Cheney and Other Republican Liars and Hypocrites

Since 2002, no government official lied about the war in Iraq more than Dick Cheney. In a different era, the vice president would have been impeached and sent packing. Cheney's outing of a CIA officer whose husband's factual report on Niger yellowcake disagreed with Cheney's self-serving fantasies should have been enough to send the vice president to jail. Dick Cheney's authoritarian and anti-social character has been on display repeatedly but in no case was it more obvious than when he shot a friend of his in the face with a shotgun and it was the friend who was obliged to apologize. Strange man, Dick Cheney.

I am proud to be yet another blog linking to Larry Wilkerson's article in The Washington Note:

...when Cheney claims that if President Obama stops "the Cheney method of interrogation and torture", the nation will be in danger, he is perverting the facts once again. But in a very ironic way.

My investigations have revealed to me--vividly and clearly--that once the Abu Ghraib photographs were made public in the Spring of 2004, the CIA, its contractors, and everyone else involved in administering "the Cheney methods of interrogation", simply shut down. Nada. Nothing. No torture or harsh techniques were employed by any U.S. interrogator. Period. People were too frightened by what might happen to them if they continued.

What I am saying is that no torture or harsh interrogation techniques were employed by any U.S. interrogator for the entire second term of Cheney-Bush, 2005-2009.

(snip)

Likewise, what I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002--well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion--its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa'ida.

(snip)

There in fact were no such contacts.

It's a national disgrace that right-wing Republicans continue to coddle such liars as Dick Cheney. But Cheney wasn't the only liar. We have to include such 'stalwart' Republicans as Donald Rumseld, Scooter Libby, Alberto Gonzalez, Douglas Feith, and yes, George W. Bush. There were plenty of others. The fact remains that the Bush Administration felt comfortable lying to Congress for eight years. But they didn't stop there. They lied to the American people.

Now Nancy Pelosi is accused of lying about what she was told by an administration that had little credibility. Our country needs a reliable non-political CIA but Bush and Cheney were doing everything they could to politicize parts of the government that had always been nonpolitical and bipartisan. As an example, the Bush Administration promoted people like Dusty Foggo to the number three spot at the CIA:

Foggo is scheduled to be sentenced Thursday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria after pleading guilty to a single count of fraud as part of a plea bargain. He is the highest ranking CIA officer ever to be convicted of a federal felony.

The fraud was part of a bribery ring that included Foggo's old friend, contractor Brent Wilkes, and former [Republican] Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, both of whom have been sentenced to years in prison.

Court papers filed this week offer the most detailed glimpse yet of Foggo's misconduct, which included getting his mistress hired to a $100,000 a year job at the CIA and steering millions of dollars in CIA contracts to Wilkes.

Even in the CIA there were people under Bush who were feeding at the public trough.

Again, most people in the intelligence community are competent professionals. But Bush and Cheney were not shy about bending the rules and finding people who would do the same. Here's another example of life under Bush by way of Talking Points Memo:

Adm. Mike McConnell came in as the Director of National Intelligence with a rep for being professional and non-partisan, a calling card the Bush Administration has put to its own uses.

(snip)

In his first months as DNI, McConnell did plenty to undermine that rep. He told Congress that three German terrorism suspects had been arrested due to intercepts made possible by the then-new Protect America Act when in fact they were obtained under the old FISA law. Soon after, McConnell offered a especially misleading account to Congress of a supposed FISA Court ruling that had delayed the U.S. from spying on the kidnappers of U.S. troops in Iraq. And throughout congressional debate on a surveillance law he claimed that the debate itself endangered American lives.

Then earlier this year, he suggested that a questioner at a public event at Johns Hopkins was "disappointed" that the U.S. hadn't suffered additional terrorist attacks. And now McConnell has really let lose, framing the Senate debate on the surveillance bill as being between those who think "we shouldn't have an Intelligence Community" and those who do. That has prompted a letter from Sen. Russ Feingold demanding an apology for those false characterizations of the debate.

There were other people besides McConnell who served at Bush's pleasure and thought nothing of lying to Congress. We know Cheney and others were liars. We know they lied to people like Pelosi. Until proven otherwise, I think we already know who the liars are. In the current political climate, Dick Cheney will never be prosecuted and sent to jail for his crimes. At the very least, he should go home and the news media should stop paying attention to a man who lied his way into a war our nation did not need.

Two Americas, Two Systems of Justice

George W. Bush just commutted Scooter Libby's sentence. There is one set of rules for powerful or wealthy Republicans and another set of rules for the rest of us. If Americans continue to put up with this, we lose our democracy and we lose our greatness.

