BUSH-CHENEY: THEY ACTUALLY THOUGHT THEY COULD UNITE IRAQ, WHILE DIVIDING AMERICA"

Well, well. Tom Friedman has a blistering column in today's NY Times. It's behind the subscription wall, so I'll excerpt:

One benchmark the Bush team has been urging the Iraqi government to meet is to rescind its broad “de-Baathification” program — the wholesale purging of Baathists after the fall of Saddam — which has alienated many Sunnis and hampered national reconciliation.

But while the Bush team has been lecturing the Iraqi Shiites to limit de-Baathification in Baghdad, it was carrying out its own de-Democratization in the Justice Department in Washington. We would feel that we had failed in Iraq if we read that Sunnis were being purged from Iraq’s Ministry of Justice by Shiite hard-liners loyal to Moktada al-Sadr — but the moral equivalent of that is exactly what the Bush administration was doing here. What kind of example does that set for Iraqis?
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Only a united America could have the patience and fortitude to heal a divided Iraq — and we simply don’t have that today. Why? Because George Bush and Dick Cheney asked everyone to check their politics at the door when it came to Iraq, because victory there was so important — everyone but themselves. They argued that the war in Iraq was the central front of the central struggle of our age — an unusual war, a war against terrorism and the pathologies that produce it — but then they indulged in the most rancid politics as usual at home.

They actually thought they could unite Iraq, while dividing America.

Whenever Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney had a choice between seeking political advantage at home or acting in a bipartisan fashion to buy more unity, time and space to do all the heavy lifting needed in Iraq, they opted for political advantage.
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Democrats need to be careful, though, that they don’t let their rage with the hypocrisy of Mr. Bush make them totally crazy, and blind them to the fact that they — we — still need a credible plan to deal with the very real threat to open societies posed by Islamist terrorism. But I understand that rage. After all, who can ask more soldiers to sacrifice their lives in Iraq for an administration that wouldn’t even sacrifice its politics?

A MOSAIC OF CORRUPTION

Frank Rich reflects on Bush administration-related scandals (Alberto Gonzales, Paul Wolfowitz, Bernie Kerik, et al) and concludes that they are part of the same mosaic that has led to the debacle in Iraq:

What’s being lost in the Beltway uproar is the extent to which the lying, cronyism and arrogance showcased by the current scandals are of a piece with the lying, cronyism and arrogance that led to all the military funerals that Mr. Bush dares not attend. Having slept through the fraudulent selling of the war, Washington is still having trouble confronting the big picture of the Bush White House. Its dense web of deceit is the deliberate product of its amoral culture, not a haphazard potpourri of individual blunders.
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Had Iraqi reconstruction, like the training of Iraqi police, not been betrayed by politics and cronyism, the Iraq story might have a different ending. But maybe not all that different. The cancer on the Bush White House connects and contaminates all its organs. It’s no surprise that one United States attorney fired without plausible cause by the Gonzales Justice Department, Carol Lam, was in hot pursuit of defense contractors with administration connections. Or that another crony brought by Mr. Wolfowitz to the World Bank was caught asking the Air Force secretary to secure a job for her brother at a defense contractor while she was overseeing aspects of the Air Force budget at the White House. A government with values this sleazy couldn’t possibly win a war.

Like the C.I.A. leak case, each new scandal is filling in a different piece of the elaborate White House scheme to cover up the lies that took us into Iraq and the failures that keep us mired there. As the cover-up unravels and Congress steps up its confrontation over the war’s endgame, our desperate president is reverting to his old fear-mongering habit of invoking 9/11 incessantly in every speech. The more we learn, the more it’s clear that he’s the one with reason to be afraid.

I don't expect the White House to be bipartisan. But I do expect it to seek to promote the best interests of the nation rather than the personal interests of its cronies. They're paid to do just that. The evil triumvirate of Bush-Cheney-Rove has corrupted almost everything and everyone it touches.

Rich is right in pointing out that the media still doesn't know how to confront or address the administration's record of lies and deceit. I would suggest that it's largely because they're unable to face their own complicity in the situation the nation now faces. Their active cheerleading for the administration and the war, their cozy, insider relationships with Republican power brokers, and their awe of their corporate masters didn't start with 9/11. They actively despised and challenged the Clintons and Gores at every opportunity. I don't care if a sizable majority of the so-called mainstream media acknowledge, as individuals, positions that classify them as "liberals." They are not politicians pursuing those policies; they are employees, people trying to make a lucrative living, and that living depends to a great extent on their access to power. With a few exceptions, the so-called "liberal media" have sold themselves and their "liberal" souls for a fat paycheck and the chance to rub shoulders with the powerful. And that, by definition, is prostitution.

PELOSI SAVAGED BY BUSH, MEDIA

Nancy Pelosi's trip to Damascus has been making wingnut heads explode. Michael Medved was truly unglued yesterday, arguing that she should spend time in jail for violating the Logan Act.

Sean Hannity was just as incensed and excited. Holy smoke! He's now convinced that the Republicans are going to do just fine in the 2008 elections because the Dems have blown it so badly in just a few months, and Nancy Pelosi "is a clear example of what happens when a woman gets in a position of power." Oops, Sean, I think you just insulted more than half the voting public, including a few prominent Republican women politicos (not excluding such conservative icons as Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher, Condi Rice and Liddy Dole). You just bared your true misogynistic, female-repressing macho male soul.

