Bill Kristol: Don't Blame Me, It Was Poor Execution

One of the major proponent's for the Iraq War was T.V. maven and Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol. Today on Fox News, Kristol decided the better part of valor was to save his own ass and throw everyone else under the train.

BILL KRISTOL: There would not be civil war if Zarqawi had not spent the last 2 1/2 years - had ex-Saddamists with him, very skillfully going on the offensive slaughtering Shia in Karbala, now blowing up the mosque.
CHRIS WALLACE: They're there. There are going to be more mosques to blow up. What do you do about the terrorists?
KRISTOL: Kill them. Defeat them.
CHRIS WALLACE: We've been trying.
KRISTOL: We've been trying, and our soldiers are doing terrifically, but we have not had a serious three-year effort to fight a war in Iraq as opposed to laying the preconditions for getting out.
CICI CONNELLY: I think that really begs the question then: what have we been doing over there for three-plus years? You say there hasn't been a serious effort to rid that region of the terrorists. I just wonder what secretary Rumsfeld would say in response to that or all the U.S. soldiers who have been over there all this time.
KRISTOL: Secretary Rumsfeld's plan was to draw town to 30,000 troops at the end of major activities.

What a disingenuous fuck. As he knows, Rummy didn't, in fact, draw down to 30,000. Where the fuck does Kristol think the other troops were to come from? Where the fuck was he when General Shinseki was being shown the door for suggesting more troops were needed?

This is the classic case of the historical revisionism we so often see from these wrong-headed conservatives. Kristol was laughably wrong about this "adventure." He should not be let off the hook but should be treated as the town scourge on matters of foreign policy in the future.

What are the chances the traditional meeting will continue to treat Kristol as an expert on foreign policy while continuing to treat liberals, the folks who who were right on this issue, as foreign policy know nothings?

UPDATE: As Kevin Drum more succinctly notes, Kristol's lament is similar to the swan song of the old Communists: Communism didn't fail, it was never truly implemented.