President Bush is illegally using the government to increase the power of the Republican Party. He has started a war based on lies. He has broken treaties and laws. Bush and Cheney have flouted the US C0nstitution. Every Republican senator who continues to back George W. Bush is responsible for the disaster that is this presidency. Bush must be held accountable or precendence will be established for any number of undemocratic and authoritarian behavior by any future president regardless of whether they are Republican or Democrat.

Congress can restore order. Only a large number of obstructionist Republican senators are preventing the return to sanity. Democrats and and a handful of Republicans are making progress but Americans need to speak up loud and clear.

We Need Special Prosecutor to Babysit Bush His Last Two Years

Almost every day a new scandal breaks out that involves the Bush Administration. I can understand the arguments that impeachment is not politically viable in the current environment but it's clearly time for Congress to appoint a special prosecutor. It's apparent that Alberto Gonzales and the entire Justice Department are so utterly under the thrall of the White House that we can no longer expect an independent Justice Department to investigate wrong-doing by government officials since those same officials are often politically protected by the White House.

On Slate, Dahlia Lithwick points to a revelation at the Alberto Gonzales hearings that makes clear the integrity of the White House is at all-time low:

One of the finest moments comes when Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., busts out a big, big chart. Which happens after almost everyone has gone home. The chart compares the Clinton protocol for appropriate contacts between the White House and the DoJ on pending criminal cases with the Bush protocol. According to Whitehouse, the Clinton protocol authorized just four folks at the White House to chat with three folks at Justice. The chart had four boxes talking to three boxes. Out comes the Bush protocol, and now 417 different people at the White House have contacts about pending criminal cases with 30-some people at Justice. You can just see zillions of small boxes nattering back and forth. It seems that just about everyone in the White House, including the guys in the mailroom, had a vote on ongoing criminal matters.

It's not the job of the Justice Department to do the political bidding of the President; it is the job of the Justice Department to uphold the laws of this nation and to guard those laws with reasonable caution from political interference. The United States became a nation when King George III sought to subvert the law (he, the king, in his own estimation, being the law—or 'the Decider') for his own political ends. We should not forget that Benjamin Franklin threw in with the break from England after being deliberately humiliated by what amounted to a political lynching by the king's ministers and cronies. Respect for the law and putting those laws in writing with a document that outlined what the government could do and not do was what our country was founded on; deciding on a republic was simply part of how those laws were to be implemented, changed from time to time and respected without arbitrary change by those who are the most powerful.

Washington and the media can no longer avoid or make light of the fact that the White House over six years has repeatedly been violating hundreds of laws with impunity, and in some cases, the violations have occurred quite literally millions of times as in the illegal use of e-mails on Republican National Committee accounts as a way of avoiding legal requirements to keep track of government business from the White House—the people's business, mind you.

The New York Times has an editorial on the Alberto Gonzales hearings:

If Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had gone to the Senate yesterday to convince the world that he ought to be fired, it’s hard to imagine how he could have done a better job, short of simply admitting the obvious: that the firing of eight United States attorneys was a partisan purge.

Mr. Gonzales came across as a dull-witted apparatchik incapable of running one of the most important departments in the executive branch.

I first used the word 'apparatchik' back in 2003 on the AOL message boards. I was criticized for being shrill which generally was not the case with most of my posts at the time. Since I was trying to reach moderates and perhaps even rational conservatives, I dropped the term though I felt it accurately described the political public relations types that seemed to be orchestrating so many press releases and conferences during that period. When The New York Times starts using such a term, we know, four years later, that there has been a sea change in how President Bush is viewed by a majority of Americans these days.

We have a crisis and the only proper way to deal with that crisis is to hold George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and many of the top Bush Administration advisers accountable. It's time for a special prosecutor—the blatant corruption at the top of the Justice Department makes that evident. Congress needs to appoint a special prosecutor who can begin to restore a sense of integrity where in fact it must exist: among those who are charged with upholding the law. What is apparent is that the US Attorneys who were fired, although they were all Republicans appointed by Bush, were largely fired for not doing the political bidding of an increasingly corrupt White House. It is time to recognize that we have a problem. Our democracy is bleeding. And Congress must act.

Gonzales Appears to Be Doing Bush's Bidding

I'm short on time for blogging these days and hope soon to get on a more blog-friendly schedule but, for now, here's as relevant a story as one can see on the firing of the US attorneys; Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo has been in the thick of things:

For some, it is a matter of outrage that President Bush has renewed his support for Alberto Gonzales even after new evidence has emerged that the Attorney General has repeatedly lied about the US Attorney Purge. Myself, I see it more as a matter of confirmation and almost a welcome one in that it confirms the nature of the debate we're having.

This isn't a case where Alberto Gonzales has fallen short of the president's standards or bungled some process. This is the standard. The Attorney General has done and is doing precisely what is expected of him.

