Three weeks after the presidential election, many progressives are emerging from shock-induced comas, muttering about persistent reports of voting irregularities in Florida and Ohio and studying maps of highways north to Canada. In our absence, many things have happened:
Attorney General John Ashcroft resigned, and on his way out the door attacked federal judges who reminded the Bush Administration that it is not above the law when it comes to the War on Terror™. He called the rulings "intrusive judicial oversight and second-guessing," apparently preferring that we all simply accept Our Leader's judgments without question or dissent. He was much more pleasant when all he did was protect the public morality by covering up nude statues.
His designated replacement, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, may not be the Bible-thumper his predecessor was, but he is hardly an improvement. As President Bush's chief counsel when he was Governor of Texas, Gonzales was notorious for providing Bush with pre-execution clemency memos so brief, they routinely omitted any extenuating circumstances, proof of innocence, and so on. Thus rendered blissfully ignorant, Bush rejected every single memo without a second thought (or a first one, for that matter) and in doing so very possibly condemned innocent people to death. But Gonzales is even more notorious for his 2002 memo justifying the use of torture of al Qaeda prisoners on the grounds that unless someone is killed or permanently injured, it's not really torture and is thus OK. (This doctrine was, of course, extended for use in Iraq and led to the Abu Ghraib abuses which were exposed earlier this year.)
The last voice of moderation in the Bush Administration also resigned. Long after he was humiliatingly pushed aside in terms of policy, Colin Powell quietly stepped down as Secretary of State. He leaves behind a legacy of failure, of which only the loudest was his UN Security Council briefing on Iraq -- which even he now admits was based on phony data. Let us not forget the State Department's Patterns of Global Terrorism 2003 report, which loudly proclaimed that terrorist attacks had declined significantly on Bush's watch, only to be quietly withdrawn and republished with the real information -- that terrorist attacks had significantly increased. But then again, sabotaged from Day One by the resident neoconservative hawks, he never really had a chance.
His replacement is none other than Condoleezza Rice, who distinguished herself in the first term by reducing the role of National Security Adviser to little more than a PR cheerleader for the White House, being forced to admit that Bush had been briefed on the al Qaeda plot weeks before 9/11, and managing to stabilize precisely nothing as head of the Iraq Stabilization Group. But she's a reliable yes-woman, and therefore she stays.
Porter Goss took over as head of the CIA, and one of his first actions set the tone for what will likely be a long and dispiriting term as head of the nation's intelligence agency. In a memo circulated to all staffers and promptly leaked to the press, Goss ordered CIA analysts to "support the Administration and its policies in our work," reducing them to parroting yes-men. In other words, if the facts don't agree with the party line, it's the facts that have to go. It's the same loyalty-above-all-else mindset that gave us the Iraq quagmire, only now it's official policy.
Add to all this Bush's plans for the partial privatization of Social Security (which will enormously enrich GOP backers on Wall Street while endangering the livelihood of millions of senior citizens) and no planning in Iraq other than more of the same, and it looks like we're in for a rough ride.
Fasten your seat-belts; it's going to be a bumpy four years.
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