Bush and Rice share blame for Blackwater

Dan Froomkin, in a special column to washingtonpost.com, writes:

In the wake of last month's shooting of 17 civilians by Blackwater gunmen in Baghdad, the Bush administration is finally acknowledging -- more than four years late -- that private security contractors in Iraq should operate under the law.

Last week, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice admitted to Congress that the State Department had inadequately supervised those contractors. As Karen DeYoung wrote in Friday's Washington Post, "Pressed to express regret for what Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md.) called "the failures of your department, your failures," Rice said, "I certainly regret that we did not have the kind of oversight that I would have insisted upon."

Not the kind of oversight that she "would have insisted upon?" Would someone please remind me of her job description? Isn't she like in charge of these things, or am I missing something?

Rice agreed that "there is a hole" in U.S. law that has prevented prosecution of contractors.

But did we really need an apparent massacre to point out this giant loophole and its perils?

As it happens, President Bush has been aware of the hole for some time -- and deserves some of the blame for not fixing it earlier. Confronted about it in public more than a year ago, Bush literally laughed off the question -- and then, tellingly, described his response as a case study in how he does his job.

Here's the video, posted to YouTube on April 11, 2006:


As my good friend Tengrain at Mock, Paper, Scissors would say ... Impeach the mutha already!