Bush Should Consider Advisers' Track Records

Bush was asked this weekend about proposals by some members of Congress, i.e. John McCain, to send more troops to Iraq in an effort to stabilize the country: "I haven't made any decisions about troop increases or troop decreases, and won't until I hear from a variety of sources," Bush replied.

Who do you suppose those sources would be?

Kenneth Pollack is the director of research at the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy. He's formerly a Middle East analyst at the CIA and the National Security Council -- sounds like good credential, huh? He recently commented "One of the many tragedies of Iraq is that we now have experienced military commanders with sound strategies, and we are still failing to adequately support them with the necessary troops, civilian personnel, and funds."

I assume he will be one of the sources.

However, Pollack doesn’t have a good track record, but that’s never stopped Bush before. Here's what Ken Pollack said in his book The Threatening Storm (pp. 173-175:

“....Just to be clear about this: in 1990, Iraq built a workable nuclear weapon. All it lacked was the fissile material. “

Yeah, right. And in the early 1990s, Warner Bros. built a workable time machine. All it lacked was the flux capacitor and 1.21 gigawatts of electricity.