January 31, 2007 by lonbud
When Chickens Come Home To Roost
It seems to me the entire span of George W. Bush’s tenure in office has been one long game of Three Card Monte.
While the public appears finally to have its collective eye on the bean under the battered, bloodstained cup that is our Connecticut Cowboy’s Little Bighorn — hundreds of thousands of people converged on Capitol Hill last weekend in an almost impromptu display of refusal to permit the way forward becoming a staying of the course — there are so many other fronts on which the Bush administration has inflicted damage, even if someone were to somehow miraculously “solve” the problem of Islamic radicalism tomorrow, we’d still be many years away from purging the evil wrought by our government during the past six years.
I don’t have the time or the energy tonight to chronicle Mr. Bush’s below the fold violations of the American spirit, of its promise, and of our constitution — though, rest assured, one need dig none too deeply to find evidence of his affirmative malfeasance in everything from the basic transparency and accountability of government, to protection of the environment, to oversight of financial markets, banking, lending, and insurance regulation, health care, education, communication, transportation, antitrust, and tax policy, even in the innocuous fields of personal comportment and good taste in humor.
There is one delicious little bit of the Bush administration’s hubris beginning to bear fruit, however, and I thought it worthy of a mention in passing.
Some may recall the Wilson-Plame affair, in which Joseph Wilson, a man with a long record of distinguished service in America’s diplomatic corps, was given a mission to ascertain the veracity of allegations that agents of Saddam Hussein had at one time sought to obtain yellowcake uranium in Niger as part of Iraq’s campaign to obtain nuclear weapons.
Mr. Wilson did his due diligence and returned to file his report, which said the allegations had no basis in fact, and could hardly support a supposition that Iraq might any time soon pose a nuclear threat to anyone. However, the Bush administration had a war to launch — despite having no plans for actually winning it — and the president made the accusation, stated as fact, in his State of the Union address to the American people, that agents of Saddam Hussein had tried to obtain uranium in Niger.
Shortly afterwards, Mr. Wilson wrote an op-ed piece, published in the New York Times, saying the charge was poppycock, whereupon “someone” in the Bush administration told members of the press that Wilson had been sent to Niger, not at the behest of the Bush administration, but rather by his own wife, who just so happened to be an undercover operative at the CIA.
This bit of “unnamed official” provenance had the twin effects of undermining the conclusions of Mr. Wilson’s investigative work and “punishing” his wife, Valerie Wilson-Plame, by blowing her cover as an agent of the CIA and destroying her career. It was also a violation of federal law.
Some may remember the Bush administration’s feigned incredulity at the leakage of such sensitive information, or recall the baldfaced mendacity of the president’s assurances that the leaker would be found, fired, and sent to prison.
Who could forget the interminable, inscrutable deliberations of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, as he seemed to call everyone in Washington DC and half the nation’s press corps before his thrice reconvened grand jury to ferret out the truth?
There was momentary titillation when it seemed Bush adviser Karl Rove might be slapped with an indictment after his fourth appearance to testify, and a collective sigh of anticlimax when the only person indicted for anything in the entire matter was Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief-of-staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who was charged, not with disclosing the identity of an undercover agent of the CIA, but merely with perjury before a grand jury.
Keep your eye on the bean, friends and neighbors, where is it now, you never know, you never know, you gotta pay if you wanna say…
Some may recall a major side attraction of this particular midway curiosity at the wild carnival of rape, and plunder, and waste we’ve been locked inside for six years, was the fetid tent occupied by Judith Miller, the former New York Times reporter who spent 85 days in jail on contempt of court charges for refusing to divulge her sources for a story she never wrote about the outing of Valerie Wilson-Plame.
