The Tipping Point By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Wednesday 04 October 2006
Let's see.
Anything important happen over the last several days?
Seventeen American soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Saturday. Dozens of civilians have died in the last few days as the sectarian civil war in Baghdad reaches new and horrific levels of violence. The bombers have gotten clever, it seems; they detonate one device to bring in rescue workers, police and onlookers. When the post-blast crowd is thick enough, they detonate another device.
Condoleezza Rice has been exposed once again as a bad liar. Several new reports confirm that CIA Director Tenet and CIA Counterterrorism Director Black did, in fact, deliver a stern warning to her regarding an impending terror attack two months before 9/11. That same warning was given one week later to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and Attorney General Ashcroft, in a briefing described as a "10 out of 10" on the Take-This-Seriously-o-Meter by the official who prepared it.
Rice, Rumsfeld and Ashcroft all received frightening warnings before the attacks, with Bush getting the August 6th PDB warning to cap it off, and nothing came of it. This moves matters well beyond simple negligence. It is abundantly clear that there was a policy in place to whistle past any and all terror warnings in the months before 9/11. It wasn't about incompetence. It was policy.
Disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff reappeared on the scene over these last few days. A bipartisan Congressional report described hundreds of contacts between Abramoff and the White House, including 82 contacts with Karl Rove's office and at least ten between Abramoff and Rove himself. Recall that former White House spokesman Scott McClellan brushed off any White House-Abramoff associations back in January, describing them merely as a "few staff-level meetings."
Congressman Henry Waxman, minority chair for the House Government Reform Committee, released a massive batch of emails from Abramoff to various Washington DC power players. In one, dated March 18, 2002, Abramoff wrote, "I was sitting yesterday with Karl Rove, Bush's top advisor, at the NCAA basketball game, discussing Israel when this email came in. I showed it to him. It seems that the President was very sad to have to come out negatively regarding Israel, but that they needed to mollify the Arabs for the upcoming war on Iraq."
"The upcoming war in Iraq," wrote Abramoff casually, one year and two days before the invasion was undertaken. It seems those "few staff-level meetings" availed Abramoff of some significant information. How this criminal came to know war in Iraq was coming before the rest of the world did is something that deserves a great deal of intense scrutiny.
So, yeah, a few things have bubbled up in the last few days that, one would think, might bring a drop of sweat or two out on any number of Republican brows. Amazingly enough, however, it isn't the war or the 9/11 lies and failures or even Abramoff that is inspiring the Republican perspiration.
No, it's a sex scandal. Of course.
(snip)
It is difficult to nail down which aspect of all this is more repugnant. Certainly, a congressman using his position to prey on children, all the while sitting on a committee aimed at protecting children from people like him, is beneath contempt. Almost equally disgusting has been the all-too-familiar chorus from bigots like Pat Buchanan, who cannot miss an opportunity to conflate homosexuality with pedophilia. To paraphrase comedian Chris Rock, that train's never late.
But perhaps worst of all is the fact that a story like this is what captures the complete attention of the news media, and by proxy, captures the attention of the American public. Iraq, 9/11 and Abramoff don't pique the interest of those tasked to report the facts. A sex scandal, however, is a five-alarm house on fire. This does not say much for them, and in the end, doesn't say much for the rest of us, either.
Still, there is this. Columnist Molly Ivins once famously noted that you got to dance with them what brung ya. This Foley scandal may well become the tipping point that drives this catastrophically dangerous Republican party out of power in Congress come November, and may finally unleash an avalanche that will sweep some degree of accountability back into government. It is sad and sorry and sick that it took the exposure of a molester to even entertain the possibility, but then again, this is George W. Bush's America. Sad and sorry and sick have been our watchwords for a very long time.
More:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/100406R.shtml
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