At last, an honest answer out of Tony Snow.
When asked why, after four years in Iraq, President Bush decided he needed a war czar, the White House press secretary responded: “I honestly don’t know.” No, Tony, and neither does anybody else.
After several generals turned down the job, because they don’t support the president’s policy in Iraq, Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute accepted the assignment. But that still leaves a lot of questions unanswered.
1. If the president is commander in chief, why do we need a war czar?
2. If the war czar is now in charge of the war, what happened to the secretary of defense?
3. If President Bush insists we have to leave conduct of the war up to generals on the ground in Iraq, why add one more general giving orders from Washington? And …
4. No matter how you slice it, isn’t this just one more layer of government bureaucracy?
Of course it is. And that’s what the war czar’s all about: putting one more layer of distance around George Bush — so he’ll have somebody else to blame when Iraq finally falls apart, once and for all. The truth is, we don’t need another war czar. We need another president.