Where's the Apology?
By PAUL KRUGMAN
George Bush promised to bring honor and integrity back to the White House. Instead, he got rid of accountability.
Surely even supporters of the Iraq war must be dismayed by the administration's reaction to David Kay's recent statements. Iraq, he now admits, didn't have W.M.D., or even active programs to produce such weapons. Those much-ridiculed U.N. inspectors were right. (But Hans Blix appears to have gone down the memory hole. On Tuesday Mr. Bush declared that the war was justified — under U.N. Resolution 1441, no less — because Saddam "did not let us in.")
So where are the apologies? Where are the resignations? Where is the investigation of this intelligence debacle? All we have is bluster from Dick Cheney, evasive W.M.D.-related-program-activity language from Mr. Bush — and a determined effort to prevent an independent inquiry.
True, Mr. Kay still claims that this was a pure intelligence failure. I don't buy it: the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has issued a damning report on how the threat from Iraq was hyped, and former officials warned of politicized intelligence during the war buildup. (Yes, the Hutton report gave Tony Blair a clean bill of health, but many people — including a majority of the British public, according to polls — regard that report as a whitewash.)
In any case, the point is that a grave mistake was made, and America's credibility has been badly damaged — and nobody is being held accountable. But that's standard operating procedure. As far as I can tell, nobody in the Bush administration has ever paid a price for being wrong. Instead, people are severely punished for telling inconvenient truths. And administration officials have consistently sought to freeze out, undermine or intimidate anyone who might try to check up on their performance.
Posted by P6 at January 30, 2004 08:39 AM
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Comments
The CEIP was the same one claiming that attacking Iraq would bring on Armageddon as Hussain unleashed smallpox, nukes and dirty bombs all over the world, so they have a bit of a credibility gap to. After all, if Hussain thought he had the weapons (which is what Kay reported) how the hell were we supposed to catch the rogue scientists? (It wasn't as easy for us to bug, torture and interrogate them to get to the truth as it was for Saddam.)
As for the 'polls' showing that the British Public doesn't buy the report, I think it is funny that Steven Den Beste just wrote a post about how inadequate polls are for judging public opinion, even when they aren't intentionally slanted. (I won't try to beat him on that front.)
Posted by Phelps at January 30, 2004 06:56 PM