Delusions and lies from Dick Cheney exposed

The byline is at the bottom (I'd be happy to have written this, but I didn't; see if you can tell if it is a "liberal" or a "conservative" assessing the situation and the dishonesty.)

"Many months ago it became obvious to all but the most ideologically blinkered that America is losing the war launched to deal with a chimeric problem (an arsenal of WMD) and to achieve a delusory goal (a democracy that would inspire emulation, transforming the region). Last week the president retired his mantra "stay the course" because it does not do justice to the nimbleness and subtlety of U.S. tactics for winning the war.

A surreal and ultimately disgusting facet of the Iraq fiasco is the lag between when a fact becomes obvious and when the fiasco's architects acknowledge that fact. Iraq's civil war has been raging for more than a year; so has the Washington debate about whether it is what it is.
In a recent interview with Vice President Cheney, Time magazine asked, "If you had to take back any one thing you'd said about Iraq, what would it be?" Selecting from what one hopes is a very long list, Cheney replied: "I thought that the elections that we went through in '05 would have had a bigger impact on the level of violence than they have ... I thought we were over the hump in terms of violence. I think that was premature."
He thinks so? Clearly, and weirdly, he implies that the elections had some positive impact on the level of violence. Worse, in the full transcript of the interview posted online he said the big impact he expected from the elections "hasn't happened yet." "Yet"? Doggedness can be admirable, but this is clinical.
Anyway, what Cheney actually said 17 months ago was that the insurgency was in its "last throes." That was much stronger than saying we were "over the hump" regarding violence. Beware of people who misquote themselves while purporting to display candor."

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The above is from the column by George F. Will in this week's Newsweek (dated 11/6). Cheney's attempted revision of the historical record is right in there with Bush claiming never to have said "stay the course" (on which see http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976823050 ),

BTW, having run through some of my conservative geneaology today (at http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976828154), I might mention that I audited the last course that George Will taught at James Madison College, an institution he helped plan and launch before going off to D.C. (first the office of Colorado Republican Senator Gordon Allott). He also taught at another alma mater of mine, the University of Toronto.

Is a a "leftist"? I think not. He has a conservative's realism and distrust of utopian projects (which the neocon fantasies about Iraq began as, wrecked though they now are).