The Gathering Storm

Normandy


Update/Leak indictments

An hour ago I was contacted by a U.S. government official close to the Fitzgerald case. This person told me that there WILL be indictments announced later this afternoon, and the Special Prosecutor will hold a press conference tomorrow.

Richard Sale

OK, if you look at the Steele post, you'll see a lot of silly comments. Do a bunch of squishy liberals and wingnuts think I care if they call me a racist? Yeah, right. I wonder how many of them challenge people in real life.

They are a warmup for what is to come.

When the indictments come down, and people realize the kind of nuclear level shit Bushco is in, anything we write or say will be pounced on.

I mean, people are going to be scared shitless, because if Fitzgerald is right, this is the collapse of the GOP as a modern political party. The whole nest of charges, basically revolving around the kind of petty political revenge Rove mastered in Texas.

So we better expect things to be as ugly as possible with the GOP in high desperate stupid mode.

Why?

Because it's time to save the republic. The GOP, under Bush, have driven us into a ditch. A bad, murderous ditch and it's time we get out of it before we drown.

It's not that the GOP had some master plan to ruin America, but that they were more wedded to their ideas rather than common sense. You think Andy Sullivan accusing ANYONE of racism is delusional, well wait until what they say about Pat Fitzgerald, the working class kid who put himself through Amherst and Harvard Law. That he has a vendetta, he's wrong, it doesn't matter.

The GOP was certain that they had the answers, that the Dens had ruined this country, and that they would save it.

Which is why they could destroy Brewster-Jennings without a thought. The fact that they made the world more dangerous with their reckless actions will not penetrate the Dobsonites and the hard core rightists. They, the fools, will go down with Bush to the end.

The rest of the GOP will, like Arlen Spector when talking to Harriet Miers, finally realize that Bush is mediocre, dangerously so. But they will debate forever dumping him into the Harding bin of bad presidents.

Helen Thomas was precient in calling Bush the "worst president ever". It might have been seen as overblown at the time. but we're headed into James Buchanan territory here.

We all make jokes about jail and Fitzmas Day, but this isn't funny. We may not have voted for Bush, we may not like him, but our collective security depends on his effectiveness and the effectiveness of his staff. But from 9/11 to Katrina, we have been failed. Failed to the point that this nation's security may have been crippled in any number of ways. Brave, resourceful CIA officers we ask to do our dirty work in parts of the world we would never want to be in, may have died over this.

The CIA may not be our friends, but it should be clear that they also don't join the GOP when they get hired. I think it's clear that Plame was a liberal democrat, by her political donations alone. Yet, she went to Central Asia and risked her life for this country, all of us, even though some of us do not trust or like the CIA.

I tend to blame the CIA's bosses more than the agency, but I think, we on the left, better realize something: national security needs to work. If the CIA doesn't work, or abuses people, we need politicians who will do their jobs and reign them in. But I think we need an effective CIA, protected by law and custom. I've smelled when intelligence failed. Jen swept it out of her aparment. I saw the consequences in a newspaper for over a year. They buried the last firefighter a few months ago. So I know all I need to know about intelligence. When it doesn't work, people die. They die at thew WTC, they die in Iraq and they die in backrooms when they are carelessly betrayed.

So while I joke and mock the Bushies, I am genuinely outraged by this, their carelessness, their pettines, their cowardice. They have endangered us all for petty political revenge and didn't even bother to resign. There shouldn't have to be a drawn out trial here, but that is what they want.

Fitzgerald is no hero. He is doing his job, as he has done before. He can only remove the worst parts. No trial can repair the damage done. That is up to us and the political process. We have to fix what happened, all of us, Democrats and Republicans. If they refuse to do so, if they choose to remain blind, then we will do it on our own.

But make no mistake, we are about to enter rough times here, brutal times and we must be ready to meet them.

posted by Steve @ 3:00:00 PM