Some may also recall Ms. Miller as a high-profile apologist and assertive cheerleader for the Bush administration’s misunderestimation of Saddam Hussein’s store of WMD, and his threat to America (or anyone else) in the run-up to the war (eye on the bean, eye on the bean), and that, finally, after compelling a personal letter of absolution from a source she swore to protect — none other than Mr. Libby himself — she renounced her principled defense of the First Amendment to testify that Mr. Libby had been one of a number of sources with whom she spoke about Ms. Plame and her identity after Mr. Wilson’s op-ed appeared in July 2003, and after another typist, Robert Novak, had days later revealed Ms. Plame to the wider world.
Only in subsequent testimony, when reviewing notes taken during the period, did she “recall” a meeting with Mr. Libby earlier, in June, prior to the appearance of Mr. Wilson’s op-ed, at which Ms. Plame’s identity was discussed.
Today, in the trial of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the attorney for the former Bush administration official showed Ms. Miller, in the empty, degrading way only a seasoned litigator can, for the unreflective, untrustworthy hack she’s always been, and made great strides toward letting Mr. Bush save his pardons for the truly needy.
Tam O’Tellico - January 31, 2007 @ 8:35 pm
Regulars here will remember the heated exhanges between Mr. Herdegen and me over the Plame Affair some time back. Pooh-pooh, and much ado, said Michael. Bullshit, says I, if lying about a blow job is an impeachable offense, lying about outing a CIA agent will get somebody in deep shit.
The wheels of justice grind exceedingly slow – especially since there was an election looming, but at long last the legal system is beginning to turn over rocks and expose what everyone but the Bush Apologista knew all along – the piss-ant that passes for VP instigated the Plame Affair and the fool who would be king was a cover-upper, if not a co-conspirator.
I remain pissed that Patrick Fitzgerald didn’t indict Rove, at a minimum. But the way things are proceeding in the Libby trial, the defense is making a pretty good primae facie case for indicting just about everybody in this administration. I say – Bring it on!
Speaking of Crooked Dick, I watched snatches of the Wolf Blitzer interview and was appalled at Cheney’s snarling thinly-veiled disgust and at Wolfman’s wimpiness. While he asked some tough questions – excluding the low-blow about Cheney’s daughter (why go there when there is SO much esle to take the slimy bastard to task for?), Wolf otherwise came off looking like a school-boy whining about too much homework. No wonder Cheney is so dismissive of the media!
For my money, Olbermann’s editorials are still one of few examples of the media calling slimeballs slimeballs. John Stewart can be biting, too, but how do you take a comedian seriously? I guess we’ll find out now that Al Franken appears to be running for Norm the Midget Coleman’s seat in Minnesota.
Then again, Congress has always been full of clowns.
lonbud - January 31, 2007 @ 9:05 pm
I was pleased enough to beat him to the punch by several hours, but Sidney Blumenthal published today a well-researched and cogently written account of Cheney’s involvement in the smear campaign against Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame, along with a clear timeline showing who knew what when and the things they did with their knowledge. Highly recommended reading.
Now, I could have done that kind of an article too, but Mr. Blumenthal has a staff and, presumably, is paid handsomely for his work. I’m just a lone typist with a bottle of wine and the wee hours of a few evenings a month at his disposal.
For me, it’s all about the love…
Michael Herdegen - February 2, 2007 @ 5:47 pm
Lying about a blow job is rarely an impeachable offense, and of course no American President has been impeached for such a thing. Maybe a judge or two had been.
Tam O’Tellico - February 3, 2007 @ 8:59 pm
I really don’t care to argue any further about which president is more deserving of impeachment Clinton or Bush – I would think by now the answer ought to be obvious to anyone. Fortunately for Bush, this country doesn’t have a provision for a vote of no-confidence – though the 2006 elections were evidence enough that the voters have lost all faith in the fool who would be king.
Since there is so little chance of Bush receiving his just desserts, I say we move on to the next occupant of the WH. I watched the speeeches of several of the Democratic contenders at the recent DNC meeting. and I must say I was less then impressed.
