Perle wasn’t mischaracterized; he’s just spinning furiously now.  His long block quote tells us as much.

jpe, thanks so much for telling us what Mr. Perle’s opinion is.

Have you emailed him so that he knows as well?

Rob:

No honest supporter of the war in Iraq is going to claim that the war has gone perfectly.  It hasn’t.  Mistakes have been made.  Balls have been dropped.  But be that as it may, it doesn’t make the original mission any less worthy, nor does it make the original decision to pursue that mission in Iraq with invasion any less correct

I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to read the Orson Scott Card commentary I linked to earlier, but what he said was pretty interesting (keep in mind he is or was a Democrat):

Critics of Bush love to cite the many “mistakes” his administration has made. Most of these “mistakes” are arguable—are they mistakes at all?—and when you sum up the others, with any kind of rational understanding of military history, the only possible conclusion is that this is the best-run war in history, with the fewest mistakes. And most of the mistakes we’ve made are the kind that become clear to morning-after quarterbacks but were difficult to avoid in the fog of war.

Worse yet, Bush’s opponents invariably depict these mistakes as being the result of deliberately chosen policies—a ludicrous charge, but one that is taken seriously by an astonishing number of people who should know better. The game, you see, is blame. It’s not enough to say, Bush made a mistake. You have to say, Bush deliberately did it wrong for evil purposes and he must be punished.

But let’s accept the fairy tale that this war has been badly run. That still does not change the fact that on all of the biggest points, Bush has made exactly the right choice—and he has been the only one who has even seen the need to make those choices!

Carrick, I’d read it.  Great op/ed.

I wasn’t saying that the war has been badly run.  I’m just saying that it hasn’t been perfect.  And it hasn’t.  Could all the mistakes have been avoided?  I don’t know, but the larger point here is that the debate over Iraq should be over how we win.  How we go forward.  Not if we should go forward, or whether or not we should quit.

Rob, I wasn’t criticizing you...it’s just interesting to recognize how much of the criticisms we hear amount to Sunday morning quarterbacking, and most of it designed to damage the President rather than do something more constructive (like help in “course corrections").  I also found it interesting to see Orson’s viewpoint was the same as mine, even though there likely is some ideological differences.  (I don’t for example worry about the damage that Republicans are doing to our nation’s values and ideals, as he apparently does.)

criticisms we hear amount to Sunday morning quarterbacking,

FYI: The expression is “monday morning quarterbacking” the day after the game is played

This whole Vanity Fair kerfuffle is but one more illustration of the fact that those on the Left are not constrained by principles or morals as are those of us on the Right.  Even if the interviews were accurately reported by Vanity Fair, and quite obviously those who were actually interviewed don’t think so, the fact is that the magazine gave its word that the material would not be published until after the election.  Obviously, that promise was also a lie.

Rob: It’s nice to see “Neo-Con” not used as a smear…