the emerging shitstorm

History will look back on this moment as the one in which that they lost all control of it.

I mean, last weekend, like everyone else, I was sincerely trying to understand Libby and Miller's goofy notes to each other. Now I'd just guess that Miller and Libby...like everyone involved in this mess...are scared shitless...and it runs all the way to the top.

There's only one reason that anybody, even in gossip, mentions governmental nobodies like John Hannah and David Wurmser...and that's when folks in government are in deep, deep trouble.

I remember back in my home state of Minnesota, occasionally there'd be a scandal or two...and what would usually emerge was that in the monolithic culture of Lake Wobegon...once enough people did something wrong...then, within that class of people, most everybody did it...and the big excuse, safety in numbers, became the big trap. Witness the GOP.

It seems to me, in this emerging shitstorm, that we are very close to breaking open the hard shell of operational impunity that gave governmental players what must have felt like a cloak of immunity: everybody was doing it. Terror alerts, talk of mushroom clouds, forged documents, back channel collaboration with the press, election tampering through intimidation and calculated challenges: these are all on the table for journalists who are willing to go there. The time for the truth is now. There are reputations to be made. This is why we have freedom of the press.

I'm not talking about bloggers and links, though that is always welcome and needed, I'm talking about interviews with the major players on major news outlets. I'm talking about folks who are deeply involved finally coming clean about this administration and how they operate. And, inevitably, that will point back to the President. There is no way around this. He can avoid responsibility for minor things, for quibbles, but he chose Cheney and Rove and Hadley and Bolton and Rice, and he stuck by them during the 2004 campaign, knowing what he knew.

It's come to the point where the patriotic thing to do for all involved is, simply, to tell the truth: the fortunes and legal jeopardy of the President and his buddies be damned. And I am convinced that the simple truth, presented in unvarnished terms, will topple this Presidency.

Despite being scoffed at, by friends and family alike, I predict this President and his Vice President will no longer hold office in 18 months time. The 2006 election will become extremely significant in this context; it will be about the the power to investigate and it will be about who holds the Senate and who determines the Speaker of the House. The GOP will regret the day they let George Bush and Karl Rove smear John McCain in South Carolina, and the U.S. will come to regret this love affair with the GOP...a party that has given us: Nixon and Watergate, Reagan/Bush and Iran/Contra, and now Bush/Cheney and the emerging shitstorm swirling in Washington.

There's something that links all three of these scandals: abuse of power and the public trust.

It's time for the American public to wake up.

{Permalink}