Responsibility Watch

The new administration seems to be paying no attention to the problem of terrorism. What they will do is stagger along until there's a major incident and then suddenly say, 'Oh, my God, shouldn't we be organized to deal with this?'

That's too bad. They've been given a window of opportunity with very little terrorism now, and they're not taking advantage of it.

L. Paul "Jerry" Bremer
Keynote Address
Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation
Terrorism: Informing the Public
February 26, 2001

Criticism of the new administration, however, was unfair. President Bush had just been sworn into office and could not reasonably be held responsible for the Federal Government's inaction over the preceding 7 months.

L. Paul "Jerry" Bremer
Contender for Secretary of State in Second Bush Term
May 2, 2004

I love these jokers. We're not responsible for anything bad. And any suggestion to the contrary is just unfair.

What whiners.

Also notice the subtle date shift. Bremer made his speech in February. But in his retraction, he's absolving Bush for 7 months of inaction (i.e. February, March, April, May, June, July, August, and eleven days in September).

I find it interesting that Bremer is incapable of making a principled retraction. He might simply have said "at the time I made those remarks the Bush administration had been in office 36 days. I was perhaps to hasty in my condemnation."

But the reality is that even an "outsider" like Bremer could tell early on that the Bush administration wasn't doing enough to combat terrorism. And despite the pleas from those in and out of the administration, the Bushies took no serious action until after September 11.

On the plus side though, I take Bremer's statement to mean that all future presidents are absolved of responsibility for any shit that hits the fan in their first 210 days in office. After all, they can't be expected to know what's going on having just been sworn in and all.