Critics of President Bush expecting that he would issue pardons to his staff for any possible war crimes, underestimated the devious cunning of his advisers. Not issuing the pardons may have been their greatest stroke of genius because it provides President Obama with a loose-loose decision.
If President Obama initiates a war crimes investigation, the conservative talk show hosts will unleash a propaganda counter-attack that will be a relentless stream of vitriol that will question Obama’s reasoning, sanity, and patriotism. The attempts to formulate a program of change will become deadlocked in a debate about the need for any war crimes trials.
The Republicans will use the “innocent until proved guilty” dodge to sabotage every step of the investigation process. (Note: by that criteria, Hitler can not be considered a war criminal.)
If President Obama does not conduct a war crimes investigation, then the Republicans can claim that it constitutes a <I>de facto</I> “not guilty” verdict and closes the topic forever.
Imagine that Hitler didn’t commit suicide and that after the Allied victory, Hitler avoided being indicted for war crimes. Wouldn’t his supporters have claimed that the fact he wasn’t put on trial meant that there wasn’t enough evidence for a conviction?
Was there any chance that Hitler would have been given a pass due to good-sportsmanship?
If President Obama wants to form a consensus majority, he has to avoid a divisive trial.
If he advocates “forgive and forget,” then eventually the Republicans can use the fact that no trial was held as the basis for saying “if there were any war crimes, then Obama became an accessory after the fact by not holding any investigations.” At that point the Obama administration will want to avoid any discussions about the possibility that war crimes may have been committed during Bush’s term in office.
Forgoing any Christmas pardons for the advisers who delivered the “weapons of mass destruction” rational for going to war, was clever raised to the third power.
President Bush didn’t issue any pardons and now the next move is up to President elect Obama because any pardons would have been seen as avoiding punishment for some wrong that had been committed. Without pardons to denounce and decry, the next move is up to President Obama and he has other more important issues needing immediate attention.
So who do you think will win this year’s Best Motion Picture Oscar
Ned Kelly said: “Such is life.”
Now, the disk jockey will play AC/DC’s song “Highway to Hell” and we will scram. Have a “no harm, no foul” type week.
The Tattlesnake – Is Gov. Rod Getting Rammed? Edition
What’s the Republican Political Angle to the Blagojevich Prosecution?
Is Illinois’ F**king Golden Boy Merely the Stooge for a Partisan GOP Attack on Obama and the Dems?
Had Enough Leading Questions Already?
While some may choose others – such as Billo, Hannity, the Savage Wiener or Radio’s Anal Cyst Rush — as a reliable weathervane of what not to believe, I have my own preference – second-tier CNN newsreader Kyra Phillips. In the case of the first four names, we know they are regurgitating their daily Talking Points from the Ministry of DoublePlusGood Neocon Truth, but Kyra aspires to a level of journalistic integrity that renders her eructations of state-sanctioned Big Media hooey more entertaining – and she’s easier on the eyes and ears than the Cave Boys.
I first noticed Kyra’s particular talent in this regard back in May of 2003, following Junior’s Commander-Cody-with-a-Codpiece moment on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln and his hilariously boneheaded ‘Mission Accomplished’ ramblings afterward that ‘major combat operations’ had been completed in Iraq.
The Most Trusted Name in Newspeak had Kyra onboard the carrier that day and, with time to fill and a Glorious Victory in Eastasia to celebrate, she was given a free ride on a US Navy jet at the taxpayers’ expense. After landing, the breathless and excited Ms. Phillips gushed — only verbally, as far as I know — over the sea-going military, jet pilots, aircraft carriers and the whole goddamned Good War thingie – we had kicked Iraqi behind and all was right-wing with the world! But I noticed something in Kyra’s flushed smiling face and twittering-with-glee voice – why, it reminded me of a time decades before when I ran into a notorious groupie just hours after she had ‘balled’ (late ’60s slang term for copulation) every member of her favorite band! Of course, the video of Bush’s dumb publicity stunt is only useful now as a platform to launch a thousand jokes, and I’m sure Kyra’s embarrassing orgiastic spurt of militaristic slathering, wearing a flight helmet, no less, has been filed in the root cellar at CNN never to be seen again.
In the years since, whenever Kyra decides to editorialize the news, whether it be Rudy Giuliani’s popularity with Dixie-Fried Republicans, Fred Thompson’s manly irresistibility to voters, or Sarah Palin guaranteeing a big McCain win with the womenfolk, I have sure knowledge that whichever way Kyra blows, so to speak, the opposite is true.
This came up again a few weeks ago as the news of Scooter Libby prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s December 9th arrest of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich blanketed the airwaves like an all-day Chicago blizzard. There was Kyra, frowning eyebrows crawling toward one another, serious-minded caterpillars an omen of the bad news to come, hyperventilating that the Blago scandal was “ten times worse than Watergate,” an attitude likely shared by some of her second-string Big Media cable colleagues but not expressed in so grandiose and historic a phrase.
Really, Kyra, ‘ten times worse than Watergate’? Hint to Phillips’ fevered brainpan: Blago didn’t have a private ‘Plumbers’ force breaking into his political opponents’ offices, he didn’t suborn perjury, he didn’t claim executive privilege to protect himself, he didn’t have a slush fund with millions of dollars in it to pay off criminals in his employ, and any scandals he’s alleged to be involved in are fairly pedestrian examples of political corruption and not a Constitutional crisis for the nation.
Perhaps she was taking her cue from Fitzgerald, who buzzed that Blago was on a “crime spree.” Whoa! Al Capone went on ‘crime sprees’ such as the infamous St. Valentine’s Day Massacre – Blago’s babbling about wringing cash out of various politicians and bigwigs comes nowhere near that level of violent wrongdoing.
Whatever Blago’s crimes, no one died, no one was injured, he didn’t start any unnecessary wars based on lies, he didn’t authorize torture or the waste of billions of dollars in taxpayer money through no-bid contracts, he didn’t order Ken Blackwell to finagle the Ohio vote in 2004 to shoehorn Junior back into the presidency, he didn’t conspire to steal an election and jail the winner, as in the Don Siegelman case in Alabama, all of which seem to me to be much more serious than these routine instances of alleged malfeasance by Blagojevich.
But there’s more to this story than has been unearthed by the corporate BM, using the telescope from the wrong end, as usual.
Here are a few facts that have been missed in the rush to convict Blago:
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