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Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Incurious Bush

You claim that President Bush may have "established a new standard for presidential incuriosity" (The New Intelligence on Iran, Boston Globe, Wednesday, December 5th, 2007).

There are however other explanations for his behavior other than laziness. First Mr. Bush is a crafty person. There were things that he did not want to know, and any minimization of Iran's nuclear work was one of those things. If he did not know that Iran's behavior had changed, he could go on telling the world how evil Iran was.

A second, more flattering explanation, is that Mr. Bush is a very good intuitive psychologist. He knows that early impressions anchor one's position so that a false early impression could be detrimental to wise decision making. As the August information was of the anecdotal, unconfirmed kind, it would be sensible not to know its details so that later decisions would be free of inappropriate influences.

My bet is that he was just lazy.

Sent to Boston Globe

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