Lights Out

Once upon a time, the Bush Administration tried to put a happy face on the Iraq War by pointing out all the good things we were doing to the Iraqi people - other than killing them, that is. New schools, hospitals, water treatment plants, etc, were loudly touted as George W. Bush bringing enlightenment to the Iraqi masses. The fact that it was based largely on mercenary "contractors" and truly obscene war-profiteering was politely unmentioned by most of the media.

But reality, as Stephen Colbert so memorably pointed out, has a well-known liberal bias. It soon became apparent that the benefits of civilization weren't quite as advertised. The reconstruction projects were handed out mostly on the basis of political patronage, and billions upon billions of our tax dollars were wasted or simply stolen. Many of the projects were never actually built, and many others were built so shoddily that they're unusable. (It's not surprising that with such a track record, White House propaganda has returned to the fear-and-smear tactics of old, attacking anyone who criticizes our occupation of Iraq as Osama bin Laden's cabana boy.)

For example, electricity supplies in Baghdad, in the middle of that country's baking summer weather, have dropped from six or so hours daily to just one or two hours a day. Which means that in 130-degree heat, there is no lighting, no air conditioning and no refrigeration for most of the day. Now, piddling details such as this are supposed to be included in the State Department's weekly status report to Congress on conditions in Iraq - but the Los Angeles Times reported that the Administration quietly changed it some months ago. Instead, the White House now reports the total amount of electricity generated in the country, regardless of whether that electricity actually reaches the people of Iraq.

Even given the dismal state of the Administration's war efforts, the latest revelation is a doozy. After all, generating electricity doesn't make a bit of difference if it doesn't get to you and you can't turn the lights on. It also fits perfectly into the Administration's habit of hiding or otherwise disguising bad news rather than dealing with it. Either way, while the total-electricity-generated figure might be strictly legitimate, it's also profoundly dishonest.

Assuming, of course, that the electricity was actually generated. Given the record of fraud and theft on the part of profiteering contractors, it's certainly possible that even the misleading figures given to Congress are a mirage. It's like something out of George Orwell's 1984:

But actually, he thought as he re-adjusted the Ministry of Plenty's figures, it was not even forgery. It was merely the substitution of one piece of nonsense for another. Most of the material that you were dealing with had no connection with anything in the real world, not even the kind of connection that is contained in a direct lie. Statistics were just as much a fantasy in their original version as in their rectified version. A great deal of the time you were expected to make them up out of your head. For example, the Ministry of Plenty's forecast had estimated the output of boots for the quarter at 145 million pairs. The actual output was given as sixty-two millions. Winston, however, in rewriting the forecast, marked the figure down to fifty-seven millions, so as to allow for the usual claim that the quota had been over-fulfilled. In any case, sixty-two millions was no nearer the truth than fifty-seven millions, or than 145 millions. Very likely no boots had been produced at all. Likelier still, nobody knew how many had been produced, much less cared. All one knew was that every quarter astronomical numbers of boots were produced on paper, while perhaps half the population of Oceania went barefoot. And so it was with every class of recorded fact, great or small.

As we are unable to even keep the lights on in the capital on any reasonable schedule, President Bush and his inner circle must be clinically delusional and actively hiding from reality. That's the only explanation as to how they are still surprised that the Iraqi people want us out.

Impeach Gonzales

"The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."

- Constitution of the United States, Article II, Section 4

Enough is enough.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has shown over and over again that he will warp justice, perjure himself before Congress and drag the Justice Department into the mud to protect the political interests of President Bush and the Republican Party. His latest antics before the Senate Judiciary Committee did nothing to change that perception.

Back in 2004, half the Justice Department's top leadership threatened to resign over the Bush Administration's blatantly illegal secret-spying program, and stayed only because the White House agreed to rein in its more outrageous aspects. Testifying before the Senate last week, Gonzales claimed that the dispute was not over the innocuously-named "Terrorist Surveillance Program," but over another spying program.

The only problem was that former Assistant Attorney General James Comey, former FBI Director Robert Mueller, and internal DOJ documents all showed that Gonzales was lying through his teeth. It could have been lifted right out of the Marx Brothers movie Duck Soup - "Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?"

The farce achieved further Marxian proportions when Press Secretary Tony Snow insisted that "nobody has really laid a glove on" Gonzales, despite even loyal Republicans publicly saying that the Attorney General is more trouble than he's worth.

