I dont have any

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I don’t have any sympathy for Doug Feith, but Mark Thompson at Time makes a point that bears repeating:

Feith may have been one of the Bush Administration’s most fervent supporters of war with Iraq but, in truth, he was only a bit player. Indeed, he is the third bit player in the Iraq fiasco to be paying for the sins of his superiors recently. For a couple of weeks now, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby has been in the dock in federal court in Washington, trying desperately to keep his one-time boss, Vice President Dick Cheney, from being stained by the responsibility for Libby’s chats with reporters and government officials about Valerie Plame’s CIA job. Then, just yesterday, Army General George Casey was raked over the coals by Senators who didn’t think his past 30 months in command of U.S. ground forces in Iraq warrants his elevation to Army chief of staff. . . .

This trio of woes seems to have a common thread: Underlings snared while trying to please their bosses. It’s almost like blaming the hammer instead of the carpenter for a bent nail.

Update: Let me refine a point here. Some readers have objected to calling Feith a “bit player.” I probably wouldn’t have phrased it that way, but I don’t think Thompson is letting Feith off the hook in any way. Nor should he be. Yes, Feith is an important figure who held a high-level position at the Pentagon. But he was merely implementing a policy that came down from the White House and the Office of the Vice President through the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Heaping scorn on Feith, who is no longer in government, is appropriate as far as it goes. Just keep in mind that the buck stops with Bush and Cheney, who not only directed the policy in the first place but remain completely unapologetic, as strikingly demonstrated by the White House’s refusal to cooperate with the investigation of Feith’s office by the Pentagon inspector general. In that sense, Feith is a bit player.

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