The past few days of news from the nation's capital have felt like a demented game "can you top this?" In the middle of the week, Congress passed a detainees bill that makes a mockery of the rule of law and the bill of rights, expanding even further the reach of an executive branch whose powers have grown without check these past five years.
By Friday, another Republican member of the House, Florida's Mark Foley, resigned after news broke that he had a habit of sending creepy emails and IMs to teen-age Congressional pages. It appears that top Republican leadership including Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert and Majority Leader John Boehner knew about Foley's misdeeds for a long time (in the case of Rep. John Shimkus, up to five years ago) - and did nothing.
Also of note, and perhaps worst of all: A report in Bob Woodward's new book that former CIA dirctor George Tenet warned Condi Rice in July 2001 of an imminent Al-Qaeda attack but couldn't get her to take action, and that the meeting was never revealed to the 9/11 Commission. If it's true, it's no wonder that Bush apologists have tried so hard - especially in recent months - to distort and discount the Clinton admin's efforts to get Osama bin Laden.
But as Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts wrote last week, "It's hard to imagine a more useless argument than the one that has reignited over which president should get the blame for Sept. 11. Here's an idea: Let's blame Osama bin Laden! ... I am less concerned about fixing blame for what happened five years ago than in making sure something worse doesn't happen five weeks from now. Which is why I think the most important headline of the week wasn't about Clinton, but rather the leaking of a federal report that says the war in Iraq has not made America safer. Rather, the report says, the war has attracted and radicalized more Muslims faster than anyone anticipated. Put simply, the war is creating more terrorists than it kills." (Emphasis mine. Read more here.)
How much more of a case for change do we need than the events of the past seven days? Corruption, perversion, ignorance, willful deceit, megalomania - it's business as usual in Washington, D.C.
Enemy combatants fight outside the rules of war. The our outside the law. They are certainly outside our bill of rights....
Posted by: Bill Baar | October 02, 2006 at 05:44 AM
Thanks for the comment, Bill.
Speaking of operating outside the law, any thoughts on the Foley and Tenet stories?
Posted by: Julie Fanselow | October 02, 2006 at 08:42 AM
If we don't follow our own laws, even with enemies, then we're no better than they are.
Posted by: sharon fisher | October 02, 2006 at 08:43 AM
Sara at F-Words had a good post about this idea. Click my name.
Posted by: Julie Fanselow | October 02, 2006 at 09:08 AM