Niranjan Ramakrishnan, writing at Counterpunch, reminds us of a very disturbing reality: the fact that many of us hope that prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will finally be the one to finally convince all Americans that the Bush administration lied its way into the Iraq war and that he will tell us all exactly how it happened.
Despite the fact that most Americans are now opposed to the war and President Bush, many still choose not to hold the Bush administration fully accountable for what it has done. If they did, they would be screaming for their representatives to impeach Bush and Cheney for what they’ve perpetuated: the destruction of Iraq and the deaths and injuries of countless soldiers and civilians – all based on lies.
We see it in congresspeople on both sides who, as Meteor Blades reminds us, still call the war a “mistake”. As he tells us: this was not a mistake, this was a deliberate deception by power-hungry warmongers. Surely there can be no greater outrage than knowing that your country’s leaders have sent its sons and daughters to die over lies.
Yet, here we are on the eve of possible indictments in the Plame affair, after more than 2000 US soldiers have perished in Iraq and the people’s best hope for getting to the bottom of the trail of deceit that led there is one lone prosecutor – Patrick Fitzgerald – because those in power and those in the opposition cannot rock the foundations of the administration hard enough to move them out of DC permanently.
As Counterpunch’s Ramakrishnan, concludes:
So why is this riveting the country’s attention? Because the story follows the familiar theme so beloved of Hollywood and John Grisham — the lone hero struggling against a sinister web of evil, where everything comes down to one last battle on the edge of the cliff . Now playing at a TV set near you: Fitzgerald Against the Machine.
But when institutions have been hollowed out, consigning checks on unbridled power to hopes of individual heroism and goodness, we have doubly arrived, to the promised land of the Reagan revolution, and at the doorstep of the third world.
There is something very broken about a system of government that is unable and unwilling to thoroughly account for how it got itself into an illegal war and that refuses to inform its people and the rest of the world about how it will finally get out.
But is it broken beyond all repair. I am hoping, for my grand daughter’s sake and for all our children’s sake we will be able, with much hard work, right all the wrongs that these greedy warmongers have inflicted upon our once great nation. I am not willing to conced letting these scumbags get off with a tap on the wrist. Here is to tomorrow and the beginning of a new era in this country. One where all will be held accountable.
but I kind of wholeheartedly agree.
Whew. Where to begin? It’s a topic I’ve considered writing a diary about, but have always been overwhelmed.
There are certainly problems inherent in ‘the system’. And we can see them all very, very clearly.
But the fault doesn’t lie wholly in the system, or the people in charge of it.
Part of it is the populace.
Right now, I live with a friend of mine who is ‘the populace’. Uninformed by choice, because all of the events going on in politics, news, etc. are essentially too big and scary.
We’ve created an information society full of uninformed people. And it’s increasingly easy to isolate oneself.
So before this post gets too long, yes, the system is broken. But there are a lot of people who just don’t know. It’s not that they don’t care; it’s just that they don’t care to know.
Well, I agree that there are people in this country that are not paying attention. Let’s face it when 50% of the registered voters don’t even show up to vote it IS because they chose not to be informed. We are living in a society of instant gratification and 30 second sound bites. These folks take a sip of their coffee and a bite of there poptart as they run out the door and catch 15 seconds of the thirty second sound bite.
I believe it is up to us, the awake ones to help the sleepwalkers back into conscientiousness. One person at a time. If each of us can take the time to wake one person up and get them to pay attention and get them to vote and read and listen to what is really going on then we just may be able to do it.
I took the time to tell a gal here in my comples that is 28 and hasd never voted about my Crawford journey. She had no clue who Cindy was, Rove, Libby, Joe Wilson, Plame none of it. After I spent over an hour “informing” her she actually apologised and promised to pay more attention and vote next time. I don’t know if she really will. I know I was pretty complacent at 28. But we have to try. We don’t need to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqis, we need to do it here at home.
but also because they don’t think there is anything that they can do about it. No way to actually make a difference in the process. Voting is enough, right?
I’ll admit, that was me, a year ago. Why bother? It didn’t seem that important at all. What was I supposed to do about any of this?
Then came Nov. 3, and everything changed. It didn’t matter anymore whether or not I could do anything; it just mattered that I couldn’t live with myself knowing I hadn’t tried.