Consider this.

When Alberto Gonzales went up to the Hill earlier this year and answered questions about the US Attorney firings, he lied about why they'd been fired. When evidence revealed that what he had told the Senate was not true, he told the country in his televised press conference that he hadn't been directly involved in the process and thus had not knowingly misled the Senate. Friday's document dump showed that that too was a lie. These of course are only the most conspicuous examples and I leave aside the numerous instances of his aides lying on his behalf.

A growing number of Republicans are beginning to recognize that we have a serious problem in the White House. If our government is to have integrity, if our system of justice is to have credibility, if our constitution is to function properly, something has to give.

Bush's Arrogance Continues

There is no humility in George W. Bush. He can feign humility for the cameras but the politics of closed door, behind-the-scenes arrogance is his natural milieu. It makes perfect sense that he wants some of his top aides to testify to Congress behind closed doors, without transcripts and without taking an oath to tell the truth. Bush's comments about fishing expeditions against 'honorable public servants' rings rather hollow if one of the people he is referring to is Karl Rove.

The media shouldn't forget that part of the issue here was a backdoor attempt by the White House to avoid scrutiny by changing the way US Attorneys are appointed. Bush wanted to bypass the Senate so he could fire people who were not political enough for his taste while at the same time making it possible to get administration cronies into US Attorney without being vetted by Congress, a co-equal branch of government if the president would care to remember. Today, the Senate changed that rule back to its original form by a vote of 94-2.

Dan Froomkin of White House Watch had a post this morning well before Bush's defensive press conference and explains why the president is, after all, so defensive:

Last night's 3,000-page Justice Department document dump, still dribbling out into the public domain, appears to be a much more carefully screened release than the smaller but newsier one last week.

In barely acknowledging the White House role in the highly controversial, possibly politically-motivated firing of eight U.S. attorneys, these new documents may best be described as a lot of chaff, intended to deflect attention from evidence in the previous dump that the purge originated at the White House, was executed by the White House, and was extensively discussed with White House aides.

Froomkin is probably right that Monday night's document dump was much more screened than the first one. And yet, more issues keep getting raised. Kevin Drum of The Washington Monthly points out two problems:

...DOJ hasn't released any documents from prior to the purge showing how they judged the performance of the folks they were firing. All we have is a summary document from after the purge, where DOJ apparatchiks are tripping over themselves trying to figure out just what those reasons were. But of course, that doesn't make sense. If they had really had firm, irreproachable reasons for firing the "USA-8," they would have just dug up the old memos that spelled out those reasons and transferred them to the summary sheet. Or maybe just released the original memos themselves. Instead they were running around like chickens with their heads cut off.

(snip)

...the five firings with the weakest official explanations are the same five prosecutors who have been suspected of being either too tough on Republican corruption cases or too weak on Democratic ones. You can't very well put that on your summary sheet, though, which probably explains why the DOJies had trouble coming up with good reasons for firing them. The dots are practically begging to be connected here.

So where are the original memos explaining beforehand why the eight were fired, including the five with the weakest case for firing? I'm sure we can expect some classic stonewalling by an administration that didn't count on being caught redhanded.

Finally, Truthout has an article by Robert L. Borosage that bluntly lays out the case against the Bush Administration and their conservatives friends:

...conservatives are acutely aware that they represent a minority, not a majority, position in America. From Nixon to Lee Atwater to Karl Rove, they play politics and exploit America's divides with back-alley brass knuckles-from Reagan's welfare queen to Bush's impugning the patriotism of Georgia Senator Max Cleland, a Vietnam War hero who literally sacrificed his limbs in the service of his country. They excel in the politics of personal destruction, as Democratic presidential candidates Michael Dukakis and John Kerry discovered. And in the grand tradition of the establishment in American politics, they are relentless in seeking to suppress the vote, particularly of the poor and minorities who would vote against them in large numbers.

Gonzales' imbroglio is a direct expression of this. At its core is the run-up to the 2006 elections with the Republicans under siege for the most corrupt Congress ever. The White House and Republican politicians grew exercised at Republican prosecutors who they considered too lax in exposing potential Democratic corruption, too avid in pursuing Republican crimes or too slow in prosecuting reports of "voter fraud," the GOP code for using investigations to disrupt minority registration and get out the vote programs, and to intimidate wary black and Latino voters. Justice was ranking U.S. attorneys based on whether they were "loyal Bushies."

