Interesting to hear the President finally admit he had made mistakes in connection with his decisions concerning the invasion of Iraq and the subsequent conduct of the war. This addmission must have devastated poor long suffering Tom Broz and the brotherhood of Bush apologists. In accepting responsibility for his mistakes it occurred to me that there should be consequences for this calumny, not merely consequences for the country but consequences for this President personally.

Being a bit of a history buff my mind turned to the controversy between Thomas a' Becket and King Henry II of England in 1174 and how King Henry was required to show his penance for his complicity in the murder of Becket. The King was required to walk barefoot to Westminister
Cathedral while being scourged.

Accordingly, I think it would be most appropriate for President Bush to walk barefoot from the White house to the Capitol as a penance to show an act of contrition. Sourging would not be necessary, the act of contrition being demonstrated by his barefoot state would be enough.
After years of arrogant and inaccurate decisions, it would be more correct on his part than to once more present the American people with yet another arrogant and questionable decision as he is attempting to do.

In the nature of pulling out all the stops to support his position is the suggestion that we owe it to the soldiers who were killed for his folly to keep going in Iraq to demonstrate that they did not die in vain. In other words, we should be willing to have more of our kids killed in defense of his flawed policies as a tribute, to honor those who have already died needlessly. What a foul card to play to suggest to those who have already lost a loved one that to admit our mistakes
would denigrate the quality of their sacrifice. Now, rather than recognize that the bulk of the fighting is in the nature of a civil war between Sunni and Shiia, he characterizes all of the combatants as belligerents, as if in suggest that all of this chaos is part of the insurgency fomented by Al Qeda to overthrow the government. More troops will turn it around, bring us to victory. It is painfully reminiscent of the man who keeps repeating the same act yet expects a different result (a clinical definition of insanity). No reference is made to the fact that we have a vast number of U.S. troops already in Baghdad and the fact that this number has had little effect in quelling the violence. No, 20,000 more and a few concessions by the Iraqis will win the day.

The Joe Biden proposal of dividing the country into three sections, for Kurds, Sunni and Shiia, giving each section a large degree of autonomy but providing for a federal type central government. Looking into the history of Iraq it was interesting to note that is precisely what
the Ottoman Empire did in 1534, when they provided for three administrative provinces located at Mosul, in the north for the Kurds, Baghdad in the center of the area for the Sunni, and Basra in the south for the Shia. Although some home rule was permitted by Istanbul this administrative division was kept in force by the Ottoman until 1918 when W.W.I ended, a period of almost 500 years.The British occupation and their establishing a monarchy ultimately led us to the mess with which we are confronted today, but separating the contesting factions pretty well kept the peace for 500 years.

The mistake it would seem is viewing Iraq as a long standing sovereign political entity when in fact it is a recent creation, a product of British Colonialism and the mandate system established at the end of W.W.I .

The Iraqis love to point to the ancient cities of Mesopotamia, and then claim "we gave the world civilization." Perhaps they should have kept some of this "civilization" for themselves. The reality is that the area now occupied by Iraq is where the Mesopotamia existed but beyond the geographic locale there is little justification for the current Iraqis to take credit for the creation of civilization.

Meanwhile President Bush would do well to examine Joe Biden's proposal and stop worrying about his place in history as a brilliant military strategist and decider.

Publius