But I'm angrier after listening to what are supposed to be genuine journalists repeatedly condemning Pelosi's trip and speculating as to the "damage" it's going to do the Democrats without once informing their audience that not only have numerous Republican Congressmen recently made the same trek to Syria and Assad, Pelosi's group included a Republican Congressman, and each member of her delegation explicitly stated that they affirmed Bush's own message. The hypocrisy evident in the Bush administration's and the media's attack upon Pelosi is appalling.

Yet the White House had no criticism of the trip to Syria by three Republican House members before Pelosi's delegation arrived there this week nor of Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista (San Diego County), who visited Syria after Pelosi, Lantos and their colleagues had left. Pelosi's group included Republican Rep. David Hobson of Ohio and Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., the first Muslim elected to the House.

Issa, who is Lebanese American, criticized Bush for failing to engage in the dialogue necessary to overcome the United States' differences with Syria.

The attention given to Pelosi since her ascension to the Speakership, and the attacks upon her, make me very, very susceptible to the notion that Sean Hannity's attitude is shared by a large portion of influencers. And that the nation -- or at least the media -- is "ready" for a female president only in that it is prepared to savage her for presuming to usurp a man's "power."

UPDATE: More here.

The real story here is 180 degrees from what the pundits have been preaching. While Speaker Pelosi has been in the Middle East letting Assad and others know that Americans are united in their support for human rights and opposition to terrorism, the right has been sitting on their couches, lobbing messages of division. While Bush was attacking her at home, she was supporting him abroad.

Just who should be embarrassed?

SECOND VERSE, SAME AS THE FIRST

Former prosecutor and Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman, who served on the House Judiciary Committee during the Nixon impeachment proceedings, and attorney Cynthia Cooper present a third plausible hypothesis for the U.S. attorney firings: to influence 2008 election outcomes.

E-mails suggest political strategist Rove’s involvement. Rove’s job is helping his wing of the GOP win future campaigns. What does that have to do with firing judicial appointees?

Consider the districts they served in: Arkansas, site of Hillary Clinton’s first steps into politics as the state’s first lady; San Francisco, Democratic House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s district; Nevada, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s state; New Mexico, presidential candidate Bill Richardson’s state. North Carolina, home of former senator and presidential hopeful John Edwards, was considered but passed over by the Bush administration’s ax.

Arizona, where U.S. Attorney Paul Charleton, with a particular reputation for excellence, was fired, is home to presidential candidate and sometime Bush critic John McCain. Michigan, where the prosecutor was inexplicably fired, is home to chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a staunch Iraq war opponent, Carl Levin (up for re-election in 2008). Arizona and Michigan are both important swing states, where vote suppression or trumped up charges could tip the balance in an election.

I've been so disgusted for so long with the sleazy tactics and motivations of the Rove administration, so reminiscent to an ancient like myself who was actually old enough to know what was going on during the Nixon administration, that I hardly have the energy any longer to swell up with a good case of righteous indignation. I'm more likely these days just to shake my head and take a couple of aspirin. I tried to get through John Dean's Worse Than Watergate, but I just got too depressed, and I knew how the story would end anyway. Nixon got his second term by waving the flag for the Vietnam conflict and labeling anti-war George McGovern as soft on national security. Sound familiar? His administration was littered with political and PR hacks for whom power was the only currency, the single value. Nixon's own Attorney General, John Mitchell, was so overtly politically partisan and so disinterested in the actual dispensing of justice that he left that distinguished post to move over to run Nixon's re-election campaign, and was eventually convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and perjury for his role in the Watergate break-in and cover-up and jailed. Think Al Gonzales is haunted by those shades as he stands accused of politicizing the DOJ to benefit Republican office-holders and -seekers?

So here again, so many years later, at a point in my idealistic youth I would have imagined the American people had learned to recognize mendacity when they see it in their would-be leaders, and to find a new standard of ethics being employed by our leaders, I find that we have, in fact, learned little or nothing.

We who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

ON EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE AND BUSH'S MANHOOD

Re the U.S. Attorney firings and Congressional demands for open, under-oath testimony by presidential aides, John Dean, former counsel to president Richard Nixon, discusses the principle and historical use of executive privilege" and opines that W will go to the mat for it:

This time, it is my belief that Bush — unlike Reagan before him — will not blink. He will not let Fielding strike a deal, as Fielding did for Reagan. Rather, Bush feels that he has his manhood on the line. He knows what his conservative constituency wants: a strong president who protects his prerogatives. He believes in the unitary executive theory of protecting those prerogatives, and of strengthening the presidency by defying Congress.

In short, all those who have wanted to see Karl Rove in jail may get their wish, for he will not cave in, either — and may well be prosecuted for contempt, as Gorsuch was not. Bush’s greatest problem here, however, is Harriett Miers. It is dubious he can exert any privilege over a former White House Counsel; I doubt she is ready to go to prison for him; and all who know her say if she is under oath, she will not lie. That could be a problem.

I'm not so sanguine. I agree that Bush may feel his "manhood is on the line." But in my mind W's "manhood" is questionable, and mostly theatre. He blusters, he strikes poses, but in the end he usually finds a way to avoid mano a mano conflicts. His highly vaunted loyalty has limits, as evidenced by his throwing Harriet Miers to the wolves over her Supreme Court appointment, his allowing Condi Rice to testify before the 9/11 Commission after repeatedly exerting "executive privilege," his firing of Don Rumsfeld -- all actions he insisted he would not take, but he ultimately succumbed to the political pressure.

HOW TO OUT A CIA AGENT

Great summary of the Valerie Plame outing and subsequent events, by Robert Parry.