The axing of David C. Iglesias, the U.S. attorney in New Mexico, is the archetype. With New Mexico up for grabs, Iglesias was being pressured directly and shamelessly by Republican Sen. Pete Domenici and Mickey Barnett, the attorney representing the Bush campaign in New Mexico to hustle up indictments on alleged incidents of voter fraud. (Iglesias found no evidence of any program designed to influence an election.) Vulnerable Rep. Heather Wilson lobbied him to bring indictments against state Democratic officials before the election to help make the point that when it comes to corruption, everyone does it. When Iglesias refused to respond, he was targeted despite glowing performance reviews. The firings took place as an object lesson for U.S .attorneys headed into the donnybrook that will be the 2008 election. As Iglesias put it , "main Justice was up to its eyeballs in partisan political maneuvers."

Everyone does it. That was Nixon's excuse but, as John Dean has pointed out, the current abuses emanating from the White House are worse than Watergate. Perhaps Borosage puts things more bluntly than some people would prefer. Nevertheless, we have never seen anything quite like the Bush Administration.

Latest White House Scandal Growing

First things first. Get over to Talking Points Memo or TPMMuckraker to get the latest on what's happening with the US Attorney scandal; these guys broke the story and are the point men for the story. The major newspapers and networks are finally on to it and adding some juicy bits to the unfolding scandal.

One word is sufficient to describe this latest scandal: arrogance. The leading figures of the Bush Administration have convinced themselves that they're above the law; and they thought if they were clever enough they could get away with playing political dynamite with our system of US Attorneys. And now they're squirming and dodging and avoiding testimony before Congress; Think Progress notes the following story:

MSNBC’s Mike Viquiera: “Fred Fielding, he’s the White House counsel, he was just here meeting with the House Judiciary Committee. He made the following offer to the Congress, both House and Senate. He said Rove and Harriet Miers would be offered to the committees for their testimony in the Alberto Gonzales prosecutors scandal. However, it would be unsworn testimony, not under oath, behind closed doors, and no transcript would be permitted. Now, that is not what Congress is looking for.”

This offer is similar to the deal that was made to Bush and Cheney by the rubber stamp Congress when the Republicans were in control. During the investigation of the White House leak of CIA covert operative Valerie Plame's identity to the press, Bush and Cheney were allowed to testify behind closed doors in an informal setting about their role in the affair; to this day the American people have no idea what the president and vice president said. Since their testimony, significant evidence has come to light that Dick Cheney played a key role in the smearing of Joe Wilson. In addition, Bush supposedly gave Cheney the authority to declassify some crucial information, but that too had the smell of political convenience. There is also evidence to suggest that President Bush considered it important to protect Karl Rove from the fallout over the CIA leak. Karl Rove has no official role in national security. He is strictly a political adviser. Protecting a political adviser makes it very clear that the CIA leak was about politics at its worst; it was also about abusing national security procedure for the sake of politics.

In the last six years, Republican leaders in Congress may have felt comfortable giving Bush a free pass despite abundant evidence of his incompetence and recklessness and despite a growing number of serious ethical breaches within his administration and outright abuses of power, but the American people are increasingly restless; there have been a number of disturbing revelations and Americans want answers. It looks like, with the Democrats in control, that Congress is finally ready to demand some accountability.

US Attorneys are indeed political appointments but they have a special role in safeguarding the integrity of our government. They must be above the taint of politics. When there are those in an administration who try to rig what US Attorneys can prosecute or not, our government and our democracy is damaged. We have a problem, and once again, it is not clear that President Bush understands that he has an obligation to fix it. What we do not need is another public relations massage from the White House. We need to restore the integrity of our government. And that may be difficult given the number of lies that have been coming out of the White House.

The Cheney Problem II

The Scooter Libby trial is focusing attention on Vice President Dick Cheney like never before and the details we are learning are not putting Cheney in a good light. Americans can no longer ignore Cheney's hubris and incompetence but there have been signs for at least four years that much of this actually goes deeper. The problems with the secretive vice president are mounting.

That hasn't stopped Cheney from admitting that the job of Republicans in Congress is to bow to the superiority of the Bush Administration; here's the story from CBS News:

Vice President Dick Cheney shot back at Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel, who has accused the Bush administration of playing "a ping-pong game with American lives" by sending more U.S. troops into Iraq.

"Let's say I believe firmly in Ronald Reagan's 11th commandment: Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican," Cheney said. "But it's very hard sometimes to adhere to that where Chuck Hagel is involved."

Given his hypocritical bullying of his fellow Republicans and given the facts and behavior of the Bush Administration in the last six years, Cheney's comment has no other fundamental interpretation than this: when it comes to Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, Republicans must rubber stamp the incompetence, recklessness, deceptions and abuse of the US Constitution no matter what. That is behavior an overwhelming majority of Americans cannot afford.

