rest of the world, but will be preferable to a nuclear war with the US, which what any World War against the US would entail. They will suffer a lot to avoid it, but maybe necessary.