Correcting mistakes

In case you missed it, Condi made the mistake of being honest with the media yesterday.

But in response to a question about whether the administration had learned from its mistakes over the past three years, she said officials would be "brain-dead" if they did not recognize where they had erred.

"I know we've made tactical errors, thousands of them I'm sure," Rice said. "But when you look back in history, what will be judged is, did you make the right strategic decisions."

Rice did not cite specific mistakes in Iraq, and State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said she was speaking figuratively.

Yeah, "figuratively." That's it. Let's run with that.

One day after Condoleezza Rice said the United States made possibly "thousands" of tactical mistakes in the war against Iraq, the secretary of state says she was speaking "figuratively, not literally."

In a speech Friday at an event organized by the Chatham House think tank, Rice said, "I am quite certain there are going to be dissertations written about the mistakes of the Bush administration."

"I know we've made tactical errors, thousands of them, I'm sure," she said. "But when you look back in history what will be judged on is" whether the "right strategic decision" was made.

On Saturday, a reporter asked Rice to give examples of the mistakes.

"First of all, I meant it figuratively, not literally. Let me let me be very clear about that. I wasn't sitting around counting," she replied. "The point I was making to the questioner ... is that, of course, if you've ever made decisions, you've undoubtedly made mistakes.

"The important thing is to get the big strategic decisions right, and that I am confident that the decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein and give the Iraqi people an opportunity for peace and for democracy is the right decision."

"The other point I was making to the questioner is that I'm enough of a historian to know that things that looked brilliant at the moment turn out in historical perspective to be mistakes, and the things that look like mistakes turn out to have been right decisions."

Hmmm. She seems to have left out what the questioner asked for, which is an example of a mistake the administration made in starting and carrying out the disaster, the mess, the tragedy that is the war in Iraq.

However, no one in the administration has ever actually identified even one of those mistakes. (unless you count Donald Rumsfeld's "losing the war of ideas" bullshit. But I mean real mistakes.) So at the end of the day, the most direct answer we have from the administration to the question of what mistakes have been made in Iraq is

"You know, I just -- I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with an answer, but it hadn't yet."

So, for all the administration's pretend conciliation, all the fanfare that accompanied Bush's acknowledgment that mistakes have been made (note the artful use of the passive voice), it turns out that it was all make believe, a show designed to bolster plummeting poll numbers and make George Bush appear more human and reasonable by being able to admit what even Bhutanese yak herders know to be true -- that the administration fucked up badly in Iraq.

But, in the sprit of helpfulness, I'd like to direct the administration to a list of mistakes that it can use in case Bush accidentally calls on Helen Thomas again or another Cabinet member misplaces a talking points memo. Bush's handlers are invited to click here and scour the list for something that can be blamed on Michael Brown.