Bush on accountability.

[King Coal]

Post: In Iraq, there’s been a steady stream of surprises. We weren’t welcomed as liberators, as Vice President Cheney had talked about. We haven’t found the weapons of mass destruction as predicted. The postwar process hasn’t gone as well as some had hoped. Why hasn’t anyone been held accountable, either through firings or demotions, for what some people see as mistakes or misjudgments?

Bush: Well, we had an accountability moment, and that’s called the 2004 election. And the American people listened to different assessments made about what was taking place in Iraq, and they looked at the two candidates, and chose me, for which I’m grateful.



According to traditional constitutional norms in the United States, the president is not an absolute monarch restricted only by quadrennial elections and a two-term limit. He functions under a system of checks and balances, with two co-equal branches of government, legislative and judicial, exercising independent powers of their own. His role as commander-in-chief—of the armed forces only, not of the country or its people—signifies the supremacy of the civilian authority over the military, not the supremacy of the president over the population.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/jan2005/bush-j19.shtml