"I take responsibility"

[Walkiry]

Taking responsibility for something and accepting blame are two different things.
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Semantics games are boring and uninteresting, kinda like trying to take the letter of the law to defeat the spirit of the law.

If you take responsibility for X, that means somewhere along the lines you did not perform as you should, and you should take the blame for your (in)action. There is such thing as negligence, and the fact that Mr. Annan didn't put the money in Saddam's bank account doesn't mean he's not to share his part of the blame for it happening. Ambulance chasers make millions off this.

But what really really riles me up is exactly what Occhi said:

Empty words, pro forma, wastes of breath, going through the motions.

I can just picture Kofi sitting on his warm comfortable chair, casually looking through the several hundred (thousand?) pages document with a vacant, uninterested look on his face, close it up at the end and say "Yeah, ok. My bad. So what? Get off my office, I'm a busy man" before dismissing whoever brough the document with a complacent wave of his hand.