For your sins

A handicapped man named Scooter is taking a hit for your sins. Well, I don't know that Scooter is handicapped, but he appeared on all the internet news services on crutches yesterday. And there may be a back door open for him after the Bush administration lets him take the hit for Vice President Cheney, Karl Rove, George W. Bush and his flunkies, the White House Iraq Group. But yeah, this guy has been selected to take the bullet for all of them. Oh yeah, and you.

In his January 2003 State Of The Union, President Bush included the following statement in his package of lies: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Too bad it's not a crime to lie on CNN. Bush had known for nearly a year that this was bullshit. In February 2002, the CIA sent former Ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger to investigate the unsubstantiated claim that Saddam Hussein tried to buy uranium from Niger for use in nuclear weapons. Wilson had discovered that the claims were bogus and documents used to support the claims had been forgeries. He reported this to the CIA, and the CIA told the White House.

Now why did Bush want to lie about Saddam Hussein looking for uranium in Africa? Because he wanted to invade Iraq. Why did he want to invade Iraq? Well if you'd been awake the last few years, you 'd have learned about George H.W. Bush's ties to the Saudi royal family that led him into the first Gulf War. Yeah, that's the one where Uncle Zeke came back with an ailment the VA won't admit he has. You'd also remember that Papa Bush stopped short of invading Babylon and toppling Saddam. We'll never know why. Maybe he thought Vietnam was too recent a memory for America (he forgot that modern Americans don't have memores). Maybe he thought. "Invading a foreign country for no good reason would be a huge PR blunder which might taint my Presidency." He didn't realize that today most young Americans don't remember that he was ever President. Maybe he thought, "My son is a loser, a coker and a drunk. Let him do it, the little dumbass." We'll never know.

Now, even in 2002 after months of spin from Georgie and pals trying to blame 9/11 (perpetuated mostly by Saudi nuts, if you don't remember), the American sheep, er, people weren't willing to buy another strike at Saddam. The WHG kept cranking at disinformation. Too bad Goebbels was dead.

Six months after the President's 2003 State of the Union Address, as Bush's WMD and nuclear claims began to unravel, former Ambassador Wilson went public and exposed the Bush Administration's false nuclear claims in a New York Times op-ed called "What I didn't find in Africa."

The White House saw Wilson as a major threat. According to the Los Angeles Times, "Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff was so angry about the public statements of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, a Bush administration critic married to an undercover CIA officer [pssst! that would be Ms. Plame] that he monitored all of Wilson's television appearances and urged the White House to mount an aggressive public campaign against him, former aides say."

The week after Wilson's op-ed in the New York Times, "two senior administration officials" were cited by conservative columnist Robert Novak in his column outing CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson. The White House Iraq Group (WHIG), originally formed to sell the war to the public, morphed into a virtual hit squad that took aim at critics who questioned its claims. WHIG was run out of Vice President Cheney's office, and included Cheney's Chief of Staff "Scooter" Libby, top Bush strategist Karl Rove, and other top Bush administration officials. Not only did this leak end Valerie Plame Wilson's 20-year career as a CIA covert agent, but it also exposed a longstanding CIA front company, Brewster Jennings & Associates, where Plame worked and put at risk many of the undercover agents who had worked with Wilson in the past.

Yesterdays' indictment says Libby illegally obstructed the investigation into the White House outing of an undercover CIA agent, Valerie Plame Wilson. He also was charged with perjury and making false statements to FBI agents. The ongoing investigation of Karl Rove , among others, revolves around the same issues.

In 1999, Papa Bush said , "I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious, of traitors." Former Republican National Committee Chair Ed Gillespie said, "I think if the allegation is true, to reveal the identity of an undercover CIA operative—it's abhorrent, and it should be a crime, and it is a crime."

Well, whatever. Now, I think that if you volunteer to play Spy vs. Spy, this is one of the liabilities you sign up for, just like I think that if you volunteer to participate in the invasion of a foreign soverign nation that has not attacked you, you should not be surprised when you are shot in the ass by the locals. But these spies, you know, after a lifetime career of skulduggery, don't they deserve a little safety and peace? My cousin outed her husband as having worked for the CIA after he retired, on a Christmas card. Oops. Luckily he and Ms. Plame are still alive.

But the big sin is, after Bush lied and knew he lied, after Karl trained him to lie and lied himself, after Dick dicked us, Scooter is the trash who is gonna go down for their sins. But I bet Scooter will come out OK. You just watch.

Who should be punished? George, Dick and Karl lied to us. John Kerry bought their shit and voted for the war. And you, you dumbass. You don't study history. If you didn't spend all your time watching CSI Miami, you'd have taken the time to wake up and look at your world. And you wouldn't have voted for Bush, Jr. And you would've seen the lies for what they are.

And the moon would be made of green cheese. Sad, so sad.