A Rose Peeps Up Through The Concrete
by Eric Malone
Smells like blood in this here water.
It seems like only a week ago that Scooter Libby was tightening his sphincter in anticipation of a l-o-o-o-o-ng rape without a reach-around, not because he exposed a CIA Agent to loss of job, threatening her life and National Security, but because he lied to Gerald Fitzpatrick or Patrick Fitzgerald....you know, the Irish guy who decided his work was done after convicting the smallest scapegoat, not having the cojones to go after Cheney, Rove, and Jorge, even though their fingerprints were all over Valerie Plame and the jury saw those indelible stains on their blue Armani suits before we all got taken to the cleaners.
If there was any doubt that the murderous DNA goes all the way to the top, the Libby trial put that quaint notion to bed, even if the Prosecutor felt he couldn’t Call It Treason in a Court of Law. Maybe Paul Wellstone’s last flight was still fresh in his mind”
But just last week there was a stench lingering in the air after the jury skated past a mistrial, bad enough that we needed someone with juridical integrity to light a match in here. Yeah, it reeked that badly. And I now know how the poor people of Czechoslovakia must have felt in August of 1968 when the Russian tanks rolled in to crush the “Prague Spring” of Alexander Dubček, the kindly patriarch who tried to put a “human face on Communism,” only to be kicked in the balls by Kosygin.
That’s how it feels as I see the withered face of a country I love dearly slowly being strangled by the gradual creep of smiling simmering fascism, where mercenaries are being hired to fight our wars and soldiers of fortune are being bribed to join the National Police State (you know them as Homeland Security Federal Police). I have seen their cars in San Francisco and around the Bay Area, and guess what? Even though we are footing the bill, someone else is writing the check for these “law” enforcement officers.
But then, just as I rage against the dying of the light, the rotting hull of rich criminals and legislative corpses begins to collapse in on itself.
And you know what? It’s the little things, just like with Watergate.
You’ve probably already guessed that I’m talking about the fact that Republicans are whispering “Bring Me The Head of Alberto Gonzales.” Why? Because the guy who says “Habeas corpus” is merely a “suggestion,” not a cherished ideal that stretches back across civilized history for 792 years, Señor Torture, has been caught lying. What else is new, I hear the jaded among you asking? Well, um, I guess it’s a big deal because he was lying to Congress. Under oath. And about partisan politics, not national security. (The lie itself is almost insignificant in the larger scheme of the evil and destruction these unrepentant bastards have wrought, but it was about firing 8 Federal Prosecutors because they were actually going after Republicans who broke the law.)
Oh sure, lots of people in the Torquemada Administration have done it. Why do you think Shrubby and Cheney refused to go under oath the only time they were ever deposed, by the 9/11 Whitewash Commission?
And lots of people have lied about lots of things since December 12, 2000. Nothing new under the sun. I’m kinda getting used to it, truth be told.
But this is exactly what happened in Watergate, for those of you too young to remember, or if you have recently arrived in our once beautiful former democracy.
Nixon didn’t resign under threat of Impeachment because of Bribes, Political Payoffs, Attempted Assassinations (some of them successful), Murdering Black Panthers in their Beds, Beating up and Shooting College Kids, Taking Illegal Payments from Milk Companies and ITT, Extending the Vietnam War Unnecessarily, Bombing Neutral Countries (Thailand, Cambodia, Laos), and Selling Heroin to Finance Covert Operations.
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