It’s just that not everyone has had that moment yet. That’s why we always talk about things like ‘Well, maybe the gas prices will finally wake people up’ or ‘Geez, do you think people will wake up now that people in the White House are being indicted?!?’. We’re trying to encourage that moment.
I think that the reasons we’ve ended up where we’re at are at least threefold:
There’s a lot more to it, but those are the main points (I think…take it all with a grain of salt since I’m still new to this game 🙂
Oh I think you have the three main points down to a tee. We all have that moment where everything changes for us. I just hope it doesn’t take them as long as it took me. Must get sleep. Tomorrow is a big day. Thanks for the conversation. Good night.
I too am off to bed. G’night!
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The Huffington Post – Bob Cesca
Smearing Joe Wilson and leaking his wife’s name to Judy Miller, Matt Cooper, Bob Novak, and the rest is just one small part of a much larger and prearranged plot orchestrated by the PNAC neocons since the first Gulf War ended and Bush 41 lost re-election.
Propaganda and controlling the easily manipulated shills in the mainstream media has been an integral part of the larger strategy played out by the administration neocons. There’s a multitude of confirmed cases of propaganda coming from the administration and it’s clear that the Wilson effort is a White House Iraq Group (WHIG) and PNAC cousin of the propaganda campaigns waged by the Departments of Education, Defense, HHS and in the Medicare debate. (Not to mention the open case of Jimmy Guckert.)
EXTRA :: Judith Miller Negotiating NYT Dismissal?
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
▼▼▼ READ MY DIARY
I have to commend you on your diaries, especially the past week. You have kept us(along with Susan and Booman) so well informed and your writing has been superb. Keep up the absolutely fabulous work but God woman, get some rest…lol! You rock!!
Yes, Catnip, thank you. I admit when I saw you had taken the time to write yet another diary my reaction was: Good God, Catnip has written a lot today — time for a catnap!
Hope you are resting well now and not up doing middle of the night research.
Thanks to all who contribute so much to this site.
Thanks. 🙂
I wrote another diary in my head last nite when I was falling asleep but now I can’t remember what it was about. lol
P.S. I have long afternoon naps.
I have bowed out the last couple of weeks-because there is a certain sense of inevitability-and there is not a whole lot that can be done at this point. I would like to think that there is a hero in the person of Patrick Fitzgerald. And that is encouraging, but—big but- intelligent people that I know- are completely clueless.
I realize that not everyone has the time to read and pay attention to the political ins and outs– and there are so many overwhelming issues-it is hard for me to take it in,much less someone who has time-pressing tasks- like getting to work and getting their kids to school and daycare and doctors,and god knows what.
HOWEVER- I feel it IS my job to disseminate all the reality I can to those who know me and trust my judgement.
And now is the time– as they say- strike when the iron is hot.
The intent of the far right, since the advent of Reagan, has been to hollow out our system of checks and balances, to rinse out its vitality through shadow government and Newspeak.
Three empires have been pursued under this far right umbrella:
The empire of fundamentalism — converting the entire world to Protestantism and making the King James Bible the only law anywhere in the world. Rule by hatred and intolerance.
The empire of business — capitalism, globalization, conquest through unfair advantage, monopoly and war when necessary. Rule by avarice and greed.
The empire of the New America, colossus of the planet, brooking no other nation state to even raise its head and call itself sovereign. Rule by pride and piracy.
Running together like three muddy rivers, self-serving and serving all three agendas, this collusion of mad souls has driven this nation to the brink of collapse.
It is probably too late to wake everyone up to this slow death of a nation before they all awake to hunger, privation and misery. We are very close now.
The ones who do not want to know even now — even now! — will not want to know in the days of turmoil ahead. They will just want to lash out at whomever their TV and talk radio point them to. Rush and his ilk will guide them.
So thoroughly divided is this nation, so separated out into our neighborhoods, cul-de-sacs, and cars — each consumer living at the furthest end of a line of credit which requires repayment every month to a financial tapeworm — that we are not neighbors, or friends, or Americans.
We are scared consumers. Rove and Cheney and Bush know this, and use this against us.
Fear has driven this country down, and is now going to break it.
What rises next will most likely be the outcome of widespread anger, force and mutual harm.
May we come to days of reconciliation, like South Africa was forced to face and live through. May we build a nation like we once had.
