What will it take for President George W. Bush to be held accountable? Recently, a letter purporting to show that Iraq had sought to procure uranium from Niger — a key argument in the case for war and cited in President George W. Bush’s Jan. 28 State of the Union address — was a forgery. This fact barely seems to make the headlines in today’s news. It’s amazing. Who forged it? What were their intentions?

Furthermore, why didn’t Hussein use these chemical weapons, and where are the hundreds of tons of chemical weapons that President Bush claimed? The recent claim is that Iraq disposed of all of them just shortly before the war. This is just one in a long line of unverifiable claims that simply must be taken on faith. It seems like these aren’t reasons, but rather excuses being made up as they go along.

Isn’t it just as likely that they never had these weapons to begin with? Former chief U.N. inspectors Hans Blix and Scott Ritter seem to think so. Chief U.N. Inspector Blix has been reported as saying that Western Intelligence has been “shaky.” In a recent speech on C-SPAN, Ritter, the chief U.N. inspector in Iraq under Clinton, called for the president of the United States to be held accountable. Apparently, he doubts Iraq had these weapons of mass destruction as well. In fact, if you want to hear a very strong argument for the accountability of government, I would recommend going to c-span.org and listening to Ritter’s speech given on April 25.

When are we going to demand that the decision makers be held accountable (instead of just the Dixie Chicks)?

Lon Johnson

Senior

Accounting