Here's a question that the moderator of the next Republican debate should pose to all the candidates:
Knowing what you know now about the lack of weapons of mass destruction, the lack of Iraq-Al Qaeda connections and what you know now about how the Bush administration wound up handling the war, would you still vote the same way on the Iraq War?
John McCain was on "Meet the Press" on Sunday and he said repeatedly the problem was Secretary Rumsfeld's handling of the war. Remember, President Bush made an active decision, despite many voices to the contrary, to keep Don Rumsfeld in charge of our efforts in Iraq for nearly four long years. This is the same president making decisions on Iraq that John McCain and the other Republican contenders say they trust to make the right decisions now.
So, knowing what they know about the Bush administration and how they handled the war, would they have given them the authority to launch an attack against Iraq if they had to do it over again?
It's a very simple question and I would love to see how they answer it. Knowing that we had almost no reason to go in the first place and knowing that Bush would botch it, are they crazy enough to say they would do it again? Or can they finally admit what the rest of us already know, it was a terrible decision to attack Iraq and to trust this president to lead that effort?
Of course, that leads to the obvious next question: If you think Bush handled this war so badly up until now, what gives you the confidence that he will handle it any better from now on?
If he put in place all the incompetent people that botched the war and authorized all the wrong decisions leading up to now, why would you have any confidence that he would make any better decisions going forward?
But one thing at a time. Let's first find out if any of them are willing to say with a straight face that knowing we were headed to failure in Iraq they would do everything the same again.