White House Dogs

Scott McClellan upsets the kennel

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
http://www.mytown.ca/zepp
06/01/08

It’s an incredible story. A former high-placed former official of the White House writes a book that seems to confirm that the President, in order to cover up lies he told the country in a rush to an unnecessary war, deliberately outed a undercover operative of the country, and then repeatedly lied to the country about that.

The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Conyers, who had nearly abandoned efforts to show that this actually happened, and that the president of the United States is complicit in a lurid tale of betrayal, lies, deceit, and possible treason, announces that he would like to have the official testify before his committee. The official states that he is willing to repeat what he said in his book under oath.

The press secretary of the White House then announces that the WH is seeking ways to block the former official, now a private citizen, from testifying before the committee.

Sounds like one of Alan Drury’s later novels, doesn’t it? Drury, who won a Pulitzer for “Advise and Consent” in the early 1960s, turned into a parody of himself over the years, writing ever-more fantastic stories about how one group was determined, at all costs, to destroy America, and turn it over to the Soviets, and his later novels seem ridiculous now, not because they were so beyond the pale, but simply because he identified the wrong group as being the problem.

Watergate was about a president who lied when he said that he didn’t have concurrent knowledge of plans to break into the Democratic National Headquarters and steal information. They finally showed he was lying, and his ass was out of there.

This is about deliberately putting American lives at risk, both in the intelligence services and in the military, in order to wage a war that in no way benefitted America. What Putsch’s motives were in invading Iraq remains a matter for conjecture, but it’s clear that the national interest was not the motive behind it.

Scott McClellan is at the center of a political firestorm, although like so many that have enveloped this vile, treasonous administration, the firestorm is curiously muted. Most newspapers today have shifted their attention to such important items as a crane collapse in Manhattan, the NBA semi-finals, and the weather.

McClellan notes that if the White House was lying about Iraq, the outing of Valerie Plame, and a host of other items, the press was negligent and curiously muzzled in how they reported it. As witness now: the following day, a story of treason and betrayal in the oval office is buried behind stories of cranes collapsing. The media, which has dutifully acted as poop-scoopers for this administration since 9/11, are in their accustomed role of enablers for the GOP. In fact, that was the term McClellan used, referring to them with justified contempt as “deferential, complicit enablers.”

Remember when America used to be proud of its free press?

The third element of this particular story is that there is so little surprise in the general public, so little outrage. Yeah, the president is a filthy liar, a pitiful coward, a probable traitor, and now he’s trying to tell Congress it can’t investigate him. Yawn. Tell us something we don’t already know. Unlike the Nixon administration, this one at least knows better than to lie about the allegations. They have carefully not denied what McClellan has said.

America, aren’t you settling for too little in the leadership department? I mean, can’t you at least demand a president who sells out his country for his own interests, instead of an international oil cartel?

Of course, the White House and its media defenders are saying that McClellan is just a disaffected former employee, and hinting broadly that he was fired. Some are claiming that he wrote the book to cash in on his former position, although an advance of $75,000 – a fraction of what he could make if he followed the normal GOP method of cashing in and went to work for the corporations – doesn’t seem like a big incentive. And the White House is saying it’s puzzled and surprised by the book, of which they’ve had advance copies for a month. You bet they’re surprised, right?

I keep comparing the whole Valerie Plame thing with Watergate. Watergate really was just a burglary; one with some nasty political implications, since it was the party in power using illegal means to spy on the party out of power, and yes, Nixon did lie about his involvement. But it didn’t get anyone killed. By outing Plame, Putsch deliberately put at risk the lives of people who have decided to serve their country and sacrificed any hope of a normal, care-free life to work in intelligence, and friends of this country who have risked their freedom and their lives to help America in one way or another.

He did that deliberately. And he did it to cover up the fact that he was fabricating evidence for a war that has killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, thousands of Americans, and destroyed the lives of millions of other people.

I keep comparing the two, and there’s no comparison. Nobody died in Watergate, and it doesn’t even appear that anyone had their lives destroyed. The scumbags most closely involved in it went on to lucrative careers as right wing radio hosts and demented professional evangelicals. Even Nixon got rich writing books.

Along with the nearly 4,100 Americans killed, another 25,000 are seriously wounded, and at least 40,000 have PTSD, or other severe emotional problems, the result of being callously pushed back into the “war zone” (the overly-glamorous name for the occupied area) over and over.

Putsch lied about that war, claimed it was one America had to fight. Different folks have different theories on why he lied; some say it was to help his oil buddies, others that he wanted American hegemony in the middle east, others that he wanted to avenge – or top – his daddy, or that Karl Rove told him it would help him win the 2004 election. But he lied. And he lied about lying, and sacrificed more good people to prop up those lies.

The President of the United States is a filthy liar, a pitiful coward, a probable traitor, and now he’s trying to tell Congress it can’t investigate him.

And most Americans, stymied by a press intent on defending him and bamboozled by endless propaganda and deliberate distractions like pointless stories about construction cranes collapsing, sit numb and dumb.

This has to end, this psychological and emotional enslavement of Americans. American are a better people than that, and deserve far better treatment.

It’s time they demanded that Congress take Putsch’s lying, cowardly, treasonous skank ass, and throw it out of office, and into jail where it belongs.