BUSH-CHENEY OFFENCES MUST BE EXPOSED

Why We Can't Let Bush and Cheney Get Away with It.


In the last few weeks, I haven't been able to get away from the talking image of President Bush on the TV screen, and as well, that of the formerly silent, sulking, mysterious and mostly invisible Dick Cheney. Now they have surfaced everywhere with a vengeance, in an attempt to rewrite history in the last few weeks of their disastrous administration. Bush has taken on an eerie, earlier pre-2000-election persona. He is again the affable, drawling, smiling, snickering, back-slapping good "ole boy" that we stupidly elected eight years ago. He has even admitted some "disappointments"...like finding no WMDs in Iraq. Watching this Bush persona it's almost hard to remember that this is the man responsible for the unnecessary war which took the lives of more than 4000 young Americans, caused dreadful injuries to tens of thousands more, killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, caused million to become refugees in their own country and a similar number of the upper and middle classes to seek residence as refugees in surrounding nations, and for domestic policies, that brought our nation to an unprecedented financial crisis, that gutted the government agencies that led to the Katrina disaster, and for too many others to enumerate here. These criminal acts are what Bush terms "disappointments".

In a recent piece in Harper's magazine by Bilmes and Stiglitz, the two economists claim that the waste, lies, fraud, foreign adventurism, failures of oversight and regulation as well as simple corruption of the Bush-Cheney years have resulted in a $10 trillion dollar debt and new obligations for our nation that we will struggle for decades to overcome (See: Harper's magazine Bilmes and Stiglitz Jan 2008).

According to Frank Rich of the NY Times, the Bush Administration has compiled a record which Rich characterizes as: "Eight years of Madoffs" (See NY Times Opinion, Sunday January 8, 2008). Rich writes that the Bush years were a "sinkhole of corruption, cronyism, incompetence and outright theft that epitomized the Bush team's management at home and abroad".

Shunning a formal list of Bush imbroglios, disasters, and incompetence, such as that presented by Dennis Kuciniks's 35 articles of impeachment (Kuciniks Address to Congress: July 25, 2008) and the oft-repeated Iraqi-war-crimes, domestic spying, signing statements, the torture memos, renditions, Justice Department scandals, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Katrina, etc. etc., Mr. Rich focuses on other less widely discussed scandals, but no less disastrous. Included in the columnist's tally are: (1) the $117 billion dollars (for comparison that amount is about one-third of the infamous bank-bail out) ripped off from taxpayers who thought they were paying for Iraqi reconstruction--but according to government sources these funds just "disappeared" into the Iraqi desert winds like the gold dust in the Bogart movie, "Treasure of Sierra Madre" (See Gov Doc. Special Inspector General for Iraq), (2) the false numbers pulled out the air by the government to represent "newly trained Iraqi security forces" for each month (and of course paid for by Uncle Sam), (3) the lost tax revenues from offshore corporate tax havens that Bush ignored, (4) the sex scandal in the Interior Department in which major oil companies used sex, booze, marijuana and cocaine to leverage favorable deals on federal oil and gas royalties from Bush officials, who were tasked to conserve these resources for the American people, and who were too stoned to notice or care. (5) Then there was Secretary of Interior, Dick Kempthoren's quarter-million-dollar-redo of his office bathroom-- something else we all paid for. Rich's list underscores for us the depth and width of the river of waste and corruption of this administration. It's exposure is particularly important right now, as the Bush team runs around to every news outlet and venue in a blatant attempt at rewriting its own disastrous history.

Last month, both Law Professor Johnathan Turley, (on Keith Olberman MSNBC) and Paul Abrams (in the Huffington Post) addressed the issue of why VP Cheney "must be prosecuted". Turley focused rightly only on one of Cheney's crimes when Cheney actually admitted on a televised interview that he not only was fully informed about the use of torture (water boarding) but passed his approval up the line (to the President) for a "go ahead". Turley said flatly "this is a war crime and must be prosecuted". Abrams agreed, indicating that the new Justice Department has "no choice" but to prosecute Cheney (and others, probably including Rice, Yoo, and Gonzales) for war crimes. Abrams added:"If it does not, it will...surrender Americas moral authority in the world and ...(this) will serve as a recruiting tool for"our enemies. In reference to the crimes of the Bush years and why they must be prosecuted, Eugene Robinson (Jan 13, 2008, Washington Post) summarized it well, when he wrote: "But it's important to convene an investigation and learn the truth, all of it, so that no president is tempted to take such liberties again. History, both short-term and long-term, will be grateful."

Will we ever get to see the perpetrators, Bush, Cheney, Rummy, Wolfie, Perl, and John Yoo and their like hauled off in hand cuffs with trench coats over their heads? Unfortunately, I doubt it. Even the cool Mr Obama, who might have shown a little more ire recently when he was rebuffed in his request to use the nation's guest house, the Blair House, so his daughters could begin their school year in a location close to where they will live. The reason: the residence was previously booked. Later, it was revealed by Margaret Carlson (MSNBC) that the Blair House was not occupied, as Mr. Bush had claimed. The devious and petty Mr. Bush first informed the Obamas that the Blair House was unavailable, then to cover his tracks, hastily invited his old Iraq-war-supporter friend, the past Australian prime minister, John Howard up to Washington for a quick one-day "barbie" and to accept a US honor in the middle of the Obama request-period.

Obama has reasons for ignoring the awful past of the Bush years, stating: "I would not want my first term consumed by..(a witch hunt) because I think we've got too many problems to solve." There seems to be no arguing with that line of thought. He should and must be fully devoted to the task of pulling the nation out of the hole we are in, and certainly Congress will have to move ahead quickly on many fronts to new issues. After all, there are only so many hours in a Congressional day. Also, rubbing salt in Republican wounds will not encourage them to work amicably with the new administration. President Obama will need their help to solve the mess Bush left on the White House doorsteps.

But on the other hand, to let these men off Scott-free would, ignore past crimes, compromise our own laws, and undermine our moral authority. Rich states that the country must restore its international reputation, and adds that to be able to make new policy decisions, we must first know what went wrong. That would mean untangling the complex threads of the Bush dealings and incompetence to discover where they went astray.

Recently I heard John Klein of Newsweek give an interview on MSNBC on this very subject. In response to the question of what to do about Bush and Cheney's crimes, he agreed that it would be too much a distraction to prosecute them. However, he offered a novel solution. Give them a presidential pardon! Yes the Congress would indite them for their heinous crimes and at the same time, President Obama would pardon them. They would forever be branded as criminals,, their offences would have been exposed and debated, but the nation would be saved from the distraction of a trial or charges of a witch-hunt, which we have no stomach or time for in the present calamitous times.

In the end, we must somehow prevent our nation from falling into such a disaster again, and to that end, we must not simply sweep the Bush Cheney offences under the proverbial rug. They must be aired and exposed for what they are--overt criminal actions against the constitution, the nation and the world at large.