Politics

The sad fact is that we have just passed the 2,000 mark for U.S. fatalities in Iraq. This grim tally surely gives us pause to ask once more: why? The pretexts for war given to us by the Administration have all long ago been exposed as either misleading or wrongheaded: there were no weapons of mass destruction, there was no terror link, and Saddam was not about to attack the U.S.. We were deceived. Duped. Lied to. However you couch it the outcome is the same, the people of the U.S. [and the rest of the world] were taken for a monumental ride by a group of conspiritorial ‘cabalists’ hell bent on invading Iraq. They saw no wrong in cooking the books to take advantage of our post-9/11 fears, and they brooked no opposition [see Valerie Plame]. Now they have the blood of over 2,000 U.S. military men and women on their hands, not to mention that of the 30,000 or more Iraqis who have died in this unnecessary war. Are they contrite? Not at all. Are they guilty? Absolutely. Shame on us all for for falling for the scam.

Now it turns out [at least according to the New York times] that Libby learned Valerie Plame’s name from Dick Cheney and not from reporters. Whoops, looks like Dick’s in deeper than even I thought! All these leaks of information in the last week or so of a hitherto lips-sealed investigation are mighty fishy: sounds like poor old Libby is being set up as the ultimate fall guy. But from Dick’s lips? Can we say ‘unindicted co-conspirator’?

The more I read about the infamous Plame scandal [or should I call it the Rove/Libby/Cheney/Rumsfeld scandal?], the more annoyed I get. The Republicans are already trying to spin this as a minor affair. They are saying that it is a case of politics as usual and that indictments would cramp politics rather than punish crimes. That is plainly nonsense. The central facts of the case appear to be that a small cabal of conspirators lied and connived: they lied to Congress and they connived to ruin the reputations of anyone with enough gumption to resist. The object of their activities was to start a war for which there was no clear ‘need’, other, of course, than the neo-con aganda. Sending a country to war on the basis of fabrication and innuendo is immoral, doing it by lying to Congress surely is a crime. That’s besides the obvious crime of ‘outing’ an undercover agent [which is made worse by the nefarious motive: political advantage]. You cannot spin that away. The Republicans will have to find a way to wriggle out of this one other than simply saying it was all politics as usual, and the electorate will have to wake up so it isn’t duped again.

The various ongoing investigations into corruption and criminal activities that are swirling through Washington have ground government to a virtual halt. President Bush is surrounded by scandal: DeLay being booked for breaking campaign laws; Frist lying about his profiteering on stocks he was not supposed to know he had [the lies have been confirmed by the Trustees on his account:they say they kept him up to sdate on stock transactions, while he said previously he knew nothing!]; Rove and Libby being targeted for breaking the law by ‘outing’ an undercover agent; and Abrahamov casting a shadow throughout the Republican fund raising world. While it’s easy to gloat at the mess the Republicans find themselves in, I think we should avoid too much glee: the country is already paying dearly for having bought into a lightweight and incompetent administration [e.g. via the Katrina non-response, the complete lack of economic policy, Iraq etc], now we have even less hope for some semblance of leadership. This is a time for leadership, and we have none. That is nothing to boast about, nor to take delight in. We are all losers when our government is as poor as our’s is now. Wouldn’t it be nice though if the Democrats could find some spine and take advantage of Bush’s awful performance? Or is that asking too much?