[Mb-civic] Interesting Times > By William Rivers Pitt

[Michael Butler]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Hawaiipolo at cs.com
Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2005 16:57:06 EDT
To: djinbaqr at tiscali.co.za
Subject: (no subject)

Keep your fingers crossed..the infamous "straw that broke the camels back"
might be in the offing....MD>
>  Interesting Times
> By William Rivers Pitt
> t r u t h o u t | Perspective
> 
> Thursday 07 July 2005
> 
>  
> >> Many an ancient lord's last words have been, "You can't kill me because
>> I've got magic aaargh."
>> -- Terry Pratchett
>  
> The British are getting ready to evacuate their military forces from Iraq
> and send them to Afghanistan. Anyone who thinks the Afghan war has been won
and 
> is over needs to think again. 54 American soldiers have been killed in
> Afghanistan in the last six months alone, compared to 52 in all of last year.
> While this number does not compare to the 1,748 US troops killed in Iraq, the
> two-fold increase in casualties over half a year is noteworthy. Taliban and al
> Qaeda fighters occupy caves, villages and mountain passes along the Pakistan
> border, and regional experts believe their presence will require an indefinite
> American military presence in that country.
> Meanwhile, the war in Iraq burns on while Bush's biggest ally is preparing
> to haul stakes. US military forces are so stretched that Reservists who last
> saw action in Vietnam are being called back into service. Poverty within the
> Iraqi populace has become so severe that citizens are selling their kidneys on
> the black market for long dollars. It is a booming trade; some 5,000 Iraqis
> suffer from a variety of renal diseases caused by decades of sanction-created
> dirty water and lack of medicine, so kidneys are worth their weight in gold
> on the Iraqi street.
> Alberto Gonzales looks to be the next Supreme Court Justice, a choice that
> will cause progressives to grind their teeth because he argued in favor of
> torture, and will cause the Evangelical Right to lose its collective mind
> because he is not "solid" on the issue of abortion. If Gonzales does in fact
become 
> the nominee, the stage will be set for a two-pronged assault on the White
> House from the Left and, more importantly, from the far Right.
> Matthew Cooper is going to testify, and Judy Miller is going to jail.
> Cooper, the reporter from Time Magazine who received the leak regarding CIA
agent 
> Valerie Plame, was staring down the barrel of confinement until he folded and
> agreed to cooperate with Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation. This comes on
> the heels of the revelation that White House consigliore Karl Rove was one of
> Cooper's sources on this matter. Rove's attorney has claimed Karl did not
> "knowingly" expose Plame, but Cooper's testimony may rip that shroud down the
> middle. 
> Miller, a reporter for the New York Times, is being fitted for a prison
> jumper and will sit in a cell until she changes her mind about cooperating
with 
> Fitzgerald. Miller, it should be noted, is being touted as some kind of martyr
> for the First Amendment and the need for journalists to protect their
> sources. She is, to be blunt, a crappy poster-child for this all-important
> requirement, and this situation augers toward the creation of odd legal
precedent. 
> Miller is not merely protecting a source, but is protecting a criminal who
> violated national security in order to exact political revenge ordered by the
> White House. The lawyers involved are certainly going to earn their fees
trying 
> to thread this particular needle.
> One thing is sure: Whoever leaked Plame's name is having a bad day. Be it
> Rove or Cheney confidant Lewis Libby or some other unknown actor, the fact
that 
> Cooper is singing to a Grand Jury raises the specter of charges coming down
> for perjury and obstruction of justice at a minimum, with treason lurking at
> the far side of things.
> The fellow on the arm of Ms. Plame, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, smells the
> brimstone on the wind. Reached for comment regarding the imprisonment of
Miller, 
> Wilson stated, "The sentencing of Judith Miller to jail for refusing to
> disclose her sources is the direct result of the culture of unaccountability
that 
> infects the Bush White House from top to bottom. President Bush's refusal to
> enforce his own call for full cooperation with the Special Counsel has
> brought us to this point."
> "Clearly," continued Wilson, "the conspiracy to cover up the web of lies
> that underpinned the invasion of Iraq is more important to the White House
than 
> coming clean on a serious breach of national security. Thus has Ms. Miller
> joined my wife, Valerie, and her twenty years of service to this nation as
> collateral damage in the smear campaign launched when I had the temerity to
> challenge the President on his assertion that Iraq had attempted to purchase
> uranium yellowcake from Africa. The real victims of this cover-up, which may
have 
> turned criminal, are the Congress, the Constitution and, most tragically, the
> Americans and Iraqis who have paid the ultimate price for Bush's folly."
> Indeed. 
> Maybe ten thousand times in the last few years, someone has stated with
> profound assurance that the Bush administration is in trouble, that the hammer
is 
> coming down, that some form of accountability is in the offing. Maybe ten
> thousand times, these predictions have turned out to be wrong. Nowadays, it
> takes a special kind of fool to think this White House can be easily cashiered
> for its gross violations, lies and flat-out crimes.
> But it is getting awfully crowded around here. Bush's numbers are still
> cratering, the nation has stopped buying into the idea that he is some kind of
> Great Protector, the Brits are bugging out of the chaos in Iraq, Afghanistan
is 
> heating up, the Jesus Brigades on Bush's right flank are preparing to wig
> out unless they get some kind of Falwell clone onto the court, and one of the
> journalists used to destroy the career of a CIA operative who worked to rid
> the world of weapons of mass destruction is cooperating with a prosecutor.
> And then there's this from Dan Froomkin, published by the Washington Post:
> "More than four in 10 Americans, according to a recent Zogby poll, say that if
> President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war
> with Iraq, Congress should consider holding him accountable through
impeachment 
> ... The impeachment question was part of a Zogby International poll conducted
> early last week, and released on Thursday. It found that Bush's job approval
> ratings had slipped a point from the previous week, to 43 percent. But the
> jaw-dropper was that 42 percent said they would favor impeachment proceedings
> if it is found that the president misled the nation about his reasons for
> going to war with Iraq."
> Don't blink this week. You might miss something.
> William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling
> author of two books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know and
The 
> Greatest Sedition Is Silence.
> 
> ------- 
> Jump to today's TO Features:
>                                      Print This Story E-mail This Story
> 
    
    
        
    
© : t r u t h o u t 2005 | t r u t h o u t | town meeting | issues |
environment | labor | women | health | voter rights | multimedia | donate |
contact | 
subscribe |

    




------ End of Forwarded Message