Why little Gonzogate might be Bush's Watergate (not why you think)

At first I thought it was really odd that this Gonzales business was what Congress and the press latched onto to unravel Bush. But if you think about the parallels with Nixon, it makes sense. Was Watergate the worst thing Nixon did in office? Probably not by a country mile. The illegal bombing of Cambodia, overthrowing the elected president of Chile, and Operation Condor in general did far more damage and led to the deaths of tens of thousands.

But if you started to pull on those threads, they'd lead back to some big corporate players, like ITT, United Fruit, and whoever the hell it was that thought a decade of war in Southeast Asia was a good idea. Those people would not want their business discussed when everyone was watching. Instead, they pulled on a thread that was impeachable, but only led to a handful of political operatives, a dead end.

In the same way, if you pulled on the bigger threads with Bush, Enron, New Orleans, Iraq, 9/11, not only does it lead to willful indifference to human suffering and even the gleeful exploitation of it for profit, but it leads to the administration doing it as the agents of the largest corporations in the world. Once you start to go down that road in public hearings, people might forget about abortion, gays, Anna Nicole Smith and whether Harry Potter is dangerous long enough to demand a break up of some of these corporations into a thousand pieces as was done a hundred years ago with Standard Oil.

Better to take care of the problem exactly the way Bush did the first couple of years: make someone in the administration the scapegoat, get all public hatred and scorn focused on him, them remove him from sight so people think the problem is solved. This peek-a-boo game has gone through one or two cycles with Karl Rove, and it worked once or twice with Rummy before they finally really gave him the boot.

Now the same thing will be done to the whole administration. They be will taken down by a scandal that has roots no deeper than Bush's equivalent on Tattoo on Fantasy Island, Alberto Gonzales.

The media will tsk and cluck about those crazy, out of control ideologue neocons, and foreign policy establishment types like Zbigniew Brzezinski will write op-ed about how wrong-headed the very foundations of Bush's policies are even though he himself built the molds Bush poured the concrete in. Neither Brzezinski nor the Bushies are ideologues. They are businessmen, who sell the same product. Brzezinski with gravitas and Bush with a lynch mob and Jesus. To the elite, Bush's sin is that he is a bad salesman. He gave us a hat full of shit, and couldn't convince us it was a chocolate cake for long enough.

The Lyndie Englands of this era will go to prison, Bush and Cheney may go into involuntary early retirement, but those profited and stood to profit by Bush's actions, who told their papers and networks to salute so their oil and defense stocks would be shoot through the roof, they will escape unscathed.

If we were a people of laws, with equal laws for all, the soldiers tried for atrocities and torture would not serve one day more in prison than the heartless bastards in their mahogony lined country clubs. In fact, before a single soldier is convicted of any wrong-doing, the masters of war should be tried as mass murderers of hundreds of thousands. The foot soldiers should at worst get Pinochets fate of wondering if they will ever see prison even in last days of their life, and the masters of war should wonder if they will ever get some privacy while they are taking a shit on a steel toilet bolted to the wall of their cell.


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Once upon a time, an ideological enemy we had no diplomatic relations with, tested a nuke...

At the time, we were in a war with that country's neighbor, concerned that more people might be enslaved the ideology we didn't like.

They went on to develop a nuclear arsenal that is today relatively modest by US & Russian standards, but nonetheless far more than Iran or North Korea are likely to have any time soon.

Our president, who hated the very bad ideology, did a very odd thing. He went and made friends with them even though we were still fighting in the neighboring country.

Those who wanted us to be very afraid of the very bad ideology were sure that the country with the nukes would attack us or at least infect us with the very bad ideology.

Today, we don't worry about that country nuking or even attacking us in the near future because we owe them too much money and we buy too much of the stuff they make since they seem to have become infected with our ideology even though we haven't been infected with theirs at all.

Likewise, the neighboring country we fought in so long to convince them not to adopt the very bad ideology tried it for a while and decided they'd rather be like us.

We don't get to pick those countries leaders or have troops there, but for some reason they like us anyway.

With the other bad idea, there were countries we made friends with, countries we were a little friendly with, and one or two we shunned.

The ones we became friends with changed quickly, the ones we were a little friendly with changed a little less quickly, and the ones we shunned didn't seem to change at all.

Now some of the same people who said to be afraid of the very bad ideology want us to be afraid of a different very bad ideology and say we must fight a very long war to convince them the ideology is a very bad idea and that one of those countries may get a nuclear bomb.

Which method is likely to get the quickest results? Kill a lot of people or make friends?

