Terry M Neal-Washington Post

Since this is the accountability era, and it is widely agreed upon that Newsweek should account for its errors and apologize for its mistakes, perhaps we can get back to applying similarly stringent requirements on the elected officials who make grave decisions, such as whether to go to war.

When the media finish scrutinizing Newsweek, it should get back to asking tough questions of the Bush administration. Questions like:

Who should be held responsible for the faulty intelligence on weapons of mass destruction that led the United States to declare war against Iraq?

Why has the president not apologized for warning America that Iraq presented an imminent threat, when that turned out to be the case?

Will Rumsfeld, who claimed prior to the war to know the precise locations of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, personally apologize to the families of the troops who died in the search for those weapons?

Given that McClellan has suggested that Newsweek editors need to go on Arab TV and explain and apologize for their errors, will Bush also go on Arab television to explain and apologize for the mistakes made in gathering and analyzing the pre-war intelligence?

Will the administration, which downplayed the costs of the war in Iraq, publicly apologize to taxpayers now that the costs have already exceeded $300 billion?