Dan Froomkin of White House Briefing is back and has some comments on the Cheney situation:

While Dick Cheney undoubtedly remains the most powerful vice president this nation has ever seen, it's becoming increasingly unclear whether anyone outside the White House believes a word he says.

Inside the West Wing, Cheney's influence remains considerable. In fact, nothing better explains Bush's perplexing plan to send more troops to Iraq than Cheney's neoconservative conviction that showing the world that we have the "stomach for the fight" is the most important thing -- even if it isn't accomplishing the things we're supposed to be fighting for. Even if it's backfiring horribly.

But as his astonishing interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer laid bare last week, Cheney is increasingly out of touch with reality... ...

The secretive Cheney has the largest staff of any vice president in history; in essence, it's a government within a government with little oversight by Congress. Cheney has ignored repeated media requests to interview some of his people and understand his 'unusual' operation. President Bush has, by law, the ultimate authority in his government but it's never been clear how he and Cheney divide up their responsibilities. In the past, some critics have argued that Cheney is the real president while Bush is the public relations man.

Americans have a right to know what's going on in a government that has been elected by the people and why so much behavior is deliberately being hidden from us (Google Halliburton, Iraq reconstruction, defense contracts, and Republican campaign donors just as a place to start). As I mentioned above, Cheney has resisted all attempts to understand his operation; Justin Rood of TPM Muckraker has a story that may begin to peel back the layers of secrecy by revealing some of the people who directly work for Cheney (note that Cheney apparently has others burrowed in various departments around Washington):

Stamped "For Official Use Only," the four-page document lists 81 employees, including six who worked for Lynne Cheney. That's well over the 30 or so names Cheney's office is said to submit routinely to directory services.

The directory shows 23 staffers who worked exclusively on national security and homeland security issues. Meanwhile, three positions were dedicated on domestic policy issues; one of those was vacant at the time of the directory's publishing.

It's not clear how much overlap there is with the list we posted earlier of 41 staffers serving Cheney from the Senate's payroll according to a 2006 report. But at least now we're in the ballpark of the 88 staffers Laura Rozen estimated to be there.

In the next few months, Congress needs to ask what these people are doing. If there isn't cooperation forthcoming from Cheney, Congress should seriously consider cutting Cheney's staff budget in half, investigating Cheney's role in starting the war in Iraq and investigating his obvious interest in widening the war, possibly with Iran.

Since August 2003, when Cheney lied about a nuclear program in Iraq, the media and his fellow Republicans have walked on egg shells perhaps because of Cheney's threats and famous vindictiveness that resulted in the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame. The more the country learns about Cheney, however, the more it becomes obvious that his behavior is unacceptable by any rational interpretation of the US Constitution and that his resignation is long overdue.

Will Cheney Be Sitting Behind Bush Tonight?

At least the opening of the Libby trial hasn't been boring (see Kevin Drum). Both the defense and prosecution make Cheney a central figure in the Leakgate affair that came out of Bush Administration deceptions about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (specifically the Niger/Iraq uranium yellowcake story that Joe Wilson debunked). If nothing else, Patrick Fitzgerald may put a number of things on the record, after all.

There are a number of blogs covering the Libby trial so I wasn't planning on doing much but this is a huge story after all and I've been following it since the day I picked up the paper in early September 2002 and read about the famous aluminum tubes just as the campaign to justify the war began; I remember it as a red flag moment—the timing was just too cute (I grumbled for weeks but as I have noted elsewhere, I didn't come out fully against the coming war until February of 2003).

In the excerpt below, I'm quoting from the reliable Steven Clemons of The Washington Note though MSNBC has already updated parts of the story (I dislike this practice, by the way, and prefer major updates to be noted, or simply a new story to be written):

Wow. This just from MSNBC news alert:

WASHINGTON -- Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald used his opening statement in the CIA leak trial Tuesday to allege that Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff lied about Cheney's early involvement in the disclosure of a spy's identity.

Fitzgerald said Cheney told his chief of staff, "Scooter" Libby, in 2003 that the wife of Iraq critic and former ambassador Joseph Wilson worked for the CIA, and that Libby spread that information to reporters. When that information got out, it triggered a federal investigation.

Think Progress has more specific details about what the prosecution said:

Libby is now on trial for perjury. His defense is that he simply forgot who told him that Plame worked for the CIA. But in court today, prosecutors outlined a powerful case establishing that Libby had reason to remember who told him and motive to cover it up. MSNBC’s David Schuster said today’s revelations from prosecutors are “new and will astound a number of people, even those who have been following this case.” Among the new claims:

– “Vice President Cheney himself directed Scooter Libby to essentially go around protocol and deal with the press and handle press himself…to try to beat back the criticism of administration critic Joe Wilson.”

