Neocons Escape Accountability
from Consortium News:
Neocons Escape Accountability
March 8, 2013
Nearing the Iraq Wars tenth anniversary, an overriding truth is that few of the key participants in government, media or think tanks have faced accountability commensurate with the crime. Indeed, many of these Mideast experts are still go-to people for advice, writes ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.
By Paul R. Pillar
One regularly hears much talk in Washington about accountability, but also regularly sees examples of how the concept of accountability gets applied in this town in an inconsistent and warped way. There are the inevitable calls for heads to roll after any salient untoward event, and huzzahs to senior managers who do roll heads in response.
I have addressed previously what tends to be wrong about how such episodes play out. Too often there is no consideration of whether the untoward event is or is not part of some larger pattern of malfeasance or incompetence, whether those at any one level in a chain of command could reasonably be expected to prevent all such events when the action is at some other level, and whether there is any reason to expect the changes in personnel to result in any change in institutional performance.
Nor is there consideration of why those who roll heads and collect the huzzahs but who also are part of the same chain of command should be allowed to determine in a very un-Truman-like, the-buck-didnt-get-to-me way that accountability stops just below their own level.
The converse of this is that in some instances in which there is a proven pattern of error, and good reason to believe that if we trust the same people who led us into failure in the past we are likely to be led into failure again, no accountability seems to be taking place. Accountability in this instance would not necessarily mean losing a particular job; it could mean being discredited as a source of policy advice. ..............(more)
The complete piece is at: http://consortiumnews.com/2013/03/08/neocons-escape-accountability/
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Scuba
(53,475 posts)n2doc
(47,953 posts)And for minimum wage workers. Just not for the banksters, 1%ers and punditocracy.
Stuart G
(38,436 posts)leveymg
(36,418 posts)Last edited Sat Mar 9, 2013, 01:37 PM - Edit history (3)
if he wants to begin to see accountability for the many "intelligence failures" of the Bush era, go back to the actions that created the political atmosphere in which the fraudulent invasion of Iraq was possible.
Those who have kept their mouths shut have to take the first move, since neither the agencies nor the the Attorney General in this Administration seem willing to do anything to bring accountability for policy failure.
On Edit: That having been said, he has been one of the most accurate and forthright internal critics of the politicization of intelligence that created the fertile ground in which neocon deception has grown. If you study his writing carefully, you will also see that Mr. Pillar has honestly mapped out the structural flaws that led to both the vulnerabilities that allowed neocons in the Bush Administration to misuse the CIA Counter-terrorism Center and other Agency units for their own agenda and to create and sustain the false assumptions about Iraq and other countries targeted for regime change.
NoMoreWarNow
(1,259 posts)kenny blankenship
(15,689 posts)You mean the "Good" Cop doesn't actually restrain the "Bad" Cop? It's all a put on?
I am clearly "Good" Cop. Good Cop. Friend of the People
NoMoreWarNow
(1,259 posts)there ought to be a law, though...