Friday, December 30, 2005
Corruption
Sometimes I hate to come off as a liberal. I am not a part of the Democratic Party. I’ve never cashed a paycheck to write some politician’s speech. But when the most powerful man from your party in congress, until he was indicted, is Tom DeLay, how can you look yourself in the mirror and call yourself a republican?
While republicans in congress launched an investigation into the democratic president’s $1 million dollar land deal long buried in his past, they neglected to do so for the sitting president’s Harken energy deal. More importantly, as of this date 239 days have passed since a request was filed with congress to investigate the Downing Street Memos, papers leaked from the British government that allege that the president “fixed the facts around the policy” of going to war in Iraq, a far more important issue than a bad real estate deal. Phase II of the intelligence investigation has been stonewalled by republicans, leading Harry Reid to close down congress to compel the continuation of an investigation that no conservative wants to conduct. The House, meanwhile, though it has the power and the responsibility to launch its own investigation, as it did for the Iran-Contra Affair, refuses to do so.
With Roberts, the republican senator from Kansas, chairing the committee tasked with the investigation I have little hope the results will be honest. Roberts has said several times that he doesn’t think there’s anything to find. That’s improper from the man supposed to be leading the investigation. Roberts also recently criticized the ranking democratic member of the Senate Intelligence committee, Rockefeller, for simply making public his misgivings about the recent White House wiretapping scandal. Even though the adminstration’s reckless use of forged documents was already known (among other bad sources the administration used), Roberts, in his October 2003 report, placed the blame squarely at the feet of the CIA. When Kay’s report emerged in January of 2004 concluding that there were no WMDs in Iraq, democrats responded by new cries for an investigation. Roberts accused them of “politicizing” the debate. When the Plame issue comes to a head later that year, Roberts dismisses it, telling CNN "I must say from a common sense standpoint, driving back and forth to work to the CIA headquarters, I don't know if that really qualifies as being, you know, covert," echoing GOP talking points and uttering an egregious lie. Fitzgerald later lays to rest the conservative lie that Valerie Plame wasn’t undercover, despite Roberts’ assertion. Larry Johnson, a recently retired CIA operative who testified in the case, rightly excoriated the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee: how could a person in this position be so ridiculously ignorant of CIA procedures, especially when it was the CIA who initiated the investigation by filing a complaint that Plame’s cover had been blown?
Both houses of congress have similarly refused to investigate the Valerie Plame leak, leaving the investigation to the independent council. Porter Goss, the head of the CIA, famously said “give me a blue dress and then we’ll talk,” alluding to the Monica Lewinsky scandal. I would expect the head of the CIA to be more concerned with the safety of his operatives, but then again, he is a Bush appointee.
The fact is that our government is run, ass to antlers, by a network of republican cronies who are incapable of honestly policing themselves.
“Scooter” Libby, the Vice President’s Chief of Staff, is under indictment in the Valerie Plame case. Tom DeLay, formerly the most powerful man in the House, was also forced to resign his position and is under indictment. The Abramoff indictments are about to begin and may implicate six members of congress, most or all of them republicans, perhaps including Tom DeLay. Unanswered allegations about the use of WMDs still swirl around this White House. Bill Frist, the senate republican leader, is under investigation.
This is corruption of monumental proportions.
# posted by BitterHarvest @ 11:37 PM 