– Cheney personally “wrote out for Scooter Libby what Libby should say in a conversation with Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper.”

– “Scooter Libby destroyed a note from Vice President Cheney about their conversations and about how Vice President Cheney wanted the Wilson matter handled.”

And here's the story from the defense side from The Guardian:

Attorneys for former White House aide ``Scooter'' Libby said Tuesday that Bush administration officials tried to blame him for the leak of a CIA operative's name to cover up for Bush political adviser Karl Rove's own disclosures.

Attorney Theodore Wells, in the opening statements of I. Lewis Libby's perjury trial, said Libby went to Vice President Dick Cheney in 2003 and complained that the White House was subtly blaming him for leaking Valerie Plame's identity to columnist Robert Novak.

``They're trying to set me up. They want me to be the sacrificial lamb,'' Wells said, recalling the conversation between Libby and Cheney. ``I will not be sacrificed so Karl Rove can be protected.''

Karl Rove and Scooter Libby. Now that's quite a pair. In Dante's Inferno, in one of the rings of hell, two ambitious thugs whose conspiracy unravelled spend their hours blaming each other for their downfall and they are doomed to gnaw at each over and over until the end of time. I don't wish such a fate on Rove and Libby, but they seem to be wishing it on each other.

Of course Libby blaming the White House for making him the fall guy to protect Karl Rove is a bit of a crock. When Bush, Cheney, Rove and Libby are involved, bad things just seem to happen? I seriously doubt that Bush or Cheney will be impeached because of the politics involved and the failure of the media and the continuing failure of a now Republican minority in Congress to come to grips with a reckless and law-breaking administration, but no one should doubt that the president and vice president are impeachable for any number of things they have done, including committing fraud in making the case for war in Iraq. If not for the protection of a rubber stamp Republican Congress, a number of Bush Administration figures would also have faced prosecution by now.

Perhaps Bush will make a lame crack or two tonight in reference to Cheney or Libby. If Cheney is sitting behind him, it will be one more embarrassment for Bush. And the nation.


Note: I'm still inclined to let other bloggers follow the trial closely but I'll be popping my head in now and then.

Bush's War and Iran

Over time, there are ways that Democrats in Congress can start reining in Bush. But it's possible that time is growing short and significant numbers of Republicans will have to join Democrats to put a crimp in Bush's continuing gambles in foreign policy. As the blunders continue, things are getting complicated.

One complication is Israel which seemed to let it be known recently that it might take out Iran's nuclear program on its own. Another complication is Saudi Arabia which has been making noise in recent weeks (Cheney has had a role in this though I'm still not convinced one way or the other whether he is a listener or doing the talking). Raw Story has a post on the possibility that Saudi Arabia may raise its profile in Iraq:

NBC News' Andrea Mitchell reported on MSNBC that Saudi Arabia is mulling whether or not to send troops to Iraq, to "protect their interests" there.

According to Mitchell, Saudi Arabia is "deeply skeptical" that Iraq's government will be able to quell the unrest. Over a hundred Iraqi civilians died today, including at least 15 from a bombing at Baghdad University.

But a leading Saudi Arabia official warns that Saudi Arabia can not be expected to "solve Iraq's problems."

And then there's Iran and the possibililty that Bush will escalate the tensions, if not unilaterally attack Iran without Congressional approval. Steve Soto of The Left Coaster has an update on Iran:

The Arab Times in Kuwait says a source of theirs confirms that the White House will hit Iran between now and the end of April, confirming what Sam Gardiner told us over the weekend. Note that for some reason, the attack planning involved not only suspected nuclear targets, but also attacks against Iran’s oil industry, which would not only cripple the country’s economy but also send worldwide oil prices into the stratosphere and make it certain that Iran would retaliate in kind. (Hat tip to Michael Carmichael at PlanetaryMovement.org)

To this end, the Russians have sold and will sell more anti-aircraft missile systems to Iran in the coming months. Do not be surprised if our forces will be going up against Russian and Chinese equipment and advisors. A senior Russian naval official concludes that the Bush Administration is positioning submarines for an attack. (Hat tip to Raw Story)

The most disturbing new aspect about the story is the possibilitly of an attack against Iran's oil industry. If true (and that's a big if), perhaps Bush wants to cripple the world's oil industry and wants to force the United States turn to dirty sources of fuel like offshore drilling, coal and oil shale with a moratorium on environmental regulations while paying lip service to clean energy. I'm not sure how reliable the Arab Times are but stories about possible action are circulating elsewhere and something to consider is that it's possible that some members of the Bush Administration are circulating the stories in an effort to provoke Iran into a response (Cheney?). Something to keep in mind about Iran is that it is some years from developing a bomb and is not an imminent threat but it is possible that when it comes to Iran another mushroom cloud scam may be underway by the Bush Administration and its neocon allies in the media. Certainly the usual neocon suspects have been making noise about Iran over the last few months.

