Accountability

No Accountability

David Broder today makes a point that I've been talking about for the last year, but which seems to get almost no press attention.

Accountability should have been the centerpiece of the Kerry -- Edwards campaign, yet it seems to get little attention.

The DNC should have been running ads on this topic for months now.

Here is a taste of what David says:

When has the United States launched a preemptive attack on a foreign nation with as little provocation -- and as spurious a rationale -- as this war on Iraq? The great selling point was Saddam Hussein's possession of weapons of mass destruction. Last week, that contention was definitively demolished in a 1,000-page report from the head of the U.S. inspection team in Iraq. Charles A. Duelfer concluded that Hussein did not possess and had no real plans or programs to develop biological, chemical or nuclear weapons.

Previously, the State Department and the CIA had both said that the secondary rationale -- a supposed link between the Iraqi regime and the Sept. 11 terrorists -- was without foundation.

Yet on the very day the Duelfer document was released, here was President Bush in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., declaring that he had to invade Iraq because "there was a risk, a real risk, that Saddam Hussein would pass weapons or materials or information to terrorist networks." That risk -- with no bill of particulars behind it -- is supposed to justify a war of choice that has taken more than 1,000 American lives, caused far more Iraqi casualties and shows no sign of coming to an end.

As for Cheney, the chief cheerleader for this war, his comment in the Tuesday night vice presidential debate was: "What we did in Iraq was exactly the right thing to do."

This refusal to acknowledge error -- this rejection of accountability -- is more than personal vanity. It infects the entire approach of this administration. The top civilian leaders of the Pentagon failed to provide the number of troops needed for success in Iraq -- a point made repeatedly by the former Army chief of staff and by Sens. John McCain and Joe Biden and now belatedly confirmed by the president's handpicked Iraq administrator, Paul Bremer. Yet Bush and Cheney have done nothing but praise Don Rumsfeld and his team.

You can read the whole column here