Take Backs are for Pussies

What is so wrong with acknowledging a mistake? Dubya and Cheney make it sound like reversing one's opinion is unreasonable and just unpatriotic! In the case of politicians, they're accusing them of pandering to the current wave of popular opinion (and Bush's falling approval ratings). While that may be the case, how do they explain people that have always disapproved of the war? Or Bill Clinton's recent comments?

[11/17/05 Update:]
Official tough guy (Representative John Murtha) disagrees with Cheney.

Mr. Murtha, a 73-year-old Marine Corps veteran of Vietnam combat, lashed back at Vice President Dick Cheney, who in a speech to a conservative group on Wednesday night condemned critics of the Iraq war. "The president and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing their memory, or their backbone, but we're not going to sit by and let them rewrite history," Mr. Cheney said in an address to the group, Frontiers of Freedom, in Washington.

Mr. Murtha was disdainful of the vice president's remarks, saying that "people with five deferments" had no right to make such remarks. Mr. Cheney, like millions of other young men of the era, avoided military service during the Vietnam war.