Laura Rozen has an article in American Prospect Online concerning Bush's possible intentions towards Iran:

President Bush's Wednesday address to the nation on his new Iraq strategy delved heavily into an alleged uptick in Iranian support for terrorism and attacks on coalition forces in Iraq, and his plans for confronting it. The speech was followed the next day by the dramatic U.S. raid on an Iranian office in the Iraqi city of Irbil. Speculation is now intensifying: Has Bush signed a finding authorizing covert action on Iran? If so, what specifically does it say? Alternatively, has he authorized a more aggressive Iran strategy through a presidential directive that doesn't explicitly require informing Congress -- or the public -- of action?

(snip)

U.S. officials interviewed by the Prospect would not reveal whether they had been briefed on such a finding, or if one even exists. But there is evidence that, while Bush probably has not signed such a finding regarding Iran, he has recently done so regarding Iranian-supported Hezbollah in Lebanon; further, there is evidence that he may have signed an executive order or national security presidential directive regarding a new, more aggressive policy on Iran. Such directives are not required to be reported to Congress -- they are more in the realm of the president communicating to authorized people inside the administration his expectations for a policy.

Whatever Bush has put in writing or not about Iran, he is required to consult with Congress on such a important issue. I'm not sure what it takes these days to convince Americans that we have a constitutional crisis on our hands. I'm convinced we're already in one but I doubt a majority of Americans see it that way yet. But if Bush launches a war against Iran without Congressional approval, how will Americans react? And will it be too late? Now would be a good time to write your representatives in Washington.

Dealing with George W. Bush

One of the greatest features of a democracy with a well-crafted constitution is that it offers various legal tools for dealing with incompetents and bullies like George W. Bush. Unfortunately, one of the disadvantages is that democracy takes time. George W. Bush should never have been reelected. All the problems that the American people are now seeing with some degree of clarity were evident before the 2004 presidential election, though it should be pointed out that 59 million people saw the problem—it's unfortunate that 62 million saw something that wasn't there.

These days, we are in something of a constitutional crisis; the paramount issue is keeping Bush from dragging the United States into a deeper war and completely destroying the vision of foreign policy, flawed as it is, that has existed since Franklin Roosevelt. It is evident that Bush and Cheney wish to replace the old foreign policy with something far worse or so crippled that reformers will takes years to repair it.

Glenn Greenwald of Unclaimed Territory has some thoughtful insights into the Bush and Cheney regime:

The reason Bush violated the law when eavesdropping is the same reason Lithwick cites to explain his other lawless and extremist measures -- because he wanted purposely not to comply with the law in order to establish the general "principle" that he was not bound by the law, to show that he has the power to break the law, that he is more powerful than the law. This is a President and an administration that are obsessed first and foremost with their own power and with constant demonstrations of their own strength. Conversely, what they fear and hate the most is their own weakness and submission to limitations.

For that reason, the weaker and more besieged the administration feels, the more compelled they will feel to make a showing of their power. Lashing out in response to feelings of weakness is a temptation most human beings have, but it is more than a mere temptation for George Bush. It is one of the predominant dynamics that drives his behavior.

His party suffered historic losses in the 2006 midterm elections as a result of profound dissatisfaction with his presidency and with his war, and his reaction was to escalate the war, despite (really, because of) the extreme unpopularity of that option. And as Iraq rapidly unraveled, he issued orders that pose a high risk of the conflict engulfing Iran. When he feels weak and restrained, that is when he acts most extremely.

Bush officials and their followers talk incessantly about things like power, weakness, domination, humiliation. Their objectives -- both foreign and domestic -- are always to show their enemies that they are stronger and more powerful and the enemies are weaker and thus must submit ("shock and awe"). It is a twisted world view but it dominates their thinking (and that is how our country has been governed for the last six years, which is what accounts for our current predicament). As John Dean demonstrated, a perception of one's weakness and the resulting fears it inspires are almost always what drive people to seek out empowering authoritarian movements and the group-based comforts of moral certitude.

When talking about Bush and his abuses of power, Richard Nixon is a good comparison and John Dean has been very helpful with illustrating a number of issues including the tendency of conservatives to give in too easily to authoritarianism, but I think the last character to specifically behave like George W. Bush and Dick Cheney was Senator Joseph McCarthy (and by extension, J. Edgar Hoover who quickly changed course after McCarthy's fall (...or appeared to)). What made McCarthy so dangerous was that he specialized in fear, the use of fear for bullying and increasing his power. But eventually McCarthy was reined in without using some of the powerful legal tools available. Keep in mind that McCarthy was never convicted of anything. No serious effort was made to arrest or impeach him. But he was exposed for what he was and he was censured—and power inexorably slipped from his hands. Of course, it helped that even President Eisenhower finally turned on him.

