A Voice Of Common Sense Departs

I know Meghan O’Sullivan has been depicted in some corners as a typical Bushco cheerleader for the Iraq carnage, but that is not the case.

O’Sullivan, who eventually became Dubya’s top adviser on Iraq, was once castigated by Bushco for calling out Ahmed Chalabi as the con man and crook that he is, earning the particular enmity of Dick Cheney and getting her excluded (for a time) from Jay Garner’s transition team in Iraq which landed in that country in early 2003.

As with Gen. David Petraeus, I think O’Sullivan is a member of the reality-based community to whom Dubya gave short shrift through his idiotic stubbornness for years, but then turned to people like her and Petraeus when it became painfully evident to him that the people he had relied on had not a clue about what they were doing (of course, the same thing had long since occurred already to everyone else).

Don’t get me wrong, though. I’m not trying to pretend that Petraeus and O’Sullivan aren’t scheming political operatives in their own right. It’s just that they happen to be adults in an administration of what at best could be termed “bad example” adolescents.