Not that the whole interview was “60 Minutes,” even with commercials; I was gagging after only a few minutes. If one were to arrive as an alien without any knowledge of what had come before, one might think that Bush was a brave, stoic, responsible leader, sensitive to the families of the fallen, able and willing to admit mistakes, and not wanting to send any brave young men out to die but rather doing so because he had no choice.

An image which, of course, is pure, unadulterated bullshit. Or at least, that’s the reaction of someone who was not born yesterday, and who does have a memory of what Bush has said and done in the past. Even though this looks like a “New and Improved” Bush, it is nothing more than the same old hollow manipulator up to the exact same tricks he’s always been up to.

First, from the interview:

Scott Pelley: You mention mistakes having been made in your speech.

Bush: What mistakes are you talking about?  Abu Ghraib was a mistake.  Using bad language like, ya know, “bring ’em on,” was a mistake.  I think history is going to look back and see a lot of, uh, ways we could’ve done things better. No question about it.

Bush is behaving in true Republican form here, admitting to mistakes long after exhausting every attempt to blame everyone else, long, long after having denied many times that he ever made any mistakes. Do you remember this one?

John F. Robertson: Thank you, Mr. President. In the last campaign, you were asked a question about the biggest mistake you’d made in your life, and you used to like to joke that it was trading Sammy Sosa.

You’ve looked back before 9-11 for what mistakes might have been made. After 9-11, what would your biggest mistake be, would you say, and what lessons have learned from it?

Bush: I wish you’d have given me this written question ahead of time so I could plan for it. (laughter)

John, I’m sure historians will look back and say, gosh, he could’ve done it better this way or that way. 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 answer, but it hadn’t yet.

For years, Bush made what were universally regarded as disastrous blunders, and yet time after time, denied he had made any mistakes, or at least pretended there were none. In the debates for the 2004 election, for example, Bush again denied having made any mistakes more serious than a few ill-chosen appointment nominations. The debate denial, like many others, was made after the Abu Ghraib and “bring them on” mistakes he now ‘fesses up to. Why did he deny they were mistakes before?

And now we’re supposed to believe that suddenly he’s owning up to all of them without a selfish reason for doing so? Or that he chose to confess to only mistakes made far enough in the past to have safely faded in people’s minds? Bush is trying to play the humility card here; he has no choice but to admit to mistakes, and to claim that he is somehow responsible:

Bush: …the reason I brought up the mistakes, and I, is one, that’s the job of the commander-in-chief, and two, I don’t want people blaming our military.  We got a bunch of good military people out there who are doing what we’ve asked them to do.  And the temptation is gonna find scapegoats.  Well if people want a scapegoat, they’ve got one right here in me.  ’Cause it’s my decisions.

Yet another crock of BS. First of all, if it’s the “job of the commander-in-chief,” then why did he deny the mistakes before? Second, and more importantly, nobody else is blaming the troops. Bush is yet again trying to cast his opponents as troop-bashers, when the exact opposite has been true–Bush himself has blamed the troops for his own malfeasance. But by claiming that any criticism of him or the war is somehow aimed at the troops, he uses them as a human shield against criticism–whilst at the same time giving the audience a chance to consider that it was the troops’ fault, as they had never been blamed in the first place. It is a slick political move–it makes his critics look bad, makes him look good, and garners sympathy for his cause. That, of course, aside from the fact that it is a chickenshit cowardly maneuver that uses the troops, and demeans their honor and sacrifice by turning that into a political prop.

But the worst of it was this:

…Umm, (sigh) you know, you know a lot of them say, you know, Mr. President, don’t, don’t let my son die in vain.

One look at Bush’s past practices leaves no doubt that these family members were chosen with great care, allowing only those who would demand Bush continue to prosecute the war. As if that weren’t bad enough, for Bush to come out of it so dewy-eyed and use the sacrifice of the fallen troops as a slick propaganda line, to justify his past failures and his newly disastrous police to send 21,500 men and women back into the meat grinder, many for the third tour… it is enough to make one physically ill.

But there’s always time for one more lie:

Pelley: The president told us he reads a casualty report every morning, and personally signs every letter to the families of Americans killed in action.

This report, from the conservative Washington Times, shows how Bush, at the very least for the first year and a half of the war, did not bother to sign such letters; both he and Donald Rumsfeld used an signature-stamping device. All of this when Bush refused to allow fallen soldiers to be publicly mourned, lest the sight of flag-draped coffins be an embarrassment to the president.

But now, when Bush needs as much ammunition as he can get, now we hear how he agonizes over the personal tragedies, how he mourns each soldier, how he takes loving care to sign each letter. No one remembers, for example, how Bush callously excluded a fallen soldier’s widow from a ceremony using him as a PR prop “honoring” him. Bush didn’t even bother to lay the wreath himself.

One would be hard-pressed to imagine a situation where the expression “crocodile tears” would be more precisely accurate than this sickening performance in which we have seen the president partake.