Treason

A flurry of short posts today, I know. 

These latest revelations concerning Bush establishing a tit-for-tat "Attack Saddam and we'll lower oil prices" with the Saudis (read the post directly below this one if you don't know what I'm talking about) are, in my view, the most troubling thing of all.  If they're true, and given Woodward's insider status I have little reason to believe that they are not, there had better be a full-on investigation.  At a minimum, the media had better make an effort to check this out.  If it withers and dies.....I don't even know how to finish that sentence.

I want you to imagine--and I know that this is not a new game to play--the uproar if Bill Clinton had told the Saudis about our military plans before they were announced to the public or even to Madeleine Albright, and that they offered to lower oil prices in order to boost the economy and help Al Gore win in return.  He would have been impeached in about 24 hours, and justifiably so.

If these allegations are true, they should be the final demonstration of something beyond partisan attacks or policy disagreements:  George Bush is willing to sacrifice national security for his own political gain.  What the Valerie Plame investigation began, the Prince Bandar accusations should finish.  These two matters, above all, demonstrate something much more serious than budgeting to help big contributors, or altering the tax code, or weakening environmental laws:  they demonstrate a true contempt for America and its citizens. 

Do not wave the flag and call liberals unpatriotic while you endanger lives and operations by revealing the name of a covert CIA operative.

Do not wave the flag and call liberals unpatriotic while giving a wink and nod to a Saudi leader with connections to terrorism.

Do not wave the flag and call liberals unpatriotic while you reveal war plans to a foreign leader so that he'll do his best to manipulate the global economy for your benefit.

The worst thing that one can say about Clinton is that he committed perjury and should have been removed from office for it.

The worst thing that one can say about Bush is that he and his cohorts have, on at least two occasions, evidently commited treason by breaking federal laws necessary to protect national security and by making war decisions for electoral gain. 

Treason. 

2:19:13 PM    comment []

Holy shit

Wait a minute. 

Just wait ONE FUCKING MINUTE. 

There's a post below here where I question whether or not Woodward's revelations will have an impact.  But I've been looking around the blogosphere this morning, and found a link on Pandagon to Oliver Willis' site, which has this from 60 minutes last night:

But, it turns out, two days before the president told Powell, Cheney and Rumsfeld had already briefed Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador.

"Saturday, Jan. 11, with the president's permission, Cheney and Rumsfeld call Bandar to Cheney's West Wing office, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Myers, is there with a top-secret map of the war plan. And it says, 'Top secret. No foreign.' No foreign means no foreigners are supposed to see this," says Woodward.

"They describe in detail the war plan for Bandar. And so Bandar, who's skeptical because he knows in the first Gulf War we didn't get Saddam out, so he says to Cheney and Rumsfeld, 'So Saddam this time is gonna be out, period?'" And Cheney who has said nothing says the following: "Prince Bandar, once we start, Saddam is toast."

After Bandar left, according to Woodward, Cheney said, "I wanted him to know that this is for real. We're really doing it."

But this wasn't enough for Prince Bandar, who Woodward says wanted confirmation from the president. "Then, two days later, Bandar is called to meet with the president and the president says, 'Their message is my message'" says Woodward.

Prince Bandar enjoys easy access to the Oval Office. His family and the Bush family are close. And Woodward told 60 Minutes that Bandar has promised the president that Saudi Arabia will lower oil prices in the months before the election -- to ensure the U.S. economy is strong on election day.

The BOLD ITALIC UNDERLINES are mine.

My god.  MY GOD.  I have to think about the ramifications of this before I write more.

11:53:46 AM    comment []

Condi is saying that there is a real risk that the elections will present a tempting target to terrorist groups.  Apparently some of the chatter of late has mentioned the presidential election.

This may well be the case.  Terrorists want to disrupt the normal functioning of a country, and disrupting an election would count. 

But it's a terribly sad statement about the Bush Administration that they've been so underhanded, so lie-prone, so despicably political that I'm overwhelmingly cynical about anything they say.  I can't help but feel that Karl Rove has some master plan for accelerating fears of an election attack to use in the campaign.  I don't know how or why.  Nevertheless, my cynicism is entirely out of control.

9:33:39 AM    comment []

April was the deadliest month for US soldiers in Iraq.  Where's that corner, again?

9:29:13 AM    comment []

Do not miss Tom Friedman's excellent editorial in the NYT yesterday.  The gist is that Bush completely screwed everything up by agreeing with Israel on the right of return for Palestinians, as well as the settlements, but the whole situation is such a disaster, with everyone on all sides at fault, that it's impossible to say what's next.  Also, Friedman has this gem:

But after I got all these prospective columns off my chest, I decided what I really wanted to say was this: I'm fed up with the Middle East, or more accurately, I'm fed up with the stalemate in the Middle East. All it has produced is death, destruction and endless "he hit me first" debates on cable television. Arabs, Israelis, Americans — everyone is sick of it.

This precisely captures how I feel.  I hardly read anything about Israel and Palestine, because it's never, ever going to get better.  No hope.  At all. 

That said, it's pretty hard not to find fault with Bush for just ejecting decades of conscious neutrality, probably on the basis of Israel's importance in the upcoming Rapture.

9:27:18 AM    comment []

Is this Bob Woodward stuff going to go anywhere?  I won't link to it, because if you read the newspaper (at least the Post and/or the Times) it's pretty much ubiquitous.  I understand he was on 60 minutes yesterday, but I haven't read any coverage yet.  In any case, only the most utterly naive didn't know that the Administration was planning on invading Iraq well before they admitted it; I haven't read anything particularly new there.  Woodward's insider description of the rift between Cheney and Powell is interesting--seems to back up other things suggesting that many of the principals aren't even on speaking terms in the Administration.  So much for the tight ship....

In any case, I can't see Woodward's stuff making a dramatic difference by itself, but it's certainly another chink in the armor, another brick in the wall, another chicken coming home to roost.  Insert your own cliche here. 

If we reelect this guy, we should be ashamed of ourselves and our country.

9:21:49 AM    comment []