Should Bush say sorry?

Discussion of pre-war intelligence before OIF has been hotly debated in the press and has resulted in 5 official inquiries from 3 different governments. Regardless of Saddam’s numerous transgressions, both those known before the war and those evidenced afterwards, debate and inquiry still center on the argument over the existence of WMDs.

Now, there is a minority of the population that is still sticking to the president’s line, and another minority that is tripping all over itself to burn effigies of Bush. Then there are the middle-grounders, which may have wanted Saddam deposed due to humanitarian concerns etc, but have been slowly turning against Bush over the past couple of years. The anti-Bush argument is that pre-war WMD intel was flimsy, and all this was a mistake.

I was thinking, what if Bush made a pre-emptive strike at these dissenters by outright apologizing for the decision to invade Iraq based on WMDs? He wouldn’t be apologizing for the war, in fact he would probably have to pair this with a speech about how to fix the situation, but he would accept responsibility for acting on uncertain WMD intel. Hell, it isn’t like he is looking out for another term. Would this defuse some of the dissent we currently see, taking the wind out of the anti-Bush crowd and converting over more of those from the middle ground?

The question could be simplified by asking if a mistake is made, is it better to take responsibility or not? This can be analyzed by using game theory.

We could look at this by setting up a simple 4X4 payoff matrix, pitting making a mistake [M], and not making a mistake [M] versus accepting responsibility [ R] and not accepting responsibility [R].

Now we load the model with a preferential order of outcomes, 1 being the worst payoff, and 4 being the best payoff.

1 (worst) = Make a mistake and not accept responsibility
4 (best) = Not make a mistake and accept responsibility

2 and 3 are always hard to put in, but I will say (and you don’t have to agree with me here):

2 (2nd worst) = Make a mistake and accept responsibility
3 (2nd best) = Not make a mistake and do not accept responsibility

Now let’s solve for maxi-MINs and mini-MAXs and look for a saddle point.

Joy! The saddle point is 2 = Make a mistake and accept responsibility

That’s interesting! The outcome with the most logical payoff is accepting responsibility when making a mistake.

Now, what if you switch the positions of 2 and 3. Say, for moral reasons, you prefer to make a mistake and accept responsibility.

2 (2nd worst) = Not make a mistake and do not accept responsibility
3 (2nd best) = Make a mistake and accept responsibility

Joy²! The saddle point is 3 = Make a mistake and accept responsibility

It is interesting to see that according to the sensitivity analysis it doesn’t matter whether you switch the payoff preferences of 2 and 3, the saddle point remains at M+R. So maybe if Karl Rove knew game theory he would tell the president to step and do the right thing!