Chris Dodd popped off like a chamber of commerce shill, a Northeastern Huey Long populist employing all the right applause lines, but signifying nothing.
Barack Obama seemed to be searching for just the right measure of gravitas to counter the perception that he lacks experience. He delivered a thoughtful plea, but his use of “hope” was all to familiar to those of who gagged at the cloying Madison Avenue ad campaign employed by Clinton and Gore at the 1996 convention. Hope must be retired to the dumping ground with all the other four-letter words.
After two minutes, I couldn’t listen to Hilary Clinton any more. The very idea of 4-8 years of that fingernails-on-the-blackboard, old-maid school-marm, everyman’s first wife whine might make me long even for Bush’s dyslexic malpropistic tortured syntax.
John Edwards was as stilted and contrived as I’ve ever seen him, using all the hand gestures from Debate 101 while resorting to every sophistic trick in the book – just what you’d expect from a defense attorney in recovery.
The best speech I heard was from that old warhorse Mike Gravel, former senator from Alaska. Having no chance of winning the nomination, Gravel was able to speak staight from the heart, and he did so quite succinctly, calling bush’s war and his presidency a moral outrage – couldn’t have said it better myself. At one point Gravel stated categorically that anyone who voted for the Iraq War resolution based on the flimsy-ass evidence offered had clearly demonstrated they lacked the judgement and the moral authority to be POTUS. Amen, Brother – see ya Biden, Hilary, et al.
For my money, the two men who have spoken words closest to my heart are two men who’ve clearly earned the right to criticize this pitiful excuse for a President and his misbegotten and mishandled war – Chuck Hagel and Jim Webb.
Michael Herdegen - February 3, 2007 @ 9:25 pm
Well, I guess everyone needs a hobby, and being angry at anyone who can win the White House seems pretty harmless.
Tam O’Tellico - February 4, 2007 @ 8:40 pm
My “hobby” is taking the time to try and find a candidate I can actively support. I wish a helluva lot more Americans had that hobby instead of basing their vote for the guy with the best hair or against the guy who gets the worst slogan pinned on him. That kind of “voter involvement” is what got us the fool who would be king.
While my standards may be high, I don’t think they are unrealistic in that we are choosing to make someone the most powerful man (or woman) on Earth. My standards may be unrealistic in that my candidate of choice probably wouldn’t have a chance of winning given the reality outlined in the paragraph above.
half-mooned - February 5, 2007 @ 5:06 pm
I’m w/ you Tam. Let’s ban all voter involvement! That there is source of the whole problem, I tell ya’. You can’t go around expecting the uneducated masses to elect the right candidate. How can they? I think one should at the very least have a college degree and/or job making at least 60k a year before being allowed to vote.
Tam O’Tellico - February 5, 2007 @ 8:32 pm
Half-mean, I hope your comment was intended as humor or at least a sarcastic response to my post – these days it’s hard to tell. I once wrote a parody of Swift’s sarcastic A Modest Proposal and was amazed to discover how many people had never heard of Swift – let alone his modest proposal. Thus they thought I was seriously proposing they eat the children of the poor.
Humor is a dangerous game, but politics is even more so. Nevertheless, fools like me rush in:
In spite of the fact that I am viewed as a Raging Liberal, I don’t believe in motor-voter registration or any other such universalist nonsense. Getting your ass out from in front of the TV long enough to vote should be a small price to pay for the privilege of voting. Being able to read and write English seem to me to be pretty sensible requirements, too – and it would be nice if “concerned” voters could at least spell their candidates name right.
While I don’t think a college degree or a high income should be requirements for voting, the Founders more or less did. They devised a system in which only white men of property were allowed to choose our leaders. They also constitutionalized representation by proxy for those 3/5 of a human being persons called slaves. So much for strict interpretation.
Strange how those who favor a strict interpretation of the Constitution so often favor a literal reading of the Bible – but so only so long as it suits their purpose to do so.
