It's been repeated enough to join the high ranks of cliche. But that doesn't lessen the truth of it. Let's take a look at history, both distant and recent, and see the similarities:
1. A federal government office gives an exclusive contract, without any competitive bidding, to a private contractor. Both involve control of oil reserves.
In 1921, then-President Warren Harding transferred control of naval oil reserves to the Department of the Interior. The next year, his Interior Secretary, Alfred Fall, rented out control of the Teapot Dome (Wyoming) and Elk Hills (California) oil fields to two separate businessmen who had paid him bribes. Near the end of the year, a Senate investigation brought these events to light, and Fall spent a year in prison.
In 2003, on the cusp of the end of Gulf War II (Operation "We Should Have Done This The First Time We Were Here"), the government awards a generous contract to Halliburton, a company with ties to the Administration. At first, they tell us that the cost of the war will be paid for by Iraqi oil profits. Then they ask us for $87 million. Then, the Congressional Research Service comes out with an announcement that Halliburton is charging the U.S. taxpayers about 20 cents more per barrel than the going rate of gasoline in the Middle East. Hmmm.....
2. The U.S. creates an ill-advised war that instead of creating freedom and peace, creates an ideological and bloody quagmire in a foreign country.
In the early 1960's, the Kennedy administration sends its first "advisors" into Vietnam, and installing a South Vietnamese dictator, in an effort to prevent what hawks referred to as "the domino theory." Johnson continues sending soldiers to maintain peace in the region. The phony "Gulf of Tonkin" boat sinking causes a major escalation in the war. U.S. agents assassinate the dictator. When people back home begin to notice the sheer numbers of body bags coming home and the live broadcasts from the field, the tide of public opinion begins to turn. Johnson, knowing he will lose if he runs again, steps down. Nixon eventually ends the war.
In the early 1980's, seeking a potential ally against Iran, we make overtures to a two-bit Iraqi dictator named Saddam Hussein. We give him money to buy weapons and turn our heads when he uses them against his neighbors. Hussein, though, gets a little too big for his britches, and eventually invades another neighbor of his, Kuwait. The first George Bush puts together a coalition to free Kuwait. Ten years later, with an itch to finish the job they started, and perhaps wanting to cover up their earlier indiscretions, they drum up a phony case and invade. They depose the dictator. Still, the Iraqis, like the Vietnamese before them, come to see them not as liberators but as invaders. Today, we might hear or read about a soldier's death, but we won't hear about most injuries. And we'll certainly never see them. (At least they have seemed to learn something from their prior experience...)
3. Information published in the New York Times by governmental staff with sensitive information about a foreign entanglement drives Administration officials into fits of psychotic rage, moving them to break the law in order to obtain revenge.
In 1971, Daniel Ellsberg, a former RAND analyst and aide to Defense Secretary John McNaughton, released to the New York Times and 18 other newspapers photocopies of the "Pentagon Papers." Richard Nixon and his staff were furious. They send the "Plumbers" to burglarize Ellsburg's psychiatrist's office in order to dig up some dirt on him. The next year the Plumbers break into the Democratic National Committee Office. After they are arrested, the original investigation, spearheaded by White House counsel John Dean, finds no connection to the Administration. However, one of the Plumbers, a White House aide and Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP) member James McCord, will write a letter to the judge saying that they had pleaded guilty and lied about evidence under the advisement of Dean and then Attorney General John Mitchell. Senator Sam Ervin creates an investigative council to look into these and other allegations. What they find brings down nearly the entire administration.
In 2003, Joseph Wilson, a former ambassador, publishes a letter in the New York Times. Wilson had been sent by Dick Cheney to investigate claims that the Iraqis had tried to buy processed uranium (or "yellowcake") from Niger. He found no proof to back up those claims, and reported this to the Vice President's office. After the "yellowcake" lie gains ground, and even shows up in the President's State of the Union address, Wilson writes the letter to set the record straight. In June, CNN's Robert Novak exposes Wilson's wife Valerie Plame as a CIA operative who works on WMD cases. His information comes from a senior White House official. It turns out that at least six other reporters were also given this information, but did not report it. No one is admitting who the leaker is, but there are plenty of theories. The President has gone from saying "I want to find the leaker" to saying "we'll never find the leaker." He is trusting the Attorney General, who has obvious ties to the administration, with the investigation. Several Congressmen, including Senator Charles Schumer and Representative John Conyers, are clamoring for an independent investigator. Conyers says, "If the administration fails to quickly take action to remove [Presidential advisor Karl] Rove and appoint a special counsel, it will be sending us down the same unfortunate path of that third-rate burglary more than 30 years ago."
The cycle has begun again. Will we be able to stop it this time?
10:07:43 PM 
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