The Screw Is Turning...

We live in much-hyped democracies where one main ingredient has been sorely missing since Margaret Thatcher famously declared "The lady's not for turning." That missing ingredient is accountability.

Bush, Blair and Howard are all terrified of "turning" and will do anything but admit they were wrong. The electoral repercussions are too frightening for them.

But this myopic attitude, taken to today's extremes, creates an impossibly surreal environment. Something's gotta give. The truth will out.

Writing in the Washington Post, E.J.Dionne cuts through all the Bush administration's recent dissembling, finger-pointing and revisionist history:

"President Bush's government was unrelenting in trying to convince Americans that Saddam Hussein posed an immediate threat to us, that he had scary weapons, that he was tied to al Qaeda and thus to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. It is wholly inadequate to shuck all this off on the CIA. The president was determined to scare the hell out of the country and make the case for war by whatever means necessary."

He throws in a few choice quotes for any who suffer the media's apparent short-term memory. For example, Bush in Feb 2003:

"Chemical agents, lethal viruses and shadowy terrorist networks are not easily contained. Secretly, without fingerprints, Saddam Hussein could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists or help them develop their own. Saddam Hussein is a threat. He's a threat to the United States of America."

Looking back, he might as well have said President Megawati of Malaysia was connected with 9/11. He could have made similar allegations about Malaysia's probable/possible/hypothetical WMDs and launched a pre-emptive attack on Kuala Lumpur - the US public would have lapped it up just as easily in their righteous thirst for post-9/11 vengeance.

Last week Bush declared: "The culture of America is changing from one that has said 'If it feels good, do it, and if you've got a problem, blame somebody else' to a culture in which each of us understands we are responsible for the decisions we make in life."

"That's a great idea," says Dionne. "Applying it to the president means that he, not the CIA, is responsible for the case that was made for the war in Iraq. By the president's own logic, he can't blame a bunch of bureaucrats ("if you've got a problem, blame somebody else") for his administration's eagerness to offer the most lopsided picture possible of the threat Hussein posed. "