Oh, NOW you want to cry about it

From the Weekly Standard:

"Why are conservative Republicans, who control the executive and legislative branches of government for the first time in living memory, so vulnerable to the phenomenon of criminalization? Is it simple payback for the impeachment of Bill Clinton? Or is it a reflection of some deep malady at the heart of American politics? If criminalization is seen to loom ahead for every conservative who begins successfully to act out his or her beliefs in government or politics, is the project of conservative reform sustainable?
"We don't pretend to have all the answers, or a solid answer even to one of these questions. But it's a reasonable bet that the fall of 2005 will be remembered as a time when it became clear that a comprehensive strategy of criminalization had been implemented to inflict defeat on conservatives who seek to govern as conservatives. And it is clear that thinking through a response to this challenge is a task conservatives can no longer postpone." (boldface mine)


Oh, this one is rich, rich indeed. Let's review. Republicans pushed on Whitewater, forcing the appointment of an independent counsel, who found zippity-do-dah to implicate the Clintons. Ken Starr testified under oath that he found no proof the Clintons were involved. Republicans pushed at the Supreme Court to declare that a president can be sued and forced to testify in said civil suit. The Court ruled 9-0. Republicans opened a half-dozen congressional investigations to go over the travel office firings, to go over the FBI files problem, to go over Vince Foster's obvious suicide. Conservative editorial pages accused the Clintons of murdering Foster, two teenage boys in Arkansas and massive cocaine parties in Little Rock. What came of this? NOTHING.

Finally, a blow job in the Oval Office, incredibly distasteful, disgusting and classless as it was (especially while getting one of those while on the phone with a congressman), is not a crime. Did Clinton lie under oath? Common sense says yes, but legally, the convoluted definition of sex that Jones' lawyers used gave Clinton wiggle room in a purely legalistic sense. Despite that, it was investigated with zeal, and none other than Tom DeLay pressed the case to the max, with help from his now-disgraced aide Mike Scanlon, who's part of the Abramoff scandal. DeLay said it was imperative that no president or elected official be above the law. Henry Hyde said it. Bob Livingston, in what was a courageous move, resigned because he had strayed like Clinton. All of these Republicans claimed it was all about law, and impeached the president for this, even though a lie about sex in a civil suit over sex 10 years prior hardly fits the "high crimes and misdemeanors" part of the Constitution.

So, fast forward to today, where Tom DeLay is under indictment for money laundering and conspiracy, where Bill Frist is being investigated for insider trading by the SEC, where the White House purchasing director was arrested and indicted, and where Karl Rove and Scooter Libby pretty clearly conspired to and outed an undercover CIA agent, an incident that former CIA director and former President George H.W. Bush said was "treason." The special prosecutor in the Plame case, Patrick Fitzgerald, is now looking at the Vice President himself in this. All of these things mentioned above are crimes.

So, now people like DeLay and Bill Kristol, the Standard's editor, cry foul about the criminalization of politics. They say it's because they're conservatives. What do they say about Clinton, then, and their relentless pursuit of the most masterful politician of our time? What do they say about all the investigations into things that took place years before his presidency? The crimes being investigated against these Republicans are taking place for things they did while in office, things that are against the law. It is against the law to disclose the identity of an undercover agent. It is against the law to launder money for any purpose. It is against the law to sell stock when you know a bad earnings report is coming that will adversely affect that stock's price. It is against the law to conspire to commit crimes.

This isn't payback for Bill Clinton (but it is fun to watch them squirm under the same microscope they created.) The argument Kristol puts forth basically says, "It's okay if you're a Republican." Those who are without sin may cast the first stone. Those who chose to cast stones in the 1990's were not without sin and are now getting karma payback, and paybacks are a bitch. I'm not saying I'm without sin, either, but I don't break the law, and when you break the law, you will get caught, prosecuted, and convicted. They have no room to complain. They created this monster, this "criminalization" when they decided to go after Clinton, and the only thing they got him on was lying about sex. They pressed it to the limit and lost. This time, the crimes are worse than sex, and those in trouble don't have the fallback of their peers judging them in Congress.

Just stay with an answer already!

Now, from the Bush administration spin machine, reason #1573 for invading Iraq, on yesterday's Meet the Press:

MR. RUSSERT: Let me share with you some attitudes of Americans towards the war in Iraq, and here's our latest Wall Street Journal-NBC poll: 51 percent say removing Saddam Hussein was not worth it; 58 percent said we should reduce the number of U.S. troops; 56 percent feel less confident the war will be successful. Majorities now raising huge anxieties, expressing huge anxieties over the war in Iraq.

SEC'Y RICE: I'm quite certain, Tim, that when the American people see every day what they see on their screens, which is violence and, of course, the deaths of Americans and coalition forces, it's very difficult to take. We mourn every sacrifice. But the fact of the matter is that when we were attacked on September 11, we had a choice to make. We could decide that the proximate cause was al-Qaeda and the people who flew those planes into buildings and, therefore, we would go after al-Qaeda and perhaps after the Taliban and then our work would be done and we would try to defend ourselves.

Or we could take a bolder approach, which was to say that we had to go after the root causes of the kind of terrorism that was produced there, and that meant a different kind of Middle East. And there is no one who could have imagined a different kind of Middle East with Saddam Hussein still in power. I know it's difficult, but we have ahead of us the prospect, and I think the very good prospect of a foundation for a democratic and prosperous Iraq that can solve its differences by politics and compromise, that becomes an anchor for a Middle East that is changing.

Excuse me for a second (ducks out of room):

"THAT'S NOT WHAT YOU TOLD US BEFORE YOU WENT IN THERE! YOU SAID IT WAS WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION! YOU SAID NOTHING ABOUT DEMOCRATIZING THE MIDDLE EAST! YOU SAID NOTHING ABOUT THESE ROOT CAUSES! WILL YOU JUST GIVE US THE EVERLOVING TRUTH? WHY MUST YOU ALWAYS CHANGE YOUR REASONS EVERY TWO MONTHS? DON'T YOU HAVE THE COURAGE OF YOUR CONVICTIONS, OR IS IT THAT YOU JUST CAN'T EVER, EVER, ADMIT THAT YOU WERE WRONG, WRONG, WRONG ABOUT WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION?!?!"

(returns to room)

See, this is the thing that makes it almost impossible to stay supportive of this war effort. Every time we stand up for a reason, they change course and come up with a new reason. We did the right thing for Iraq for all the wrong reasons, and the administration makes it more obvious every day that they misled us on this war. I just don't get it, I don't get why they can't be honest about this. Pride kills, and their pride is continuing to kill soldiers, because they just won't admit they screwed up and they won't change course and try something new. We've been doing the same thing in Iraq for three years now, and it's not working. Germany and Japan weren't used to democracy either after World War II, and yet they adapted well to democracy. What's the problem here?

It's clear now. We're the problem. We've been inflexible, we've been ignorant of Iraqi culture, and our soldiers have been put in a terrible position. I met a Marine yesterday about to ship out there, and I shook his hand and thanked him for his bravery. He's going to Fallujah. He's a engineer who disarms mines and IED's. He's going into harm's way because we didn't secure weapons depots in 2003. He's going because we can't withdraw due to our inflexibility. He's going for a cause that we can't even figure out because this president and his cabinet cannot find it in themselves to just tell us the truth and tell us a plan. If we're sending people like that Marine, as the people who the President was elected to serve, we deserve an answer, not bullshit.