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The disaster-per-week president

by

Gerald Plessner

March 19, 2007 - These are difficult times for Americans who knew from the beginning that George W. Bush was not qualified to be our president. The Bush years have been disastrous for America and for a world that depends on a steady hand of American leadership.

Every week brings one or two more disasters created by the Administration's incompetence, heavy-handed politics and greed.

In the last few weeks the good news has been the affirmation by a jury that the White House at its highest level used secret and fraudulent information to attack a critic who challenged its lies about Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction program.

As a result, the White House, under the leadership of its second and third most powerful officials, recklessly disclosed the identity of a covert Central Intelligence Agency operative.

Now that CIA Director Michael Hayden has stated that the person outed was a covert agent, yet another Bush administration lie that she was not a covert agent, and the complicity of right-wing media in spreading that lie, have been confirmed.

A woman of unimpeachable integrity had given outstanding service to her country but she saw her career ended and her life put at risk because multiple officials in the Bush administration spread word of her covert role to various members of the press.

Her career and her value to our nation were given their death blow when Republican columnist Robert Novak disclosed her name and role in a newspaper column.

Last week a public hearing before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform set the public record straight on Valerie Plame Wilson's role as a covert CIA agent. All the lies about Plame's status, her exposure and how it did not damaged her career and our nation's security, have now been rebuked.

As we expected, the President has not fulfilled his promise to fire anyone on his staff involved in that leak. We must wait to see if he keeps that promise, but it will probably suffer the same fate as his many other promises --- added to the list of multiple lies he and his administration have fed the American people.

Next came the ham-handed, bumbling purge of eight U.S. Attorneys for obviously political reasons. This was done under the nominal leadership of the worst U.S. Attorney General since John Mitchell of the Nixon administration.

(Mitchell, you may remember, was found guilty of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and perjury and sentenced to prison for participating in meetings to plan the break-in of the Democratic party's Watergate hotel headquarters.)

Attorney General Gonzales, one of the president's underlings in Texas Republican politics, developed a list of eight U.S. Attorneys who were relieved of their duties, mostly for political reasons. He was guided and assisted by fellow Texans, Bush political advisor Karl Rove and Bush personal attorney Harriet Myers.

Despite statements to the contrary --- and in some cases outright lies --- most of the dismissed officials were cashiered because they didn't prosecute enough Democratic politicians for vote fraud. Such prosecutions usually cause the disenfranchisement of African Americans, the elderly and other minorities, groups which generally do not vote Republican.

Other attorneys were dumped because they didn't pursue cases in areas important to the administration's political base, such as pornography and immigration law violation.

At lease one U.S. Attorney was probably dumped because she had successfully prosecuted and jailed a Republican Congressman and reportedly had begun to investigate a second Republican Congressman.

Trashing the career of a dedicated covert CIA agent and removing effective federal prosecutors for political reasons are damaging to our national security and the rule of law, respectively, but the third big story of the last few weeks is the most difficult to accept.

Americans expect their elected leaders --- and especially Republicans --- to fulfill our nation's commitment to support our military. They expect the president to provide for wounded soldiers and veterans the best possible health care and rehabilitation, should their service leave them wounded.

The disgraceful treatment and living conditions at the Walter Reed Army Hospital and the callous treatment of a number of wounded warriors, are a stain on the president's legacy, his administration and its leaders including vice president Dick Cheney and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

The previous Republican-controlled U.S. Congress neglected the needs of front-line soldiers and Marines, failing to provide the supplies and armor needed for the war on Iraq. They just as callously neglected the facilities that would treat the war's casualties.

But there is new hope for a return to responsible government. The now Democratic-controlled Congress has stepped up to its responsibility to investigate and document the failings of this administration.

Congress must not be discouraged from getting all the facts, nor should they be condemned for too many investigations for there will surely be many. We must never forget the lessons of the era of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Tom DeLay, Grover Norquist and Jack Abramoff when incompetence, patronage and criminality ran rampant.

We must study and understand the criminal destruction of our disaster response capabilities that caused more trauma and disruption than was inevitable in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

We must never forget how Libertarian hatred of government masquerading a conservative dogma caused so much damage while it stuffed the wallets of Republican fat cats.

Americans must learn about and understand the failures of Libertarian conservative governance that neglects the needy, the disabled and our military, while it excessively rewards corporations and the super-rich.

We must work together to rebuild the American compact of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" for all Americans.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Gerald Plessner is a Southern California businessman who writes regularly on issues of politics and culture. He would be pleased to hear from you and may be contacted at gerald@geraldplessner.com. To receive his commentaries go to maillist-subscribe@geraldplessner.com.