President Lyndon Johnson gave up his chance for re-election in hopes
that the ongoing Vietnam War eventually would resurrect his political
reputation and land him a place of honor in history. George W. Bush
sacrificed Donald Rumsfeld in the hope that by jettisoning that
unpopular baggage, the ongoing Iraq War (and perhaps the attack on Iran
that is coming) eventually will demonstrate that he was right and that
history will rebuild his historical legacy.
It didn't happen for LBJ -- the war, which lasted for seven more years,
resulted in a death-total of 58,000 American troops and at least two
million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians -- and it's not likely to
happen for Bush, who is planning on having a strong U.S. presence in
Iraq for at least a decade or more.
Both presidents ignored the central fact at the heart of their self-made
disasters: Their wars were unnecessary, tragically wrong from the
outset, based on lies, deceptions, and gross misreadings of the cultures
they invaded and occupied.
When the foundations of your house are rotten, you can't expect it to
stand straight and tall, especially when you put great weight and stress
on it; and no amount of last-minute jerry-rigged repairs will make it
right. The misbegotten house skews, twists, eventually collapses. That's
CheneyBush's Iraq War.
In short, Bush, already widely believed to be one of the worst
presidents in American history, will not have the legacy he so
desperately wants, that of a historical giant who, in the space of a few
years, transformed the Greater Middle East by bringing "democracy" and
free-market capitalism to the region.
Instead, he will be remembered as the American president, ignorant and
uncaring as to consequences and cultures, who recklessly stirred the pot
of chaos in that area of the world and wound up committing numerous war
crimes, endangering the national security of the United States and
creating more anti-American terrorists all around the globe. He also
will be remembered as the president who, in the name of bringing
democracy to the world, trampled it at home.
In other words, Dick Cheney won.
EXIT, STAGE RIGHT
One by one, the other key players -- a good share of whom were
incompetent or at least over their heads to begin with -- were
overwhelmed and forced out by Cheney, the master of political intrigue,
duplicity and cutthroat infighting.
John Ashcroft, a hardline supporter of the Patriot Act who once
told Congress that criticism of his hardline police tactics gave "aid
and comfort" to terrorists, resigned as U.S. Attorney General in
November of 2004. Everyone wondered why. Only recently did we learn that
a few months before that, Ashcroft, Deputy AG James Comey and FBI
Director Robert Mueller had threatened to resign over Bush's warrantless
data-mining of American citizens' phone records and emails unless the
program were brought under judicial review. Ashcroft's days were
numbered.
Colin Powell, something of a voice of reason (at least in the
context of the ideological zealotry in the rest of the CheneyBush
Administration) fought the good fight against the neo-cons Rumsfeld and
Cheney before being forced to resign. His moral low point was allowing
himself to be forced into the role of chief war-apologist when he
delivered his embarrassing list of reasons to attack Iraq before the
United Nations in early 2003. He later sort-of owned up to his mistake,
one of the few Administration leaders to do so, even if belatedly and
over-cautiously.
Paul Wolfowitz, along with Cheney and Rumsfeld one of the key
architects of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, was eased out and
kicked upstairs to the World Bank, to cover that flank of CheneyBush
imperial policy. But his managerial incompetence and neo-connish
arrogance led to his removal.
Tom Ridge, the first Secretary of Homeland Security, was eased
out for a hard-line Bushie, Michael Chertoff. Ridge later admitted that
a lot of the security "alerts" he announced were ordered from above, not
because there was actionable intelligence to justify raising the threat
level. Often, when the Administration was suffering some bad news or a
new scandal, Ridge would appear to issue those fear-mongering "alerts."
Donald Rumsfeld, one of the chief architects of the Iraq war,
took the fall for the years of CheneyBush's disastrous policies and
inept management of the occupation. The hope was that the pressure of
criticism would lessen after Rumsfeld was forced out. But again, as
bumbling as Rumsfeld was, it wasn't the secretary's conduct that was the
cental problem, it was the war and occupation itself, a war based on
mendacities, deceptions, and self-deceptions. Both Cheney and Bush, so
psychologically and ideologically insecure, could never admit to that
colossal error of judgement.
Scooter Libby, Cheney's powerful chief of staff, took the fall
for Rove and Cheney and Bush, and then, when Bush commuted his sentence,
didn't have to serve a day in jail for commiting perjury and obstruction
of justice in the case involving the outing of covert CIA operative
Valerie Plame. Libby's replacement, David Addington, reportedly is, if
you can imagine it, even more authoritarian and ruthless than his
predecessor.
Karl Rove, Bush's chief political strategist, having led his
party to the disastrous defeat in 2006 that put the Democrats back in
power in Congress, is departing -- perhaps to plan a legal defense for
his role in a wide variety of scandals, including, to name just a few,
his
violation of the Hatch Act (using government employees to aid a
political party's election chances), his coverup role in the outing of a
covert CIA agent, his power interactions with corrupt lobbyist Jack
Abramoff, his role in election fraud in 2000 and 2004, and his
involvement in the coverup of the U.S. Attorneys mess.
The key generals, most prominently George Casey and John Abizaid,
were unable to put lipstick on the pig of this war; after trying in
their own ways to warn the Administration that it was engaged in a
futile quagmire in Iraq and that escalation maybe wasn't such a great
idea, they were forced out in favor of lickspittle generals who would
swallow the CheneyBush kool-aid and not make waves.
