Who's Accountable Now?

Richard Cohen discusses Hollow Accountability, or how does the Bush administration compares to CBS.

It took no less a sage than President Bush to put the firing of four high-level CBS News employees in perspective: "CBS said they would act. They did. And I hope their actions are such that this doesn't happen again." This from the man who fired not a single person in his entire administration for getting nearly everything wrong about Iraq and taking the nation to war for reasons that did not exist or were downright specious. Lucky for Bush he's only the president of the United States and not the head of CBS.

Let us call the roll: George Tenet, who assured the president that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction? A graceful retirement and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Don Rumsfeld, who approved a battle plan of such brilliance that a 30-day war against a weak Third World country is still going on and shows no sign of ending? He stays in the Cabinet.

Condi Rice, the national security adviser who allowed the president to tell the world of Iraq's nuclear weapons program when it had none whatsoever? She is nominated to become secretary of state.

Vice President Cheney, who insisted against all evidence and with no evidence that Iraq was fast becoming a nuclear power, and who maintained that there was a link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden? He stays on the ticket and remains a heartbeat away from the presidency.

As much as this hypocrisy enrages me it doesn't surprise me. As Cohen says we have a president who has never been held accountable for anything.

Bush's observation to the Wall Street Journal is the deepest wisdom of a man who has always been protected from his own mistakes and failures, whether it's the oil business gone bust or a wayward youth rescued by equal measures of religion and family connections. His is the privileged view of privilege itself -- that others should do what he would not. For all his pretense of aw-shucks ordinariness, Bush's inner Yale sometimes oozes out. Some people should pay for their mistakes. Some people never have to.

I guess it enrages me because it doesn't surprise me and quite frankly I'm getting really tired of pointing out this blatant hypocrisy daily.
Cohen goes on to point out that the four fired from CBS were talented people who made a mistake but the only reason they were fired was a fear of the Bush administration on the part of CBS. George Tenet, Don Rumsfeld, Condi Rice and Vice President Cheney were not held accountable and in fact were rewarded when their lies, deceptions and fuck ups resulted in thousands of deaths.