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GW Bush is not a dummy, he is in reality a pretty bright guy. His executive style is in the same vein as Eisenhower and Regan. Bush has advisors whose opinion he TRUSTS, they advise him on their area of expertise and he says yes or no based upon their research and advise. What he lacks is a certain curosity to find out the facts for himself or go beyond what they tell him. This style or pathology has not served him well in dealing with foreign policy.

VP Dick Cheney has been a very trusted advisor to the President. Cheney being a veteran of the Washington beltway has mastered the art of Bureaucratic infighting and was able to put people in key positions throughout the administration. It has been said that he controled virtually every avenue of information and policy through his appointments, or had knowledge of everything that moved with regards to the executive branch.

Thus the flow of information to Bush was biased by Cheneys point of view ( Rumsfeld and Cheney were like a tag team, who basically held the same points of view and were friends). As Iraq got worse and worse Bush started to listen to other voices and Cheneys people got eliminated because of their failures. So at this point Cheney is probably relegated to his office in the basement of the West Wing and trotted out only to go to funerals. Carl Rove on the other hand was a domestic policy advisor and didn't delve into foreign policy matters.

Bush does change directions and change policy when he realizes the direction he is going isn't working. Many people say the "Surge" is just the same old same old. However faced with the options Bush has in Iraq the "Surge" was the BEST OF THE WORST options he has to choose from.

Is Bush responsible for the diaster that Iraq has turned out to be. The answer is yes he is, his decisions came from information that was skewed in a paticular direction by his advisors. He kept those advisors on until they proved themselves to be wrong or incompetent. However the damage has now been done, and their is virtually no good way out. Every scenerio has a poor consequence for the US and world. Some spell complete diaster for the US and world economys.


BTW: If you read through this, I am merely reporting what has gone on and have no political bias one way or the other on the matter. This is pathology and not partisan politics.