More pious words about accountability
from the Bush regime, this time from Colin Powell on Kofi Annan and the oil-for-food scandal:
“The [U.N.] secretary general will have to be accountable for those management problems,”
Powell said yesterday, according to Reuters. Powell did not say whether he himself should be held
accountable for telling the U.N. and the people of the world, not to mention the American public,
that he had categorical proof of WMD in Iraq.
By a nice coincidence, The Washington Post reports today that the hunt for WMD has finally ended
and that the so-called interim report submitted to
Congress last September by the chief U.S. weapons inspector Charles Duelfer — which
“contradicted nearly every prewar assertion about Iraq made by top Bush administration
officials” — will stand as the “final conclusions” of the Iraq Survey Group “and will be
published this spring.” [Italics added.]
One other point, sadly a minor one: Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent on the WMD
wild goose chase but, as the Post also reports, “there has been no public accounting of the
money.” Nor will there be. “A spokesman for the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency said the
entire budget and the expenditures would remain classified.” So much for accountability as we
head toward the inauguration behind barbed wire
of the biggest liar of them all.
