Summertime
And the living ain’t easy for Republicans
© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
7/3/05
http://zeppscommentaries.com/Politics/summer05.htm
This past week was the sort of week where normally I would shake my head in amazement and intone, "This was certainly a week to remember."
The problem is that, momentous as the events of the past week have been, in a few months everyone will have forgotten this past week. Their importance stems from their implications.
The next few months, now THAT is what everyone is going to remember.
Still, let’s recap:
Back on the 22nd of June, the Washington Post had a prescient article entitled "U.S. Forces Surprised By Taliban’s Resilience In Remote Afghanistan." Five days later, the Scotsman reported that a report had leaked from Downing Street that Putsch had put in some frantic phone calls to Blair, begging him to maintain British troop levels in Iraq, because America feared a melt-down in control in Afghanistan similar to that already happening in Iraq, and the US didn’t have a man to spare. $450 billion a year, and the US can’t handle Afghanistan. Hours after the report, the Taliban rebels shot down a US chopper, killing 16, and then held off rescuers for four days, killing another five. So Afghanistan is going to become a major story.
On the 25th, a fairly remarkable story came out that the Italian government was hunting down a CIA squad that had been grabbing "suspected terrorists" in Italy and committing extraordinary rendition, the charming American practice of outsourcing torture. The Italians had been among Putsch’s staunchest allies at the start of the Iraq invasion and occupation.
The next day, the Guardian reported that American representatives had secretly met with elements of the resistance in Iraq in hopes of establishing some sort of agreement. The talks failed. The administration did not attempt to deny the story. That they would even consider doing such a thing shows just how bad the situation over there has become. America is on the verge of being defeated in Iraq.
On the 27th, the Supreme Court held its final session in this year’s court, and while Rehnquist’s widely anticipated retirement announcement did not happen, the court did give bifurcated rulings on the Ten Commandments. Lost in the media glare over that was the ruling that Time magazine's Matthew Cooper and The New York Times' Judith Miller had to turn over their sources to the grand jury in the Valerie Plame matter. Subsequent events suggest that this ruling might just bring down the entire Putsch administration.
On the 28th, Putsch gave a prime-time address to the nation. The speech was an utter flop, with 3 out of 4 views expressing unease with Putsch’s descriptions of why we were in Iraq. Even more ominously, the combined stations only got nineteen million viewers. People who like Putsch were more likely to watch than people who don’t like him, and even they weren’t swayed by Putsch.
The next day, the Republicans backed down on a procedural matter that had caused a total impasse on the House ethics committee, leaving the group unable to open an investigation into the latest Tom DeLay scandals. The committee will now proceed to investigate those scandals, a major setback for DeLay and House Republicans.
The following day, Putsch went to Edinburgh, Scotland for the G8 conference. He was interviewed by a Danish television station, and whined that America couldn’t have possibly signed the Kyoto treaty because it would have wrecked the American economy. It’s a line that plays well to the neo-fascist corporate toads who own the GOP, but for Europe, the nations of which have all signed the treaty, it was an exercise in cowardly mewling. Blair let it be known that G8 would go ahead with plans to further reduce carbon pollution, and the United States be damned.
After that, the pace began to pick up. John Conyers of Michigan, and 51 other Democrats, formally filed a freedom of information act petition for all admin documents relating to the Downing Street minutes, and announced that they would convene a formal inquiry in June. With the tactical situation in Iraq and Afghanistan eroding by the minute, Republicans are feeling increased pressure to acquiesce to these demands.
An hour or so later, Sandra Day O’Connor announced that she was retiring from the Supreme Court, which touched off a political firestorm. Republicans immediately accused Democrats of blocking Putsch’s nominee, weeks before any nomination had been made, but in fact, it was far-right so-called "social conservatives" who were first out of the gate in refusing a nominee in advance, announcing that Attorney General Mengele would not be acceptable to them because while torturing men, women and children was fine with them, being soft on abortion wasn’t.
The G8 summit, which hasn’t even really begun, has proved a major embarrassment to Putsch. Over 200,000 protesters showed up, cordoning off the entire downtown Edinburgh area in an impressive display of solidarity. Additionally, Putsch was forced to back down on the stance that America need not recognize the anthrogenic nature of global warming, and announced that the US would sign on to controls on carbon emissions. For the corporate-controlled administration, this was a major step-down.
Then the story broke that the notes that Cooper had been forced by the Supreme Court to turn over to the grand jury stated that the source of the leak was none other than White House Machiavelli Karl Rove. In an interesting sequence of interviews, Rove’s lawyer first declared that Rove had not spoken to Cooper, and then admitted that he had, but had not leaked Plame’s name to Cooper, and is now saying that he is not at liberty to discuss the matter while it is pending before the Grand Jury.
It was a sign of how harried and disorganized the White House had become when, within hours of one another, Dick Cheney infamously declared that the resistance in Iraq was in its "last throes" and Rumsfeld declared that the fighting could go on for a dozen more years. It did little to reassure Americans who already had grave doubts about the whole Iraq mess.
So here’s where we stand at this hour: the administration has to deal with a pivotal Supreme Court nomination. But it does so at the same time that the political mastermind in the White House is suddenly in danger of going to prison, as is the party leader in the House. It comes at a time when Democrats are forcing public hearings on the Downing Street Minutes and when blow-ups threaten in both Afghanistan and Iraq. AND America, increasingly friendless because of the arrogance and high-handedness of this administration, endures diplomatic defeat after diplomatic defeat.
Summer is normally the quiet time for politics. 2005, however, bids fair to be a major exception to the rule.