Bush's Iraq Sacrifice

Before his five-day Middle East tour of lame-duck quacking on Israel's 60th birthday and to hold hands with Saudi Arabia's gas-price gougers, President Bush revealed his personal sacrifice for the war in Iraq: He stopped playing golf.

In his first on-line interview, he told Politico and Yahoo News, "I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.”

But Bush insisted that his own hardship was worth it to avert a doomsday scenario that, in the event of a premature US withdrawal, "extremists throughout the Middle East would be emboldened, which would eventually lead to another attack on the United States."

"The United States pulling out of Iraq or pulling out of the Middle East or not maintaining a forward presence would send all kinds of signals throughout the Middle East," he said. "And it would shake everybody's nerves, and it would embolden the very same people that we're trying to defeat."

Asked if he was "misled" into starting the war, the President refused to pass the buck: “Do I think somebody lied to me? No, I don't. I think it was just, you know, they analyzed the situation and came up with the wrong conclusion.”

Oh.