Mea Culpa!

My last posting, entitled "Mr. Frist , Get a Life" (now mercifully deleted), was based on a parody article at parody website, www.foxnews.us. My apologies to readers. Some rules come to mind, regarding columns and postings. I'll share them here:

1) Listen openmindedly to your critics as well as your friends. This didn't prevent me from using a parody article, but it did alert me early on that I had made a mistake.

2) Check and recheck your facts, and admit mistakes if you made them. I failed to check my facts and sources, and I made a set of mistakes.

3) Re-evaluate your assumptions and motivations. I admit -- the article fit into my assumptions, as it apparently did for many people who read my posting. Was I too quick to declare war against Bill Frist? Yes, and in this case, for the wrong reasons. Was I too willing to believe questionable statements and sources? Yes, I was.

4) Repair the damage, as identified by critics, as fostered by incorrect and questionable intelligence, and made possible through a narrow ideologically driven set of assumptions and motivations. In this case, the posting could not be repaired, and thus was deleted.

It occurs to me that writing commentary and making national security decisions could each be improved by the same set of simple rules.

Speaking of Iraq, I was recently interviewed by Brian Lamb on C-Span's Q&A program. The interview aired last Sunday night; video and a transcript are available at C-Span this week. The reason Brian called me was to get some background on the Why We Fight documentary. This coming Sunday, Brian's interview of Bill Kristol -- who also appears in the documentary -- will be broadcast. I shared a military and conservative/libertarian perspective, as well as my personal observations inside the Pentagon during the 2002 and 2003 buildup to the Iraq invasion and occupation. Bill Kristol should be able to shed light on what was happening in the neoconservative thinktanks in Washington during that same time frame.

The C-Span interviews, like this personal mea culpa about my last posting here, are about listening to all sides, exploring what we know and what we don't, correcting mistakes when we can, and owning up to our responsibilities. A big thanks to HuffPo readers, and the internet, for making it all possible.