Key Bush aid say now says he was "In Denial"

This is a fascinating story of Matthew Dowd, a key Bush and Rove aid who lead the attacks against John Kerry in 2004. You should check it out. In this interview he explains that he was fooled into supporting George W. Bush and went along with things he should have known were wrong in what he now admits was a tragic mistake. This interview in not just about Iraq. It is about the entire Bush administration and the right wing machine that develops a false narrative just to fool the public and keep power. We need more former Bush supporters to step up and admit they were mistaken. Only they really have the power to help other Red Americans see the light. Here are some selected quotes from the article and here is another analysis that goes even deeper into the way the Republican party has been taken over by folks with no need for the truth. Great Sunday reading.

Mr. Dowd, a crucial part of a team that cast Senator John Kerry as a flip-flopper who could not be trusted with national security during wartime, said he had even written but never submitted an op-ed article titled “Kerry Was Right,” arguing that Mr. Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat and 2004 presidential candidate, was correct in calling last year for a withdrawal from Iraq. “I’m a big believer that in part what we’re called to do — to me, by God; other people call it karma — is to restore balance when things didn’t turn out the way they should have,” Mr. Dowd said. “Just being quiet is not an option when I was so publicly advocating an election.”

Mr. Dowd said, in retrospect, he was in denial.“When you fall in love like that,” he said, “and then you notice some things that don’t exactly go the way you thought, what do you do? Like in a relationship, you say ‘No no, no, it’ll be different.’ ”
He said he clung to the hope that Mr. Bush would get back to his Texas style of governing if he won. But he saw no change after the 2004 victory. He describes as further cause for doubt two events in the summer of 2005: the administration’s handling of Hurricane Katrina and the president’s refusal, around the same time that he was entertaining the bicyclist Lance Armstrong at his Crawford ranch, to meet with the war protester Cindy Sheehan, whose son died in Iraq. “I had finally come to the conclusion that maybe all these things along do add up,” he said. “That it’s not the same, it’s not the person I thought.”