I know too many people that are trying to make ends meet, support their families, just survive, to have the capacity to rock the administration and scream to the lies. It’s so tragically ironic that these same folks have the higher majority of sons and daughters in the Reserves & Guard serving in Iraq -who have been incredibly abused by this most corrupt administration.Stay the course=minus Jenna & Barb Jr- Lets give some props to the military families who have taken a stance and those who have organized, at high risk, against this war. I take heart, to a degree, that this whole treasongate affair has caused even mainstream media to begin to link to the lies that begat ‘this blood on the hands of every tax payer war’. I do not agree with the ‘counterpunch’ hollywood analogy and this is certainly not about Fitzgerald singulary standing against the world-millions worldwide stand with him.
‘There is something very broken about a system of government that is unable and unwilling to thoroughly account for how it got itself into an illegal war and that refuses to inform its people and the rest of the world about how it will finally get out.’
There is something very broken—eat diary-my post above is reacting to Counterpunch- they do amazing work and sometimes they are too cynical-even for me
The essence of liberty and freedom is time. “Only if individuals have time that they can dispose of freely as they see fit can liberty be truly meaningful.” Walter Lippman said that free time was “the substance of liberty, the material of free will.” From Herbert Marcuse, “the reduction of the working day to a point where the mere quantum of labor time no longer arrests human development is the first prerequisite for freedom.”
I started a comment that turned into a rant and may turn into a diary, but for now: don’t despair. Every intelligent person in the country in 1933 was convinced that the system is broken. We were all certain in 1968 that the system was broken.
But you know what? It doesn’t matter. We have to try to use it, or try to fix it, or whatever metaphor you want. Yes, this is a brutal war built on insidious lies, and it has us all near despair. And there’s a lot wrong, and a lot to fear.
But we live our lives and do our best to make this country and this world better. We have a lifetime to do it, and only one lifetime to do it. So just do it.
Console each other, exchange ideas and feelings but build alliances and don’t confuse the really bad guys with the guys who aren’t completly right all the time.
It’s a few hours into Friday as I write this, and I know that it’s likely that in 24 hours some people here are going to be happy with Fitzgerald, and some are going to be disappointed. It’s true that he is in a unique position now to really make a difference. But he’s being built up to be a paragon, and that’s too much burden. The narrative eventually goes the other way.
Lots of folks, as someone above stated, remain clueless about this Plame/Iraq thing. Many are too busy scratching out a “living” from paycheck to paycheck to have time for updating themselves about current political issues. Recently in Michigan and elsewhere, Delphi Corp, after declaring Chapter 11 bankruptcy, has told its workers to accept $9 an hour, (previously workers on average made $26 an hour) and pay $5,000 a year for health care. As union officials have pointed out, these workers will no longer be able to afford the cars that they help make.
Earlier today I read about record quarterly profits for Exxon. 10 Billion net income for one quarter. Some would say these profits are just part of how capitalism works. Corporations are after all amoral entities. I would argue that somewhere on the way to 10 Billion, they became immoral!
As our middle class sinks into the quicksand of “free market competition” and globalization, corporations that have funded the radical right agenda have reaped the benefits of their investment.
The gap between the very wealthy, and the rest of us, seemingly grows wider by the day. Reclaiming a government that has already been bought and paid for will not be an easy task. It will be an impossible task, if we all sit on our hands waiting for a hero to save us all.
I too, am waiting and hoping for a wonderful Fitzmas present today. However, whether that present arrives or not, our current situation will remain much the same. We all must do what we can to educate our fellow Americans about how we have come to this point.
The leaders of the progressives, must aggressively state our program for change and reform. Part of that program, must restore some degree of social responsibility to the private sector of our economy. They must also communicate our plan to disengage from our occupation of Iraq to our people and the rest of the world.
To allow things to continue along the same path, is to court disaster, both internationally, and domestically. Taking our government for granted has allowed it to be taken over by BushCo and friends. If we want our country back, we are going to have to get busy.
I couldn’t agree more. Patrick Fitzgerald, I believe as you may have read is fixing this to fit his own personal conservative view point.
But aside from that ……to rely on a Republican prosecutor to save the democrats is pathetic.
Fitzgerald who is, I beleive a very conservative republican has become the hero of the left who expect a Ftizmas and are going to get according to reports nothing but a little Libby on perjury charges.
And Fitzgerald has been turned into a gigantic Santa Claus hero and now it seems he was just another Republican all along.