A Case for Impeachment
I’m lazy enough to lift articles full cloth from the famous blogs, and simply offer a different line of comments. (Though, to quote my 8th grade English teacher when he read student writings in front of the class and came to a piece of mine: “Okay, this one is a little bit different. (Pause) Actually, this one is a lot different.”) Such is the case here.
Has anyone noticed that the coverup worked?
In his impressive presentation of the indictment of Lewis “Scooter” Libby last week, Patrick Fitzgerald expressed the wish that witnesses had testified when subpoenas were issued in August 2004, and “we would have been here in October 2004 instead of October 2005.”
Note the significance of the two dates: October 2004, before President Bush was reelected, and October 2005, after the president was reelected. Those dates make clear why Libby threw sand in the eyes of prosecutors, in the special counsel’s apt metaphor, and helped drag out the investigation.
As long as Bush still faced the voters, the White House wanted Americans to think that officials such as Libby, Karl Rove and Vice President Cheney had nothing to do with the leak campaign to discredit its arch-critic on Iraq, former ambassador Joseph Wilson.
And Libby, the good soldier, pursued a brilliant strategy to slow the inquiry down. As long as he was claiming that journalists were responsible for spreading around the name and past CIA employment of Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, Libby knew that at least some news organizations would resist having reporters testify. The journalistic “shield” was converted into a shield for the Bush administration’s coverup.
Bush and his disciples would like everyone to assume that Libby was some kind of lone operator who, for this one time in his life, abandoned his usual caution. They pray that Libby will be the only official facing legal charges and that political interest in the case will dissipate.
That’s what the establishment moderate liberal EJ Dionne says.
I always wondered what the point behind Nixon’s break-in of the Watergate Hotel was. Last I checked, the final tally of Nixon — McGovern was 49 – 2. (Washington DC exists just as much as Massachusetts does.) What — was McGovern going to flip Rhode Island? But nay — the whole break-in was symptomatic of how Nixon and crew operated. A well heeled machine at that… one dirty trick after another.
I also used to think that Nixon would have gotten by if he had at some point in time simply apologized. But this seems absurd to me now. It was a third class break-in, and the Democrats complaining about the ordeal were shrill. Try the new line of reasoning: Overzealous Campaign staff! That one is a riot!! (To be fair, it was a third-class operation. After all — they were caught.!)
Bush and Kerry. You realize that Plame-Gate actually succeeded in winning Bush an election? You realize that the stalling through the Fitzgerald Investigation actually won Bush an election? If you consider Impeachment — and as we all found out (and were reminded of, if we managed to learn about Andrew Johnson in school) that’s not removal from office, so here I add and a resulting action to remove the president from office — as a corrective measure to the electoral process that was thrown out of whack through dirty dealings — the case to remove Bush is stronger than the case to remove Nixon was. (Because, you see… Nixon would have won anyway.)
This is all a masturbatory thought-process, mind you… speculation based on how political justice would be meted out over on an imagined America II over on Earth II. Though, perhaps I have the beginnings of my own Republic here. In my imagined system of justice, Nixon would have finished his presidency, and Bush would currently be on his way to being carted out of the White House and replaced by John Kerry.