I generally avoid lengthy quotes from outside sources here on the blog, but, in this case, I'm going to make an exception. Here's pro-war moderate Fareed Zakaria, on the stomach-churning stew of arrogance, incompetence and moral blindness that this administration has proudly -- yes, proudly -- served up to the American people and the world since 9/11:

"I take full responsibility," said Donald Rumsfeld in his congressional testimony last week. But what does this mean? Secretary Rumsfeld hastened to add that he did not plan to resign and was not going to ask anyone else who might have been "responsible" to resign. As far as I can tell, taking responsibility these days means nothing more than saying the magic words "I take responsibility."

After the greatest terrorist attack against America, no one was asked to resign, and the White House didn't even want to launch a serious investigation into it. The 9/11 Commission was created after months of refusals because some of the victims' families pursued it aggressively and simply didn't give up. After the fiasco over Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, not one person was even reassigned. The only people who have been fired or cashiered in this administration are men like Gen. Eric Shinseki, Paul O'Neill and Larry Lindsey, who spoke inconvenient truths. [...]

The basic attitude taken by Rumsfeld, Cheney and their top aides has been "We're at war; all these niceties will have to wait." As a result, we have waged pre-emptive war unilaterally, spurned international cooperation, rejected United Nations participation, humiliated allies, discounted the need for local support in Iraq and incurred massive costs in blood and treasure. If the world is not to be trusted in these dangerous times, key agencies of the American government, like the State Department, are to be trusted even less. Congress is barely informed, even on issues on which its "advise and consent" are constitutionally mandated.

Leave process aside: the results are plain. On almost every issue involving postwar Iraq—troop strength, international support, the credibility of exiles, de-Baathification, handling Ayatollah Ali Sistani—Washington's assumptions and policies have been wrong. By now most have been reversed, often too late to have much effect. This strange combination of arrogance and incompetence has not only destroyed the hopes for a new Iraq. It has had the much broader effect of turning the United States into an international outlaw in the eyes of much of the world.

Whether he wins or loses in November, George W. Bush's legacy is now clear: the creation of a poisonous atmosphere of anti-Americanism around the globe. I'm sure he takes full responsibility.

Read the rest of Zakaria's discussion of the responsibility-evading, didn't-serve-when-they-could've, phony-tough boy-men in and around this White House here.

POSTSCRIPT: If I sound a little miffed, it's because I am. Like all occupants of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., these people are renters, not owners, and the unique territory this nation has occupied for generations in the hearts and dreams of men and women the world over -- sacred ground earned in part by the hard work and principled leadership of a long line of Democratic and Republican presidents alike -- wasn't theirs to trash just because an Electoral College fluke denied the man who got the most votes in 2000 his opportunity to serve in the Oval Office. And it is that willful, deeply disturbing violation of America's promise, that cynical shock-and-awe attack on the "shining city on a hill" that Ronald Reagan once spoke of so movingly, that will, more than anything else, cost George W. Bush and his regents and hangers-on the White House in 2004.

It couldn't happen to a better group of guys. Boy-guys, anyway.

--------