There was little for the unindicted co-conspirators of the Bush administration to give thanks for this week as the clock winds down on the 14 months they have left in power.
With former White House press secretary Scott McClellan spilling the beans on who told him to lie to the American people and cover up the White House's responsibility for the criminal act of revealing the identity of a covert CIA officer, it clearly was time for some folks to begin drafting their requests for presidential pardons.
McClellan, in a forthcoming book that will tell some, if not all, reveals that his 2003 statements absolving top White House aides Karl Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby of any involvement in leaking the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame were untrue and that the orders to make those statements came from President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, White House chief of staff Andrew Card, Rove and Libby.
McClellan's revelation makes it abundantly clear that a subsequent statement by Bush that White House aides had no involvement in outing Ms. Plame, and that anyone who did would be fired were also, shall we say, inoperative.
It also confirms long-held suspicions that the whole despicable affair -- an attempt to punish former Ambassador Joseph Wilson for debunking a bit of the bogus intelligence the administration wheeled out to justify invading Iraq -- was orchestrated in the offices of Bush and Cheney, and with their knowledge.
It also might shed new light on why Bush quickly commuted Cheney's hatchet man Libby's prison sentence after he was convicted on four counts of lying to federal investigators. It simply wouldn't do to have Libby rolling over on his bosses.
Somehow, I have a strong feeling that this isn't the only or the last revelation of wrong-doing and criminality we're likely to hear before and after Bush and Co. leave office, or that additional presidential acts of clemency will be needed to spare other top administration officials from prison and buy their silence.
What we've witnessed and endured during seven long years of the Bush presidency is the inevitable consequence of bringing vicious and unprincipled but successful political campaigners -- attack dogs -- into top White House jobs.
The idea that a political campaign should address any and all criticism by going for the throats of those who dare to question may work on election day but it doesn't work, or shouldn't, when the full weight and power of the federal government is put behind it.
We are a better people and this is a better country than that, and this is why, when it's weighed and judged, the Bush presidency will be found to have perverted not only our system but also the very principles on which our nation was founded.
We don't rush into a war that has cost so many lives and so much national treasure, and has so damaged our standing in the world, based on a tissue of lies. But under the leadership of George W. Bush, that's what we did in Iraq.
We don't stand idly by, backs turned and eyes closed, while in wartime our friends and political contributors loot the national treasury of billions of taxpayer dollars. But the Bush administration and a Republican-controlled Congress did just that.
We don't send our soldiers and Marines into combat without enough of everything they need to fight, survive and win. But that's what this administration and its political operatives put in charge of the Pentagon did.
We don't turn the office of the attorney general and key parts of the Justice Department into a branch of a partisan political campaign -- gutting offices charged with protecting the civil rights of minorities and directing the prosecution of those of a different political party -- but this administration did.
We don't declare war and then expect that the entire sacrifice will be borne by the half a percent of our population who wear uniforms. We don't fight a long and costly war by cutting taxes on the wealthiest Americans and borrowing trillions of dollars to finance it from foreign competitors such as China. But this administration did.
We don't prosecute a war to spread democracy by curtailing democracy and suspending the Bill of Rights at home. We cannot promote our principles abroad by denying the same principles -- the right to a lawyer, the right to a fair trial, the right to be secure in our homes -- to ourselves. But this administration did.
We don't beat or torture confessions out of prisoners in violation of our laws and the laws of the civilized world. We don't lock people up and hold them incommunicado for years without charges or trials. But this administration did and does.
We don't applaud and cheer an administration and a Congress that make the rich vastly richer, the middle class less secure and the poor even poorer. But this administration has done just that, in violation of our principles and the principles of love, peace and charity that are engrained in the Christianity that these rogues and charlatans embrace so publicly but violate every day.
It will be a good day when they are gone, and good riddance to them all.
This post was originally published in McClatchy Newspapers.
"Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve."
Now mind you Shaw lived 1856-1950 and yet his words still ring true to this day.
We as a nation with a government voted by the people to govern the people has been bastardised to the point of idiocracy, has a duty and a right to set things the way they were meant to be. Our chosen officials should no longer be able to bastardize the Consitution the way they see fit "for our nations protection". If a blowjob in the Oval Office was enough to piss off our Congress then why isn't treason? We as a country ask questions and we demand answers no matter who's parade we as a country may piss on!
Washington needs an enema and everyone that outted Plame and put our nation in jeopardy should be held accountable, Democrat or Republican!!!
We don't bomb the hell out a country, and then stand back as the people loot the ministries and museums, and then supply them with inadequate drinking water, electricity and other essential services, all the while expecting them to embrace democracy. This administration did just that and may do it again in Iran.
Unionnomore...both... I find it very difficult at family affairs not to ... really hurt my neo-con brainwashed family...but..that's off topic..
I have to wonder WHY McClellan has chosen now..to out the administration...why not earlier.. but..will have to settle for being grateful for this strange turn of "coats"..
I predict...that sooner or later, hopefully sooner, Condi Rice....absolutely comes OUT and shatters what remains of the W/Dick administration...she's been a decent "soldier" for them..but with all her faults, does not strike me as someone who will always lie for her president.. so...for the first time, I may have to swallow my pride and actually buy McClellan's book...(he's made bank already)...
for once...I applaud a rat deserting a sinking ship.... whooooo wahhhhh...Scott!
Reading through your piece, I am still astounded by the 25% or so of the American public that still supports these criminals. It's sad to realize that a quarter of our country understands so little about democracy and liberty and the history of our own country and the world as to believe the lies and criminal behavior of this band of charlatans and thieves.
The rest of the main-stream press needs to follow your lead, and the lead of your colleagues, and remember that journalism requires investigation and hard questions, not repeating talking points fed by unnamed sources for their own ends.
I am thankful today for your hard work on behalf of freedom.
The big question is, What do freedom loving patriots, people that respect and follow Constitutional law do?
If our elected officials refuse to perform their duties to act, if they are too cowardly to do what is legally proscribed in the Constitution by IMPEACHING these criminals;
then it falls to the people to act.
BUT, as Naomi Wolfe has pointed out, if a disgruntled citizenry rises up in moral outrage, the forces of fascism WILL use this as a pretext to install martial law and authoritarian rule.
We should be marching in the streets, shutting down normal business; but people are too fearful to do this in numbers that would get positive results.
What smaller numbers can do is to hit the corporate bosses in the pocketbook. Sell all US based securities...all dollar denominated equities. Buy foreign, commodities, and metals.
Short US industries and indices.
Maybe then the ego-heads that control the economy will get scared enough to order the arrest and confinement of this political crime syndicate.
These low-lifes are common crooks that must get perp-walked in handcuffs.
Just when you think you have seen new lows with these clowns out comes another jaw dropping, shit-my-pants, head spinning story that leaves me speechless. Who are these incompetent boobs?
You are probably right about more coming over the next 14 months. Once that thread gets pulled then the finger pointing begins and then the rats start turning on each other...I can hardly wait.
Great post!
Since Richard Nixon created his "southern strategy"to swing the south to republicans there has been a race among his succesors to develop code words,catch phrases,and sound bites to make hatred and bigotry respectable.Ronald Reagan did it was a wink and a smile,GHWBush did it with Willie Horton and "read my lips",and the younger Bush did it with a whole panoply of hate filled buz words and phrases wrapped in biblical sounding puffery."We has met the enemy and they is us" as Walt Kelly so ably put it.