Bush's speech causes major reaction

Bush gave his speech on Iraq Wednesday evening. The media reported on it Wednesday, not too kindly. Then everyting seems to have broken loose by Thursday. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee came down hard on Condi Rice Thursday - Democrats and Republicans both. Today going through the news on-line all the stories are negative, both MSM and blogosphere. Here is from Eric Alterman yesterday:

The Bush/Cheney war in Iraq has proven to be even more catastrophic than those who had the good sense to oppose it could have predicted. It has killed Americans and Iraqis, destroyed a functioning, albeit unfree nation, increased the threat of terrorism, destabilized the region, empowered our enemies--particularly Iran and Syria--inspired hatred of the United States across the globe and will ultimately cost American taxpayers upwards of a trillion dollars. It is, almost certainly, as Al Gore has noted, "the worst strategic mistake in the entire history of the United States."

The problem the war creates for the punditocracy and the rest of the political establishment is twofold. First, the leaders they backed have not only been wildly incompetent but also impervious to reality. Offered a face-saving exit by the Baker Commission, Bush, Cheney & Co. prefer instead to double down on disaster. Second, there is the problem of the pundits' individual reputations. If William Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, Lawrence Kaplan and David Brooks et al. are so smart, why were they so wrong about something so crucial? And why, given their sorry records, do they and their editors still think anybody ought to keep listening to them? At the very least, those they misled are entitled to an explanation.

His first paragraph says what we are all sure of now. But his second takes the punditocracy to task for their idiocy, and he names names.

It's about time.

[Day of week above corrected from Tuesday to Wednesday.]