"Iraq was a Failure of National Leadership"

Richard Cohen, who supported the war in Iraq, has a very interesting New York Daily News article worth your attention. Cohen writes:

Now that President Bush, with all the enthusiasm of a dog going to the vet, has been yanked into naming a bipartisan commission to look into intelligence failures in Iraq, I'd like to see yet another commission established. This one would look into the real failure of intelligence - not the CIA, but America's political, social and intellectual leadership. It would be instructive to examine the yahoo mood that came over much of the nation once Bush decided to go to war. The decision - its urgency - seemed to come out of nowhere. Yet most of America fell into line, and in certain segments of the media, the Murdoch press above all, dissent was ridiculed. On Fox TV, France was a called a member of the"axis of weasels" and demonstrators in Davos, Switzerland, were disparaged as"knuckleheads." Colorful stuff, but wrong and craven. ... A consensus - based on false facts, outright lies and exaggerated fears - took over the nation. ... This was no mere failure of intelligence. This was a failure of character.

Read the whole essay.