The departure of all those key figures leaves Cheney, Bush, Addington
and National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley as the last creators of
major Administration policy left standing. (Rice and Gonzales are
toadies, doing the jobs ordered of them by their bosses.)
ADDICTED TO SECRECY
As it turns out, Gen. Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker will not be
writing the much-awaited September report on the progress of the
Administration's escalation ("surge"). Not taking any chances,
the White House will write it. One can expect that report will
say that enough "progress" is being made on the ground to justify a
continuation of the escalation, perhaps with some pre-election fig-leaf
alteration in the number of troops and where they will be deployed.
CheneyBush at first indicated that Petraeus and Crocker would defend the
war-policies of their masters before the Congress
in closed session. (After the Democrats loudly complained,
that decision was reversed.) That's how much confidence this gang of
ideological brutes had in its policies. It didn't want the American
people to hear what the general and the ambassador would have to say
under oath about this war and CheneyBush's attempt to string it out
until a new president is inaugurated in January 2009.
The obsession with secrecy this Administration has displayed for the
past six and a half years is not only an authoritarian knee-jerk
reaction to keep the public in the dark about what it's up to, but is
also symbolic of CheneyBush's deep suspicion of and revulsion towards
democratic institutions of all kinds.
Knowing that the public would never support a pre-emptive war of
aggression against Iraq based on the neo-con ideology of America ruling
the world, CheneyBush invented Saddam's supposed "weapons of mass
destruction" (especially non-existent nuclear weapons), and an imagined
tie between Iraq and 9/11. As a result of its lies and deceptions to
Congress, the American people and the United Nations, the Administration
was able to launch its "shock&awe" war and occupation. The current
run-up to a likely war with Iran is starting to resemble the pattern
used before the attack on Iraq.
Fearful of the public hearing too much truth about its various domestic
and war policies, CheneyBush spent
$1.6 billion of taxpayer money to buy journalists and place their
propaganda stories in various media outlets, along with pre-packaged
"news" reports churned out by its own governmental employees and often
run as "news" on small-town TV stations. Administration spokesmen then
quoted those stories in mainstream media, as proof of the correctness of
its policies.
EVEN ASHCROFT KEPT IN THE DARK
At times the Administration doesn't even tell the truth to its own
high-ranking officials. We now learn that it didn't keep then-Attorney
General John Ashcroft fully informed about aspects of the National
Security Administration's own data-mining operations against American
citizens. Thus it made sure that Ashcroft would not have a full range of
well-researched legal opinions about the unconstitutional nature of the
program.
These facts are now coming to light only as a result of James Comey's
recent Senate testimony about the infamous hospital visit of Alberto
Gonzales, then White House Counsel, and then-Chief of Staff Andrew Card
to Ashcroft's bedside in March of 2004. We've all heard how Gonzales and
Card tried to take advantage of the woozy, post-operative Ashcroft to
get him to sign an authorization to continue the illegal eavesdropping
-- illegal because it was an end-around the FISA court established by
law to adjudicate warrant requests for such domestic surveillance. Here
are the money
quotes about CheneyBush having kept their own Attorney General in
the dark about the legal justifications for the data-mining program:
"According to his notes, [FBI Director Robert]
Mueller arrived at the hospital at 7:40 p.m., 20 minutes after
receiving a call from Comey saying that Gonzales and Card were en
route to the hospital and requesting Mueller's presence in order to
'witness the condition of the Attorney General.' By the time Mueller
arrived, Gonzales and Card had already left. Mueller's notes of the
subsequent conversation between Comey, Ashcroft and Mueller reveal
that the top law enforcement officer of the United States may have
been prevented from reviewing the wiretapping program that had
already been put in place by the president.
"In his notes, Mueller says that Ashcroft 'reviewed for Gonzales and
Card the legal concerns relating to the program. The AG also told
Gonzales and Card that he was barred from obtaining the advice he
needed on the program by the strict compartmentalization rules
of the White House'." (Italics added by author Matt Renner.)
Needless to say, Ashcroft's replacement was a guaranteed
"loyal Bushie," (wait for it!) Alberto Gonzales.
DOWN IN THE BUNKER
Summing up: These guys, at least those few who remain with Cheney,
Addington, Gonzales, Hadley and Bush down in the White House bunker, are
getting nervous about their criminal liability as more of their high
crimes and misdemeanors are revealed to the public. They would be even
more anxious if an impeachment process were to begin.
So far, the Democrats have shied away from taking on CheneyBush
frontally with impeachment hearings and arrest warrants for
Administration officials who have refused to honor subpoenas to appear
and testify and/or provide requested documents. (Remember that the
failure to produce subpoenaed documents was one of the three impeachment
charges against President Richard Nixon.)
It is possible that as more reports about the thugs in charge of the
White House appear in both the internet and via the filter of a somewhat
more courageous corporate news media, the public will come to understand
how CheneyBush forces are effectively destroying the Constitution and
expanding already-begun wars and preparing to initiate new ones, thus
putting both the economy and America's national-security interests at
risk.
At that point, if and when we reach it, the dam holding back red-hot
Democratic and even mainstream Republican anger will break, and the
public will demand that Congress act to save the country from further
ruin by initiating impeachment hearings ASAP. Recent polls indicate the
American public is moving inexorably toward that tipping point. The
question is: Will they move quickly enough?
It's long since time for the CheneyBush Bunker crew to be forced to
defend themselves in such impeachment hearings in Congress and, later,
in front of criminal and civil juries both here and abroad.
Do I hear an amen?
Copyright 2007 by Bernard Weiner