Hurricane Katrina still remains one of the keys to the Bush presidency. Katrina absolutely left no doubt of Bush's incompetence. When his political team doesn't have days or weeks to carefully craft a phony message, Bush is helpless. His first real reaction when the American people made known their displeasure with his performance was to behave like a bully and demand the right to call out the military the next time such a disaster hit; bullies always want more power when their incompetence is profoundly exposed.

The way to deal with bullies is to stand up to them. When bullies behave like Tom DeLay (I am the government, he reportedly once said) or like the current crew in the White House, the pressure must be maintained. It might help, though, to make sure Bush begins to think about a pleasant retreat to Crawford, Texas, or if investigations begin to turn up too much material, his huge family ranch in Paraguay.

In the winter of 2007, after six years of profound recklessness and incompetence, a certain degree of urgency exists. Bush keeps talking about his historical destiny which is nonsense, of course. But Congress does have an historical obligation to check Bush's abuses of power. It's in the Constitution, a document written by people very familiar with abuses of power.

Bush Administration Plays Star Wars

An annoying tic that Republican business executives of my father's generation and a little younger picked up in the early 70s was to mimic various scenes from The Godfather in real business situations and even sometimes in personal life. My mother finally got my father to knock it off but his associates and other people I ran into continued to act out their Godfather fantasies from time to time. The truth is that our country has grown so fast in the last two hundred years that we sometimes forget who we are.

Now Deborah Sontag of The New York Times reveals a new generation of people in the government who this time take the Empire part of the Star Wars series too literally; here's the article:

One spring day during his three and a half years as an enemy combatant, Jose Padilla experienced a break from the monotony of his solitary confinement in a bare cell in the brig at the Naval Weapons Station in Charleston, S.C.

That day, Mr. Padilla, a Brooklyn-born Muslim convert whom the Bush administration had accused of plotting a dirty bomb attack and had detained without charges, got to go to the dentist.

“Today is May 21,” a naval official declared to a camera videotaping the event. “Right now we’re ready to do a root canal treatment on Jose Padilla, our enemy combatant.”

Several guards in camouflage and riot gear approached cell No. 103. They unlocked a rectangular panel at the bottom of the door and Mr. Padilla’s bare feet slid through, eerily disembodied. As one guard held down a foot with his black boot, the others shackled Mr. Padilla’s legs. Next, his hands emerged through another hole to be manacled.

Wordlessly, the guards, pushing into the cell, chained Mr. Padilla’s cuffed hands to a metal belt. Briefly, his expressionless eyes met the camera before he lowered his head submissively in expectation of what came next: noise-blocking headphones over his ears and blacked-out goggles over his eyes. Then the guards, whose faces were hidden behind plastic visors, marched their masked, clanking prisoner down the hall to his root canal.

In The Empire Strikes Back, there's a scene that sort of implies root canal imagery but the original image comes from The Marathon Man starring Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier; Olivier plays a former Nazi concentration camp dentist and Hoffman is the unfortunate victim of Olivier's dental implements.

What are we to make of helmets, face masks, total impersonal behavior and star trooper mentality in these images? Who took these images to heart? Cheney? Bush? Rumsfeld? General Boykin? Of course, there have been other fictional movies and fictional thrillers and fictional TV shows showing such characters. As we know, the Bush Administration has trouble distinguishing between fiction and reality.

Yes, we all remember that terrible day, 9-11, and yes we were concerned about catching real terrorists. Real terrorists, mind you. Not bozos like Jose Padilla who appears to have been more a propaganda find than a terrorist threat. I confess I'm losing track of how many government cases have fallen apart because they were based on the ravings of tortured people willing to say anything to make the pain stop or even based on the fantasies of people handling their cases. For example, the government just paid $2 million to an Oregon lawyer who was briefly held for the 2004 bombing in Spain because it was thought his fingerprints matched those on a plastic bag; the Spanish were astonished because there was no match, not even close, and their belief in American expertise was somewhat rattled after that fiasco. Someone has yet to explain how it all happened.

Having lost their way some time ago, Republicans in Congress still defend Bush and most will continue to do so. Right wing bloggers and pundits will continue to do the same. But a curious thing has been happening across America. By ones, by tens, by hundreds, day after day, Republicans and independents are continuing to turn away from Bush's perverted vision of America. Most Americans want nothing to do with Bush and Cheney's Start Wars, Inc. I suspect more Americans will continue to peel away from supporting our president and his disturbing vision of America.