Bush vs. America

George W. Bush is more and more frequently referred to as "the worst
president in the history of America" by those who know the background
and pay attention to what's going on. However, that description may be
too mild.

We may need an entirely new classification. For more than five years
we've had an administration that has shown consistent contempt for the
rule of law, for the Constitution, for Congress, for the American
people and for the facts. They're squandering trillions of dollars,
the effects of which will be felt much more severely in the decades to
come.

They have failed to catch the mastermind of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden,
and instead have helped increase that nasty band of thugs with our
ham-handed tactics. We have ruined Iraq, doing far more damage to it
than Saddam Hussein ever dreamed of. Hundreds of thousands are dead.

All for a war which we are doomed to lose, in a country we'll leave
once somebody in Washington calculates that the voters won't put up
with any more dead Americans, a number which will reach 4,000 in three
months or so.

So far, the corpse count hasn't excited many Georgetown or Ann Arbor
cocktail parties, because in this war, those fighting are mostly
inner-city blacks, jobless rural whites and Hispanics who are trying
to earn their way to citizenship.

Eventually, however, even the liberals may start to get uneasy. Last
week, in what should have been a sudden epiphany for the half-asleep,
this administration gave us a sharp lesson in just how thoroughly
corrupt it is.

That was when Our Supreme Leader announced he was commuting the
sentence of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who was sentenced to 30 months
in the slam after being convicted of perjury and obstruction of
justice. Libby, you may remember, was the former chief of staff for
Vice President Richard Cheney.

Libby leaked to the press, presumably at his master's direction, that
the blond bombshell Valerie Plame was an undercover CIA agent. This
was printed, which destroyed her effectiveness and career, as they
intended it would. Why did the Bush administration want to do that?

Simple. Her husband, a former ambassador named Joseph Wilson, had
angered the Bushies by telling the truth publicly, which was that his
investigation revealed that Saddam Hussein had never tried to buy
uranium from Niger.

Libby was tried, convicted and duly sentenced by an experienced and
fair federal judge. Previously, the Shrub had said he would do nothing
till the appeals process had run its course. Something, however,
happened to change his mind.

After five years of trying to govern by propaganda, George Bush
suddenly decided that a strong dose of George Orwell's doublespeak is
exactly what was needed instead. "I respect the jury's verdict," he
said, and in his next breath showed he didn't respect the jury, or the
judge, in the slightest, by adding, "I have concluded that the prison
sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive."

Never mind that our intellectually challenged and allegedly dyslexic
prexy never set foot in law school, or that the Constitution gives the
responsibility for determining sentences and punishment to the courts.
That doesn't matter because, as he sees it and likes to say, "I am the
decider."

But why now? The normally cautious New York Times openly speculated
Bush could be worried about what Libby might say once he realized he
was at the tender mercies of the guards and his fellow convicts.

For a little perspective, let's compare this with what actually
happened in Watergate, the only scandal that ever actually brought a
president down.

What few remember now is that Watergate actually was sort of a
comic-opera bugging episode in which a band of Cuban exiles, under the
supervision of whacked-out former spy Howard Hunt, tried to bug the
Democratic National Committee offices one night in June 1972. This was
immensely stupid, since it was perfectly clear the Democratic nominee,
George McGovern, was going to lose by a landslide.

They were caught in the act; Hunt was stupid enough to have the White
House's phone number in his pocket. Eventually, Nixon ordered an
illegal and clumsy attempt at covering the mess up ? and taped himself
doing it. Yes, he did other bad stuff, but what I just told you was
the essence of why he had to resign. That, and the fact the tape
showed he was a real potty-mouth. In that long-ago time, Americans
never imagined Their President could possibly be a man who would say
"cocksucker."

George W. Bush is a man who has constructed secret prisons and
authorized torture ? not only here but in other countries. He started
a war and lied about why. He has invaded our privacy illegally,
authorizing wiretaps in a way forbidden by the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act. When all that was needed was to ask a secret court
for rubber-stamp permission, he didn't even do that.

What America ? what all of us ? needs to ask now is this:

? Why isn't Congress ? right now ? authorizing committees to
investigate what this president and vice president knew and when they
knew it? (House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers: Your move, sir.)

? Why aren't journalists in America demanding an investigation to what
seems to be an organized cover-up and obstruction of justice?

? Why doesn't someone ? Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin, say
? demand the White House explain its strategy for the Iraq War?

That strategy seems to consist of having our soldiers drive up and
down the roads, getting blown up, until one day the insurgents adopt
democracy.

We have a world crisis and a sick democracy at home, and our puppet
masters are cleverly amusing us to death with Paris Hilton.

You really might want to do something ... while you still can.

Jack Lessenberry
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