By: Patrick F. Morris

Ain't it funny how the Republicans all of sudden are obsessed with the “need for experience” now that John Edwards has been selected as John Kerry’s running mate. This coming from a party which nominated and supported a man who had no government experience except six years as governor of Texas before being elected president, a man who showed no interest in international affairs and who disdained foreign travel.

When confronted about this during the election campaign, his answer was that his own talent was as an executive. Didn’t he own and manage a baseball team? He said that as president he would surround himself with people of experience. And so he did. Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, to name only two of the experienced people he named to assist him. And look at the result that all this experience brought the nation.

Cheney was so experienced that he was sure that he had better intelligence than the CIA. His long years of experience told him that he should trust and support Ahmed Chalabi, who was providing him with invaluable information which the CIA couldn’t seem to gather. He was certain that Saddam had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, that he was building a nuclear arsenal and that he was an immediate threat to the United States. So he twisted and hyped whatever the Agency gave him to make it suit his more experienced mind. His experience told him that, somehow or another, Saddam had ties to Al Qaeda and was probably mixed up in the destruction of the Twin Towers.

Rumsfeld, like Cheney, was so experienced that he was absolutely sure that his expertise was so vast and unquestionable that he didn’t have to listen to leaders in the military that he would need at least 200,000 troops to occupy and pacify Iraq. These two very experienced professionals were sure that our invasion of Iraq would be a “cakewalk”, and that the studies produced by the State Department, USAID, CIA and the Pentagon predicting civil chaos should be ignored. Rumsfeld’s experience told him that he could cavalierly dismiss them all with the abrupt, “You can’t predict the future, so why try”.

Yes, the Republicans are right, experience is important. But it is of little use without good judgment. Cheney and Rumsfeld have experience, but lack good judgment. Bush lacks both.

Patrick Morris is a veteran of WWII and a retired Foreign Service Officer. Since retirement he has been writing poetry, novels, plays and magazine articles. His regional history of copper mining in Montana, "Anaconda Montana" is still in print and available on amazon.com.