Another whitewash

That noted liberal Democrat, Paul Craig Roberts of the Creators Syndicate, is apparently less than impressed by the Senate’s ability to report on the administration’s misdeeds:


The only open question is whether President Bush was an active participant in the disinformation or was deceived like the American public. If he knowingly participated in the deception, he must be impeached. If he was deceived by his own appointees, why hasn’t he fired them? Bush’s reelection would signify that the American people lack the competence or character for self-rule.

The report from the Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence proves once again that government lacks the moral integrity to conduct an investigation. The senators did not bring responsibility to any individuals for a gratuitous invasion that has generated hatred of, and insecurity for, Americans for decades to come. Instead, the senators’ report held accountable that which cannot be held accountable: “the process.”

We were told that 9/11 was due to the failures of flawed procedures. So, too, was the incorrect intelligence on Iraq, according to the Senate Select Committee. In neither case are any individuals to be held responsible. Nothing, it seems, bears any significance except for the increasingly fictional economic statistics and the bureaucratic machinery. Ideologies aside, Washington appears to be evolving into something more weirdly Soviet by the week.

As to those who are still convinced that the Iraqi occupation is making Americans safer, I have a simple question: how? If I had millions of dollars in Saudi money, a cadre of fanatical followers and connections into Russia via Chechnya and China via Ningxia Hu, the fate of Saddam Hussein and his Ba’athist regime, for good or for ill, would have absolutely no effect whatsoever on my ability to send a few young men to flight school or to plant a black market explosive device in a shipping container bound for Boston Harbor.

Think, people. Think.