For the past six years, I have watched as scandal after scandal and lie after lie has been paraded for its requisite fifteen minutes of fame. "Surely this will undo the Bush administration," people say. "Yes, this is definitely it," others chime in. "Now they've gone too far." Let's write our congresspeople! Let's boycott! Let's send e-mails to Keith Olbermann!
I've had a belly full of the horseshit. Gone too far? There's no such thing as too far when one's government and the entirety of the political culture is as rotten as a ten-day old fish in the noonday sun. The truth is, the United States is at the most critical juncture of its history and the signs do not bode well.
On the heels of the unpopular surge, we now celebrate the unmasking of the purge, as if this will finally do it, this is the "too far" moment, camel's back meet straw. Frankly, I don't think so. There is a sickness in the land that overwhelms all of it for me. Let's start with this: I think those attorneys deserved to be fired.
The dirty little understory to the attorneys scandal is that none of those representatives of American justice was going to say or do anything about the politicization of their offices and the legal system in this country until they were relieved of their jobs, livelihood, and power.
Here's what David Iglesias [the targeted U.S. attorney in New Mexico] said in testimony:
Iglesias said criticisms of his performance by the Justice Department "are demonstrably untrue statements." He added: "We all have a right to defend our honor. I felt like my honor and the honor of my office was attacked."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
My, my, my. That's what Iglesias worried about. His honor. His office. His job. Where was his outrage that the administration was pursuing a dangerous course of action absolutely antithetical to the Constitution, the separation of powers, the justice system, and the rights of the American people?
On January 10, Iglesias sent a toadying e-mail to Kyle Sampson [Gonzales' right hand man] inquiring about a positive recommendation as he set out to look for a new job. If you want to read it, it's at the very bottom of this document: http://judiciary.house.gov/...
I read it, and it made me ill. What made him decide to come clean? Perhaps the offer of safety in numbers, the protection of the subpeona, the revenge value of the hearing? Certainly it wasn't your rights he was worried about. Or mine. [The Wall Street Journal tells us that Iglesias may indeed have gotten a bum rap. From its pages: Former deputy attorney general James B. Comey, now general counsel for Lockheed Martin, this week praised Iglesias as "one of our finest and someone I had a lot of confidence in as deputy attorney general."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Wow, a shout out from Lockheed Martin. That certainly bolsters my confidence that Iglesias is one of the good guys. Not.
[Pretty sad considering Iglesias is said to be the real person behind the character Tom Cruise plays in "A Few Good Men."]
And here's H.E. Cummins, U.S. attorney for Arkansas' Eastern District from 2001-2006, who said last Thursday that he and other fired attorneys had "politely declined" previous requests from the committee. He said he "didn't have any desire to stir up the controversy any further."
Oh, no. Wouldn't want to do that. Wouldn't want to -- how shall I put it? -- go to bat for American justice or anything.
"If given the choice, I'd elect to stay home and mind my own business," Cummins told The Associated Press. "Now that I'm under subpoena, I'll go and give cooperative, truthful answers."
When asked if officials in the Justice Department or White House had asked him to decline the earlier requests, Cummins said he had no comment.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...
And there's this:
Cummins said in a telephone interview Tuesday that he appreciated Pryor's [Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark] defense of his service, but that he remained a Bush loyalist who had considered leaving his post regardless.
"In my case, it's fair to say it was handled poorly, because they could just have easily called me and said 'You haven't done anything wrong. You're a champ. You've been a great performer for the president, and we'd like you to cooperate with us and give this other guy a job for two years,'" Cummins said.
http://www.nwaonline.net/...
Handled poorly? Handled poorly? HANDLED POORLY?!!##$@???
Well, that isn't going to change. Enter stage left the stooge who serves as our Attorney General:
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, addressing the growing furor over the Justice Department's dismissal of eight federal prosecutors, acknowledged Tuesday that "mistakes were made" in the way his agency handled and disclosed the dismissals.
"I accept that responsibility," Gonzales said during a press conference. "And my pledge to the American people is to find out what went wrong here, to assess accountability, and to make improvements so the mistakes that occurred in this instance do not occur in the future."
http://www.npr.org/...
Mistakes were made. Oh, my God, were they. Every day since 2000, sometimes ten or more a day, weekends included, come hell or high water. The title of the chapter in the history books that describes this miscreant administration should be: "Mistakes Were Made."
Yes, Gonzales is feeling bad right now. Damn, he's not going to get a lick's worth of credit for keeping mad dog Harriet Miers from having her way and firing every single U.S. attorney in the country. That's just the morally vapid kind of folks we have running this nation.
And here's the final lie I read tonight, from Propaganda Secretary Tony Snow:
Traveling with President Bush in Mexico this week, [Snow] confirmed that the president had a conversation with Attorney General Gonzales in October about complaints regarding some U.S. Attorneys. Snow says the president mentioned it to Gonzales "in passing," but he was adamant that Mr. Bush did not complain about specific prosecutors. http://www.npr.org/...