And speaking of the Religious Wrong, something must be done to thwart their ambition to turn this country into a theocracy – something the Founders were very much against. Their mad single-issue stampedes and their distaste for science should be reason enough to disqualify them from voting on grounds of mental incompetency.
On the other hand, as the sad history of poll taxes and literacy tests proves, voter requirements make it all too easy for party hacks like Kenneth Blackwell and Katherine Harris to deny qualified voters their rights while doing everything in their power to smooth the path for the like-mindless.
If having standards makes me an elitist, sobeit. Alas, methinks, there is no good answer to this dilemma.
lonbud - February 5, 2007 @ 10:52 pm
No, there is not a good answer to the pickle we stewin’ in. Any real change will require major readjustments in the status quo and in the standard of living for many folks on both sides of the fault line, the Great Divide, if you will.
To the extent people well-read and ignorant, well-off and indigent, well-placed and lost, well-fed and hungry, on this side of the globe and on t’other, can find some inkling of our common humanity, then we have a snowball’s chance in hell of averting the destruction of the human race in the next century or so.
Beyond that, we might as well admit Hobbes saw the whole thing for what it really is and nothing thought, or said, or done, or tried in the past 250 years has been worth a flip.
Tam O’Tellico - February 6, 2007 @ 7:13 am
Lon, I remind you that even though Hobbes saw the world as a jungle, a place where life is “nasty, brutish and short”, he nevertheless argued there was a way out of the jungle. Hobbes argued for enlightened self-interest; that is, the idea that one’s own best interests are frequently served by surrendering one’s apparent self-interest to the good of the whole, the Commonweal as Hobbes put it.
Would that Shia and Sunni, Hutu and Tutsi, Ulster Scot and Irish Catholic, Hardshell Baptist and Unbeliever understood that connection. Would that political leaders and their propagandist henchmen not exploit our differences for their own immediate gain. Would that fat-cat CEOs and Free-Market apologists understood what Hobbes and Adam Smith were saying about their responsibility for promoting the commonweal rather than promoting wretched excess.
Alas, I fear that before any of that happens, the lion will lie down with the lamb.
Meredith Charpantier - February 7, 2007 @ 11:26 pm
My faith has been invested in education. Always has been. My intent early on was to save the world by assuring everyone come via schooling to understand the logic of Smith and Hobbes and the value of the Commonwealth. Others put their faith in the church, as likely a place as any to learn to value the “good of the whole”. Seems though that these values and this logic have a snowball’s chance against the heat lamps of greed, that govern both the schools and the churches, the hearts and the minds of the masses, now and then.
A long time ago, my great grandparents joined the Church of Secular Rationalism, a “religion” which anchored its values in scientific reality, but which didn’t , obviously, last. Would that we could try again to tether ethics to something more solid than a sound bite, more universal than one’s day of rest.
Tam O’Tellico - February 9, 2007 @ 3:17 pm
Well, the fact you are with us suggests that adherents of the Church of Secular Rationalism did not practice sexual abstinence like the Shakers – who as a consequence are no longer with us.
I am also reminded of Somerset Maugham’s irreverent observation: “You know of course, the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct.”
Meredith Charpantier - February 10, 2007 @ 9:45 am
The Tasmanians aren’t the only people to have commited cultural suicide. The icelanders, the Easter Islanders, among others were too attached to their values and sins to muster up the will to change in order to survive. This is alegorical. If we don’t look outside our envelopes, we won’t be able to see the myriad of possible solutions. Cultural identification is itself a doomed concept. There are disappearing peoples in Europe due to low birth rates and exploding populations in developing nations. Maybe the Shakers were on to something. In some cases, one might just prefer to opt out of the population race, and work with what we’ve got.
Vronsky - November 12, 2007 @ 1:32 pm
“The Tasmanians aren’t the only people to have commited cultural suicide.”
Some suicide. They were exterminated by the British.