Buckley disses Bush ... in spades!

My brother, Richard from Connecticut, emailed me a short video of William F. Buckley (right) being interviewed by CBS News Saturday anchor, Thalia Assuras. Inasmuch as George W. Bush still considers himself to be a "true conservative," he must be somewhat unhappy with all that Buckley had to say about both him and his presidency during the CBS interview.

The video of Saturday's interview (plus two other videos of William F. Buckley debating Noam Chomski) are at this link. My brother, Richard, resent the videos' URL to me in a comment to this posting -- as well as his original email to me. I should have included it when I originally posted this yesterday.

Of course, most of us -- my "Republican" brother, included -- recognize the failures of the past six years and, in particular, the sad failure of our activities in Iraq. Iraq alone will be enough to make my predictions for the 2006 Midterm Elections to pan out, I think. When Buckley was asked if the Bush Administration was distracted by Iraq, he went a step or two further than distracted. "I think it has been engulfed by Iraq, by which I mean no other subject interests anybody other than Iraq ... The continued tumult in Iraq has overwhelmed ... well, other parts of the Middle East with respect to Iran, in particular."

Buckley made it clear that he believes that our being tied down in Iraq makes it difficult to deal with the Iranian problem -- that is, Iran's threat of developing nuclear weapons. He even disagreed with the neoconservative view that we might preemptively resort to an air attack on an Iranian nuclear facility. "What would the Iranian population do?" he asked.

The implication was clear: Iran can full well see how well (NOT) we are handling Iraq.

The most damaging words he had to say about GWB were when he was asked what legacy Mr. Bush will leave behind when he (finally) does leave office. He said, "There will be no legacy for Mr. Bush ... I think his legacy is indecipherable."

Indecipherable?

That, friends, is classic Buckley ... and a word that I couldn't improve upon. And to think that Mr. Buckley is 81 years young ...