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The usual suspects
October 3, 2005
The Bush administration hesitantly walked another step closer to collapse last week with the admission that Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff Scooter Libby was the second senior administration official to have disclosed the identity of Valerie Plame, former CIA officer involved in a covert operation to provide intelligence on weapons of mass destruction, to the press, in this case Judith Miller of the New York Times. Libby now joins White House adviser Karl Rove in claiming that he, like Rove, did not disclose her name, and therefore did not commit a crime. Considering that the White House is already on record as saying categorically that neither Rove nor Libby were involved in the Plame affair, only to be very publicly and clearly shown to be lying, this trimming and hedging is unlikely to do them much good.
House majority leader Tom Delay was indicted last week by a Texas grand jury for laundering illegal campaign contributions, forcing him to resign from his leadership role in the House. His connections with indicted Republican fund raiser Jack Abramoff, in Delay’s words, “one of his closest and dearest friends,” may prove to be far more damaging, and not just to Delay. Abramoff is under investigation for a variety of scams: kickbacks involving Indian casinos with Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed and conservative Grover Norquist, illegal payments to Delay and other congressmen, fraud and murder in relation to his purchase of Sun Cruz shipping from assassinated businessman Gus Boulis in Florida, and much, much more. Already, former lobbying partner and senior White House budget official David Safavian has been arrested by the FBI.
As if this were not enough, Senate majority leader Bill Frist, a doctor turned politician, is under investigation by the SEC for ordering the sale of stock in HCA by his blind trust; the point of course being that the trust cannot have been blind if the beneficiary was able to exercise such control.
Indicted Air Force reserve Lt. Colonel Larry Franklin copped a plea bargain and agreed to cooperate with investigators in the investigation of Israeli espionage in the United States centring on the America Israel Political Action Committee, one of the most powerful lobbying groups in American history. Franklin, who worked for Douglas Feith in the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans has admitted to spying for Israel. The implications of the Franklin espionage case are enormous and not limited to AIPAC, as the resignation of Feith this summer suggests.
Regional economic surveys released last week all showed big jumps in prices and falling job creation (see Commentary, forthcoming on Wednesday). The Bush administration has passed a tipping point beyond which there will be no political recovery. The best of the economic news is behind them, and no amount of spending and wishful thinking is going to change that. The administration is now a liability, not an asset.
Just how much of a liability was underlined by retired Army Lt. General William Odom, former head of the National Security Agency and presently a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute and professor at Yale University. Odom characterised the decision to invade Iraq as the greatest strategic blunder in American history. Odom has also observed that discussing the war in terms of winning and losing is a mistake, the US lost when it decided to invade Iraq. Even the Defence Policy Board, which pushed for the invasion, is reported to have its misgivings. And at a recent gathering of Republican businessmen in Aspen, journalist Robert Novak tells us, not one spoke in favour of the administration.
Bush’s base is disintegrating like the levees in New Orleans, a political event of seismic proportions. Disintegrating, it is exposing a fundamental truth of contemporary American politics: there is nothing to take its place. The party leaders on the other side of the aisle of Congress all endorse the war and like so many Republicans are deeply tainted by long years of compromise in the pursuit of power. The Democrats have collaborated enthusiastically in the program to unfetter capital at the expense of society at large. These people have no new ideas; they have shot their bolt, and the country, home to more billionaires than any other on earth, is not just figuratively but literally bankrupt, unable to manufacture sufficient ammunition or armour for its troops in the field.
Now comes the deluge.
Chris Sanders
csandersATsandersresearch.com
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