Sometimes in history, making friends doesn't work so well. Hitler and Stalin probably would have taken other people's land and killed a lot of people no matter what. But those countries were roughly our equals. Today, maybe two countries in the world are our peers, and the rest are fleas on our ass militarily. They might be difficult for us to invade and occupy, but they would have absolutely no chance of invading and occupying us.

Therefore, there is little danger in making friends (except to the people who wanted to steal stuff while we were fighting and invading).

Our elected leaders like to make up very simple stories that are easy for us to understand. Why don't they tell this one more often? Maybe because it has a happy ending for us--but not for the people who matter.

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Send 500,000 impeachment letters to Pelosi by her first day as speaker Jan. 3

Fair.org has already documented a move in the mainstream press to squelch any talk of impeaching Bush, and a similar astroturfing campaign is going on online to create a consensus against impeachment.

While arguing with one of those who think it's a bad idea, someone said there had to be a "groundswell of support" like there was for the impeachment of Nixon and cited this article:

More than 50,000 telegrams poured in on Capitol Hill today, so many, Western Union was swamped. Most of them demanded impeaching Mr. Nixon.

John Chancellor, NBC News on a Special Report on October 20, 1973

We already have more support than that. When John Conyers took Bush his petition demanding he answer questions about the DSM, it had 540,000 singnatures, over ten times as many as wrote about Nixon. I would bet most of those people would write to demand impeachment of Bush, probably more.

The great thing is, now we have someone to focus this demand on who can and possibly will act (in spite of her protests to the contrary): Nancy Pelosi.

She should have a half million signatures waiting for her her first day as Speaker of the House.

I think she and the many of the Democrats want to do this, but to overcome the reluctance of the DC etablishment and big money interests who are afraid their ox will be gored along with Bush & Cheney, she needs constant overwhelming evidence of public DEMAND not just support for impeachment.

Fax or snail mail the letter below or your own variation to:

FAX: 202-225-8259

Nancy Pelosi
2371 Rayburn HOB
Washington, DC 20515

District Office:

450 Golden Gate Ave.
14th Floor
San Francisco, CA 94102

emails are nice, but letters and faxes make a physical pile that form a powerful visual, and that should be Pelosi opening her door and being buried by letters.

CC a copy to your congressman too. You can find their address here: http://www.house.gov /

Post this around to other boards and send it to you friends, and let's see if we can get something going.

Speaker Pelosi,

The American people elected a Democratic majority to restore checks and balances, the rule of law, and our reputation as a law-abiding country in the world community. These cannot be accomplished unless President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are impeached. Their impeachable offenses dwarf those that led to proceedings against President Clinton and President Andrew Jonson, and the threatened proceeding against President Richard Nixon combined. The offenses below are already supported with evidence in the public record, including admissions of guilt. It is likely that investigations prior to impeachment would turn up even more.

IMPEACH BUSH & CHENEY FOR:

• Lying to the American people, Congress, and the world about the threat from Iraq & need for war.
  
  
• War of aggression against Iraq, which posed no threat to US.
  
  
• Death of over 600,000 Iraqis and nearly 3,000 S troops in unnecessary war.
  
  
• Exploiting 9/11 for political gain and for war to benefit oil companies and other cronies.
  
  
• Canceling Iraq’s oil contracts with foreign companies and giving them to American corporations and restructuring Iraq’s oil industry to their specification in violation of the Hague and Geneva Conventions.
  
  
• Awarding no-bid contracts to cronies for rebuilding and oil exploitation in Iraq.
  
  
• Inciting animosity toward the US by attacking Iraq and falsely claiming it was part of “War on Terror.”
  
  
• Authorizing the use of torture in violation of the Geneva Convention and US law and against the advice of the uniformed military.
  
  
• Participating in the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Haiti and attempting to do so in Venezuela.
  
  
• Failure to fully cooperate with 9/11 Commission and joint congressional inquiry, and refusal to comply with Freedom of Information Act in other areas as well.
  
  
• Warrantless wiretapping of American citizens.
  
  
• Issuing signing statements that contradict the plain meaning of legislation, including on issues of torture.
  
  
• Denying Americans and others habeas corpus rights even after Supreme Court ruled against it.
  
  
• Coercing government employees to lie to Congress and the American people about the cost of Medicare drug benefit, global warning, and toxic hazard of NYC after 9/11.
  
  
• Failure to provide timely aid to Hurricane Katrina victims and appointing someone with no experience to run FEMA.
  
  
• Barring Americans who disagree with the president from public events paid for with taxpayer money, and forcibly removing some with private security posing as Secret Service agents.

Listen to the American people so we can be confident we have a democracy again.

Sincerely,

Most of my list is paraphrased from the one found at ImpeachBush.


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