The Nattering Nabob

What a revealing way Colin Powell chose to explain things:

"It's a numbers error. It's not a political judgment that said, 'Let's see if we can cook the books.' We can't get away with that now. Nobody was out to cook the books. Errors crept in," he told ABC's "This Week."

You can't get away with cooking the books NOW, Colin? The way you could get away with it before?