This is about more than just a matter of this spy program vs. that spy program. It is about the Bush Administration putting itself above the law, and an Attorney General who still sees himself as the President's personal attorney and not as chief law enforcement officer of the country.

What we already know is dismaying enough:

• Nine U.S. Attorneys were fired because they wouldn't go along with the White House's plan to indict prominent Democrats on trumped-up charges and leave provably crooked Republicans alone.
• Gonzales, very likely on direct orders from the President, attempted to pressure a very sick John Ashcroft to sign off on the TSP, an action that sparked the DOJ mutiny.
• Gonzales perjured himself before Congress when he claimed that there had been no documented abuse of "national security letters," when numerous reports of rampant FBI abuse of the practice had reached his desk only days earlier.
• The White House has ordered the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia to ignore any and all contempt citations issued to Administration staffers who defy Congressional subpoenas to testify.

Just imagine what we haven't yet learned.

Bush has already said that he has no intention of firing Gonzales or letting him resign which, while disastrous, actually makes a bizarre sort of sense from a political standpoint. A vacancy at the top of DOJ means Bush would have to nominate a replacement, which means confirmation hearings. And that means that the White House would be forced to reveal, slowly and painfully, all the corruption and machinations that have so tainted the Justice Department under Gonzales.

But there is another way of getting rid of him - impeachment. The Constitution clearly provides for impeachment and removal of government officials other than the President.

Congress must step up and demand the return of honesty and accountability to the Justice Department and, by extension, the entire Administration. Gonzales has to go.

Oceania Had Always Been at War with Eurasia

"We never argued that [Saddam Hussein] played a role in 9/11; political opponents manufactured the claim to question the president's integrity."

- White House press secretary Tony Snow telling a bald-faced lie in USA Today; the reality is that in the run-up to the Iraq War the Bush Administration deliberately conflated Hussein, al Qaeda and 9/11 to the point where a solid majority of Americans believed Hussein to have been behind the attacks

They're All the Same Anyway

"The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq were the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11th, and that's why what happens in Iraq matters to the security here at home."

- President Bush, hoping to fool the public just one more time while not bothering to mention that the group calling itself "al Qaeda in Iraq:"

1. Didn't exist before the invasion
2. Is not controlled by Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organization, and
3. Is not responsible for the vast majority of bombings in Iraq

If You Get Sick, It's Your Own Damn Fault

"In other words, the whole plan has got to be to bring more accountability into health care, to make the consumer more responsible for making proper and rational decisions. That's what accountability does."

- President Bush, suggesting that sick people be required to shop around and get prices - and that they're SOL if they don't make "proper and rational decisions"

Bad Medicine

We already know that the Bush Administration values politics above all else - war, peace, common decency, etc. But something about Dr. Richard Carmona's Congressional testimony on Tuesday struck a nerve.

Maybe it was that when he was Surgeon General he was directed not to say anything about the dangers of second-hand smoke. Or that he was gagged about health care in prisons. Or that he was told to stress abstinence-only sex education while ignoring the numerous studies which say it just doesn't work.

Maybe it's the simple crassness of being transformed into yet another mindless White House cheer-bot, ordered to mention President Bush no fewer than three times on every page of every speech he made. (At a press gaggle the next day, Tony Snow blithely said that "if you, in fact, serve at the pleasure of the President, you have some obligation to share his policies.")

No, I think the disgusting nadir was being "discouraged" from attending a Special Olympics event. Who could possibly have anything against helping disabled kids? The Bush Administration does, apparently - and for no other reason than the group was started and run by the Kennedy family. "I was specifically told by a senior person, 'Why would you want to help those people?'" Carmona said.

And yet he was "encouraged" to travel around the country speaking at various GOP events.

This is more than simple pettiness. This is actively politicizing every function of government, even something as supposedly above politics as health care.

And it's only getting worse. The White House's nominee for the new Surgeon General, Dr. James Holsinger, is not an advocate of better health care for everyone. Rather, he's an anti-gay partisan who in 1991 wrote a scary-sounding but badly-grounded report for the United Methodist Church. Titled "Pathophysiology of Male Homosexuality," he claimed that gay sex was inherently dangerous and should not be tolerated within the church.

Enough is enough. As Carmona testified on Tuesday, "the job of the Surgeon General is to be the doctor of the nation, not the doctor of a political party." It's high time to get politics out of health care.