When I saw the NYT's headline yesterday morning about destroyed tapes, a partially vindicated CIA and a likely more culpable White House -- a headline since changed at the latter's request, so its supporters can bitch about press bias, rather than get cornered on the story itself -- my instant reaction was: Yeah, so what?
I kid you not. And that's as sad a commentary on our present course as it gets. Just another White House crime, another revelation of autocratic corruption, a few more felonies to be buried under a mound of executive-privilege claims -- felonies soon lost and forgotten amid a vast swirl of executive malefactions and to be swept away by the ticking clock. Ho-hum. Just another morning in America.
Naturally the White House declined to comment on the story, citing, as always, various Inquiries to Nowhere. But the immensely believable gist is that at the very least a quadrumvirate of executive-branch pettifoggers, and quite probably the vice president and president as well, "took part in discussions with the Central Intelligence Agency between 2003 and 2005 about whether to destroy videotapes showing ... secret interrogations."
Make that "illegal" interrogations, which of course was why the malefactors were conspiring to destroy the evidence and thereby obstruct any slim chance of justice. Just another day at the office.
The story noted -- and surely this line is stored in the paper's word-processing memory banks for ease and convenience -- "that the involvement of White House officials ... was more extensive than Bush administration officials have acknowledged." They included the usual suspects, Alberto Gonzales and David Addington, as well as the rather obscure John Bellinger III and the ubiquitous nonentity of the befuddled Harriet Miers.
Whenever pondering the possible (hence probable) commission of an executive crime, all one really needs to nail it down with is the sighting of the name, David Addington, former counsel and current chief of staff to Dick Cheney. While Alberto was but a paper-pusher and rubber-stamper, Mr. Addington has been the one Martin Bormann-like mover and shaker in the determined deconstruction of our nation of laws. In his view, we don't actually have any. We have, instead, merely one voice of authority -- the president -- which is otherwise known as authoritarianism.
You may recall what the former head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, Jack Goldsmith, had to say about the redoubtable Mr. Addington, whom Goldsmith encountered in meeting after Constitutionally hair-raising meeting. He labeled Addington the "biggest presence in the room" who was "known throughout the bureaucracy as the best-informed, savviest and most conservative lawyer in the administration, someone who spoke for and acted with the full backing of the powerful vice president."
Once, after Goldsmith had argued the enduring validity of the Geneva Conventions in relation to U.S.-held prisoners, Addington snapped back: "The president has already decided that terrorists do not receive Geneva Convention protections. You cannot question his decision." Never mind that the questioning of presidential decisions happened to be Mr. Goldsmith's job. He had gotten the memo, loud and clear. And Addington's ruling, siphoned through the vice president from the president himself, has stood within White House circles as the only relevant Constitutional Crypto-Article ever since.
So when the NYT story asserted that "one former senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter said there had been 'vigorous sentiment' among some top White House officials to destroy the tapes" -- that is, destroy evidence -- that sentiment was merely a vigorous reaffirmation of one-man rule. There is nothing illegal if the autocrat says it isn't. Case closed. See Addington Memo.
Some will cite the line following the one above as evidence of White House innocence: "other officials assert that no one at the White House advocated destroying the tapes." But it's the additional line that undoes that defense. "Those officials acknowledged, however, that no White House lawyer gave a direct order to preserve the tapes or advised that destroying them would be illegal." The translation has a twist, but is the same: Wink, wink. Case closed. See Addington Memo.
Both versions are equally damning. But then again, these days we as a nation don't really do condemnation. It's just the Bushies at play again with the U.S. Constitution, rough-housing as usual in their characteristic, mapcap way. Ho-hum.
Yet my parental instincts tell me that someone is going to get hurt -- and recent history suggests it won't be the Bushies. Yeah? So what? It's just another day of malefaction, just another White House crime to be dismissed and therefore resolved by the ticking clock.
Problem is, then another executive clock starts; and this time, with plenty of criminal but overlooked or forgiven precedents of an autocratic making.
