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<div><span>Buckley Says Bush Will Be Judged on Iraq War, Now a `Failure' </span></div>
<p>March 31 (Bloomberg) -- William F. Buckley Jr., the longtime conservative writer and leader, said George W. Bush's presidency will be judged entirely by the outcome of a war in Iraq that is now a failure. </p>
<p>``Mr. Bush is in the hands of a fortune that will be unremitting on the point of Iraq,'' Buckley said in an interview that will air on Bloomberg Television this weekend. ``If he'd invented the Bill of Rights it wouldn't get him out of his jam.''
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<p>Buckley said he doesn't have a formula for getting out of Iraq, though he said ``it's important that we acknowledge in the inner councils of state that it (the war) has failed, so that we should look for opportunities to cope with that failure.''
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<p>The 80-year-old Buckley is among a handful of prominent conservatives who are criticizing the war. Asked who is to blame for what he deems a failure, Buckley said, ``the president,'' adding that ``he doesn't hesitate to accept responsibility.''
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<p>Buckley called Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a longtime friend, ``a failed executor'' of the war. And Vice President Dick Cheney ``was flatly misled,'' Buckley said. ``He believed the business about the weapons of mass destruction.''
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<div>Buckley, often called the father of contemporary conservatism in America, articulated his beliefs in National Review magazine, which he founded in 1955. His conservatism calls for small government, low taxes and a strong defense. Both Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater said they got their inspiration from the magazine.
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<p>In the interview, Buckley criticized the so-called neo- conservatives who enthusiastically embraced the Iraq invasion and the spreading of American values around the world. </p>
<p>``The neoconservative hubris, which sort of assigns to America some kind of geo-strategic responsibility for maximizing democracy, overstretches the resources of a free country,'' Buckley said. </p>
<p>While praising Bush as ``really a conservative,'' he was critical of the president for allowing expansion of the federal government and never vetoing a spending bill. </p>
<div>The president's ``concern has been so completely on the international scope that he can be said to have neglected conservatism'' on the fiscal level, Buckley said. </div>
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<div>Vision2020 Post by Ted Moffett</div>