Every day the Common Dreams newsletter (see title link) comes to my e-mail box. Today's edition presented several opinion pieces, all with a very scary tone.Should we all be as alarmed as these writers are?
- One of those most directly affected is former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who writes on the Libby indictment in the 10/29 LA Times. He speaks poignantly about the damage done to his wife, Valerie Plame, who was undercover in the CIA. Unfortunately, Libby's indictment is about lying, not about the illegal act of revealing Plame's identity. I have asked myself whether Libby has intentionally chosen to sacrifice himself to protect the current administration from any deeper revelations. If so, that is alarming.
- Elizabeth de la Vega, former federal prosecutor and Chief of the San Jose Branch of the U.S. Attorney's Office, reflects on what she feels is a White House "conspiracy." It will be very scary for me if this scandal is limited to Libby alone. The lying goes much higher and broader than that. It involves going to war in Iraq on false pretenses. The consequences of that decision have been monumental.
- Scott Ritter is a former chief U.N. weapons inspector who participated in 52 missions in Iraq, 14 of which he led. He feels that the Bush administration has made "a frontal assault on the American system of government." The jihadis who flew into buildings on 9/11/01 made the first assault. Our nation was absolutely right and justified in its decision to respond with force. But it does matter that any such responses are always within the rule of law . . . not just their perceived letter of the law, but clearly within the underlying spirit of the law, as well. That means telling the truth about their reasons for preemptive war.
- Canada's Toronto Star editorial writer emeritus, Haroon Saddiqui, characterizes the Bush administration as "dangerous as ever," despite the legal limits of the current scandal. Prosecutor Fitzgerald has yet to close his investigation, but the consensus seems to be that Karl Rove will escape indictment. It is scary to think, as I do, that the current administration will go on for 3 more years pretty much intact. They do not govern well.
Happy Halloween, everybody!
2 comments:
So, you think you can scare me!
Ha, I guess I teeter on being scared only when I let myself.
The Bush administration has used the highest office in our land to loot our treasury, our natural resources i.e. land, water, air, and our own citizens as their lust for money and power could not keep up with their demand.
It's one thing to send our kids off to die when we are threatened, but it is quite a different story when we send our kids to die in an unjust war, based on fixed intelligence, cherry picked intelligence, and then pass it off to us as truth by scaring us with talk of "Smoking Guns and Mushroom Clouds". They knew they were lying to us, but hey they had money to make off of this war. They have been doing this for years.
After all the last truly great Republican President Eisenhower said it best when he tried to warn us of the military-industrial complex.
Also from his farewell speech:
"Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we-you and I, and our government-must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow."
Of course I knew this when they stole the election in 2000.
They had been planning the invasion of Iraq, when Clinton was still in office. If you are not familiar with the "Project for a New American Century", you should start reading up on them.
What I find the most interesting thing about PNAC, is the people involved in it.
On another topic:
There's a very good book that I think everybody should read, Kevin Phillips, Author of "American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush"
Mr. Phillips is a conservative republican, and did an excellent job exposing the Bush Dynasty.
Which the Bushes hate the term dynasty when it is applied to them, they prefer legacy. But I don't think legacy suits them as much as dynasty, and besides that I will never allow them to define how I label them.
Magic, you've given me some good food for thought and resources for further research. Thanks also for reminding me about the military industrial complex. It is amazing how prophetic Eisenhower was, huh?
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