Elephant turds are indeed a common affair with this administration. One would think this a rather large and odious one... but everyone's so used to large and odious elephant rurds that it does take effort to notice.
What do you think would happen if the headline read: "Bush Declares Himself Eternal Ruler of the World (insert madman laughter here)".
Yawn. Please pass the butter and don't feed the dog from the table.
Posted by: Clemsy | December 20, 2007 at 09:53 AM
If we look back at Watergate, it seems that the taking down of Agnew was the breech of the dam, so to speak, and from there on it was easier to get at the rotten apple at the bottom of the barrel. I think that is why Kucinich is brilliant in introducing impeachment proceedings against the Dickhead first. Unfortunately, it looks as if the leadership and enough Blue Dogs are bought off to avoid holding their fellow criminals to account. We are screwed, because I don't see Cheney and the Neocons giving up power by merely being voted out.
Posted by: Hotrod54235 | December 20, 2007 at 12:54 PM
Well, it is ho-hum out there, making me wonder if we'll ever see the official Democratic equivalent to Sen. Dole's "Where's the outrage?" cry from elections past. Even conscience-possessing operatives like Rep. Kucinich who favor impeachment aren't whining about it. Their calm and measured manner was, in another era, a sign of the Democratic Party's class, yet now has devolved into a sign of its impotence. Getting crazy angry has its risks, but it's about the only tactic Democrats haven't tried. Of course, if it's merely a tactic and not heartfelt, the act probably would fail anyway.
I think the almost universally soft approach to this latest Bush-Cheney imbroglio is both the result of weary resignation and premature cynicism: Regarding the former, the attitude is that we simply can't keep up with the amount of crap these guys are slinging at us, so we're going to walk away from it and await their departure. Regarding the latter, we're saddled with the increasingly cynical notion -- not even just among party regulars but within the press corps and the voting populace in general -- that the heavy-lift attempts at real investigations and a real impeachment process just ain't worth it at this late stage of the Staged Administration. People have had a bellyful of these dudes, and would rather not think about them any more than necessary.
To the extent that's true, it's precisely the problem, because turning our backs at the eleventh hour is just the impetus the Bushies need to do their worst and most lasting damage. It remains necessary to think about them -- a lot.
The Weary Cynic Factor is a sign that the citizenry at some basic, instinctive level is altogether too comfortable with clever, incompetent scoundrels; you know, the kind (both fictional and not) we've been massaged into loving by the mass media. Admit it: Many among us are fascinated with human stains like Bush. He's pure tabloid material gone mainstream. We keep on tuning in, waiting to see what misbegotten aventure or verbal faux pas he's going to embark upon next. It's political leadership as celebrity as entertainment vehicle. Sure it's cost us a couple of trillion. But it's delicious, and you couldn't make up some of this stuff! An attitude still all too easy to cop, at least if you're not a resident of, for example, New Orleans, Somalia or Iraq.
In short: Yes, the Gang That Can't Shoot Straight surely consists of bad boys, but they're OUR bad boys. Well, present company excluded, but that buy-in continues for a still-huge and immovable plurality of the American vote who might nevertheless go independent or Democratic in the next election, given the right 12-step program. Middle-class schadenfreude explains the balance of it. It's bad for me, now, but just wait until it gets really bad for everyone. Ralph Nader's crowd, in essence.
America remains enthralled by sensation. The populace has unwittingly turned itself from healthy skeptics into paralyzed cynics and now increasingly masochists who are willfully helpless before their increasingly sadistic government.
In some lonely bedroom or boardroom, a Harvard-educated business exec whose firm is facing a financial meltdown, who simply would have jumped out the window in October '29, is instead mentally chanting towards the Beltway:
"Rendition me! Rendition me now!"
The torture -- distant and self-administered -- must end before America can ever right itself.
Posted by: Ron Legro | December 20, 2007 at 01:34 PM
What Ron said! Right dead on!
Posted by: Jim Bush | December 21, 2007 at 11:30 AM
I second Jim Bush. Ron did it better than the pros.
Posted by: myers | December 22, 2007 at 11:57 AM