Right, Tony. You go ahead with the adamant thing. We all really trust that. We know that when you're adamant ... I mean, really and hell-fire and damn the torpedos adamant ... that ... well, you're lying through your teeth.
What's the outcome of all this? Unless it leads to the impeachment of the president and his administration, I don't see cause for celebration. I can't say I'll be happy if these sorry fucks get their jobs back. Just look at them, and how they cower before power and suck up to an administration that is fascism on a stick. I can't say I'll be happy if these people don't get their jobs back, because then Gonzales will appoint some new sorry fucks -- after consulting with Rove, of course, or whomever is their top honcho nowadays on fucking over the American people and ripping the Constitution into shreds.
It is the absence of any moral fiber and sense of right and wrong that has me convinced we are further down a bad road than we know. Apparently, there is no one in any of the branches of our current government that gives a tinker's damn for this country.
This is very bad news, folks. I am not cheered by the mamby-pamby pronouncements of our presidential candidates, designed to appeal to a mass of morally bankrupt Americans. "In it to win it"? Might as well be a Nascar race. And look at our blue dog Democratic representatives, who find themselves hard pressed to hold Bush accountable to anything. For this and this alone I am now pledged not to give them one dime or further deference.
We are now poised to ride the purge scandal like a hobby horse to its inevitable lackluster conclusion. Somehow, I'm not up for it. What I am up for is hearing somebody -- anybody -- say the obvious thing: Bush and his crew need to go now. They are neck deep in illegal activities, racketeering, perversion of and tampering with the justice system, criminal negligence, illegal war, misappropriation of funds, lying and deception, black ops here and abroad, election manipulations, illegal confinement and torture, corporate cronyism, tax fraud, child endangerment, and treason. And that's just for starters.
In the meantime, it's clear those U.S. attorneys might have deserved their walking papers. But they deserved to get them from us.
-------
U P D A T E
Many folks have taken me to the woodshed for my lack of compassion for the ousted attorneys (they have families to feed, mortgages to pay, etc.) What do I expect, anyway? Well, here's what I expect. Here's a patriot -- and he's a Republican, too: CHARLES BANKS. Follow link below for excellent summary by Joe Conason. Thanks to Kagro X, who provided this link.
http://www.observer.com/...
-------
Postscript: I had occasion to re-read this article tonight, by Chalmers Johnson, and it gave me goosebumps yet again. Below is a taste, and a link to the full Harper's Magazine piece.
A National Intelligence Estimate on the United States
By Chalmers Johnson
KEY JUDGMENTS
The United States remains, for the moment, the most powerful nation in history, but it faces a violent contradiction between its long republican tradition and its more recent imperial ambitions.
The fate of previous democratic empires suggests that such a conflict is unsustainable and will be resolved in one of two ways. Rome attempted to keep its empire and lost its democracy. Britain chose to remain democratic and in the process let go its empire. Intentionally or not, the people of the United States already are well embarked upon the course of non-democratic empire.
Several factors, however, indicate that this course will be a brief one, which most likely will end in economic and political collapse.
Military Keynesianism: The imperial project is expensive. The flow of the nation's wealth—from taxpayers and (increasingly) foreign lenders through the government to military contractors and (decreasingly) back to the taxpayers—has created a form of "military Keynesianism," in which the domestic economy requires sustained military ambition in order to avoid recession or collapse.
The Unitary Presidency: Sustained military ambition is inherently anti-republican, in that it tends to concentrate power in the executive branch. In the United States, President George W. Bush subscribes to an esoteric interpretation of the Constitution called the theory of the unitary executive, which holds, in effect, that the president has the authority to ignore the separation of powers written into the Constitution, creating a feedback loop in which permanent war and the unitary presidency are mutually reinforcing.
Failed Checks on Executive Ambition: The U.S. legislature and judiciary appear to be incapable of restraining the president and therefore restraining imperial ambition. Direct opposition from the people, in the form of democratic action or violent uprising, is unlikely because the television and print media have by and large found it unprofitable to inform the public about the actions of the country's leaders. Nor is it likely that the military will attempt to take over the executive branch by way of a coup.
Bankruptcy and Collapse: Confronted by the limits of its own vast but nonetheless finite financial resources and lacking the political check on spending provided by a functioning democracy, the United States will within a very short time face financial or even political collapse at home and a significantly diminished ability to project force abroad.
Chalmers Johnson is the author of Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire, and, most recently, Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic. From 1967 to 1973, he served as an outside consultant to the CIA's Office of National Estimates. Johnson was one of about a dozen so-called experts invited to read draft NIEs in order to provide quality control and prevent bureaucratic logrolling.
http://www.harpers.org/...
For more information about Chalmers Johnson, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/...