An Exit Toward Soul-Searching (As Bush Staffers Leave, Questions About Legacy Abound)

[onehandle]

Source: Washington Post

As Bush Staffers Leave, Questions About Legacy Abound

It had been four days since Meghan O'Sullivan left her job at the White House. Just four days since she gave up her Secret Service pass, her classified hard drive and her entree to the president. Four days since she gave up any day-to-day responsibility for Iraq.

Too soon, evidently, for the dreams to end. "In fact, I was dreaming about Iraq last night," she said. "And I woke up and thought, 'When do you think this will stop?' "

As President Bush's top Iraq adviser while the war sank into an abyss over the past few years, O'Sullivan lived it every waking hour -- and many of the sleeping ones. The dreams came every night, often prosaic, sometimes straight out of a war movie, filled with violence and menace. It was, she said, "all consuming."

Now she has left a White House under siege, part of a parade of longtime aides who have headed for the door in recent months exhausted, sometimes discouraged and wrestling with the legacy of their experience. Karl Rove feels guilty for leaving in a time of war, yet he wants to reinvent himself as more than simply "the Bush guy." Peter H. Wehner rues lost friendships with those estranged by the war. Dan Bartlett is relieved to shed the burden of worrying that any day could bring another terrorist attack.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/06/AR2007100601521.html

---

Souls? What souls?

[yardwork]

1. Poor babies. They're lucky they're not dead, though.

And what gives them the idea that they have the right to stop worrying about the disasters they have wrought?

[hobbit709]

2. I hope she has sleepness nights for a long, long time.

[independentpiney]

3. My uncle has been having nightmares since Dec 7, 1941

I hope hers last just as long,and with greater frequency.

[maddogesq]

4. Legacy? Here's your legacy!

Need I say more?

[War Pigs]

5. too old for Iraq, assholes? Send YOUR kids, and maybe some

of the guilt will go away. How about 20% of your future earnings (for life) to help the widows and now fatherless children you helped create pay for college and health care they'll need for the next 50 years or so?? Doubt it

[Doctor_J]

6. Sounds like Nellie Rove will be with us for awhile

I can't believe they didn't put that piece of shit in prison when they had the chance.

I hope the entire lot of them enjoy eternity in hell for what they did to the world.

[quiet.american]

7. Just remember, Meg, "I was only following orders" won't cut it. n/t

[w4rma]

8. It ticks me off when articles like this are written in a way that shows more sympathy for the idiot

brainwashed, evil directors of this war than the soldiers who risk their lives following those orders.

[calimary]

9. I loved many parts of this. LOVED that "it's something you live with"

snivel. Yeah. Lucky YOU, bartlett. Good on YOU, o'sullivan. Just ducky for you, wehlen. Nice for you, rove. You DO get to "live with" it. A whole lot of other people won't get to live PERIOD because of what you've done, actions you've taken, advise you've given, policies you pushed, and LIES YOU TOLD.

And notice how so many of them had their own versions of "I'm not going to revisit that" or "I don't second-guess..." or that ridiculously nauseating cliche "I'm moving forward." That's certainly understandable. I myself wouldn't want to spend any time revisiting that shit if I had had any part in it, either.

It is at least minimally comforting to know many of these assholes do not rest completely easy now that they're away from it all, and that they still feel compelled to justify so much of what they've wrought. That's what happens when you realize, deep down, that your legacy is a nightmare fuck-up of the most monstrous and epic proportions. Provided, of course, that even a tiny scrap of you is willing to face it (which, with these people, is doubtful). Anyone who had accomplished anything good would be eager to revisit it and talk about it all the live long day.

You shouldn't have to do Cirque du Soleil-style contortions to keep justifying things you did. What you did shouldn't require justifying. Unless they really are THAT bad.

I, too, wish them a lifetime of sleepless nights, and maybe several months facing a war crimes tribunal in advance of some serious time in federal prison.