© Merle Harton, Jr. | About | XML/RSS

Gonzales Steals the Car

On March 13, a week ago, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said that he knew very little about the firing of the eight Department of Justice (DOJ) attorneys,¹ but today it was revealed that he attended a November 27 strategy meeting with his (former) chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, and a handful of DOJ officials and there approved a five-step plan for firing the prosecutors.² This lie is not in itself significant, but together with the other lies that have issued from the Cheney-Bush administration it establishes a clear trend. Every nation has in its history a period of great corruption among leadership. This is ours, once again.

But then perhaps the lie is significant. A year ago, Patrick Fitzgerald, in explaining why Cheney's chief of staff, Scooter Libby, was indicted by a federal jury on five felony charges of lying to investigators and misleading the grand jury in the Valerie Plame leak case, said: "We brought those cases because we realized that the truth is the engine of our judicial system."³ Truth is the engine of the judicial system because speaking the truth is what makes rational discourse possible. We should certainly expect its appreciation from the Attorney General of the United States, but perhaps not from someone who wants now to be known as a member of the class of Bushevik liars. It's not that we can't live both with what is true and with what is false, for that is a fact of life and the process by means of which we get to our many forms of knowledge; what we can't abide is the lie.

Is this why Mr Bush doesn't want Congress to interview his staff under oath or have their testimony set in the form of a transcript?⁴ He himself sets up the suspicion that they plan to speak not the truth and that forcing them to take an oath, or make an affirmation, would require them to lie; having their words transcripted would permit a third party to discover more readily that their words were false ones. I guess that makes perfect sense: if you're planning to lie, why let everybody know about it?

My problem with the Cheney-Bush presidency and their evil pack is very close to St Paul's problem with the citizens of first-century Crete. In his epistle to his Gentile convert Titus, he said the Cretans were "mere talkers and deceivers" and even went so far as to repeat Epimenides' own words: 'Even one of their own prophets has said, "Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons." This testimony is true.'⁵ Had Epimenides not been a Cretan, his remark would have been mere vicious opinion, but coming from a Cretan his statement results in a form of the so-called liar paradox, making a contradiction out of an apparently self-referential proposition.⁶ Have we reached the point yet where we ought to say, "All Busheviks are liars"?⁷

1.  Transcript of Media Availability with Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, March 13, 2007: "What I know is that there began a process of evaluating strong performers, not-as-strong performers, and weak performers. And so far as I knew my chief of staff was involved in the process of determining who were the weak performers. Where were the districts around the country where we could do better for the people in that district, and that's what I knew. But again, with respect to this whole process, like every CEO, I am ultimately accountable and responsible for what happens within the department. But that is in essence what I knew about the process; was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on. That's basically what I knew as the Attorney General."
2.  "Gonzales attended meeting on US attorney firings," Reuters, March 23, 2007.
3.  "Cheney Aide Charged With Lying in Leak Case," New York Times, October 29, 2005.
4.  "White House Offers Interview With Rove," AP/ABC News, March 20, 2007. This news article is archived at Truthout.org.
5.  See Titus 1:5-16: 5The reason I left you in Crete was that you might straighten out what was left unfinished and appoint elders in every town, as I directed you. 6An elder must be blameless, the husband of but one wife, a man whose children believe and are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient. 7Since an overseer is entrusted with God's work, he must be blameless—not overbearing, not quick-tempered, not given to drunkenness, not violent, not pursuing dishonest gain. 8Rather he must be hospitable, one who loves what is good, who is self-controlled, upright, holy and disciplined. 9He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it. / 10For there are many rebellious people, mere talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision group. 11They must be silenced, because they are ruining whole households by teaching things they ought not to teach—and that for the sake of dishonest gain. 12Even one of their own prophets has said, "Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons." 13This testimony is true. Therefore, rebuke them sharply, so that they will be sound in the faith 14and will pay no attention to Jewish myths or to the commands of those who reject the truth. 15To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure. In fact, both their minds and consciences are corrupted. 16They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him. They are detestable, disobedient and unfit for doing anything good.
6.  Attributed to sixth-century philosopher-poet Epimenides. In its simple form, Epimenides' statement results in a paradox because if what he says (as a Cretan) is true, then his statement has to be false. The paradox is common in logic textbooks during the Middle Ages and thereafter; other variants include (Bertrand) Russell's paradox and the Burali-Forti paradox in set theory.
6.  And then there's this op-ed from James C. Moore: "Don't expect the truth from Karl Rove," Los Angeles Times, March 13, 2007; archived at Common Dreams News Center.

Remembering Guns and Butter

"History's so strong / History's so strong" - Red Hot Chili Peppers¹

As Monday, March 19, marks the fourth anniversary of the Iraq War, CODEPINK has sponsored a new poll (carried out by Zogby International on March 7-9), that found two-thirds (68%) of Americans surveyed are in favor of withdrawing US troops sooner rather than later.² The results are very similar to those in other recent polls.³

This isn't about the polls, but about how we're going to get US soldiers and mercenaries out of Iraq much sooner than later. Street protests aren't resulting in policy changes, and if yesterday's anti-war march from the Lincoln Memorial to the Pentagon is any indication of American mood, everybody's just plain angry.⁴

Congress can stop the war in Iraq, just as it stopped the Vietnam War,⁵ but I'm inclined to think that the tipping point is going to be the economy, if it's going to be anything at all. We're already funding the destruction of Iraq with borrowed money, so the only issue with the new $100 billion defense-budget request by the Cheney-Bush presidency is which credit card we're going to put this on.

The one sure thing that gets Americans away from the television set long enough to pay attention to the world around them is the odor of the economy. When that starts to stink, and it may be soon, we'll find the Iraq War back in the field of vision of most Americans. Again we'll have to choose between guns and butter. I think a trillion dollars is a lot of money, especially when we can't pay it back.

1.  Lyrics from the Red Hot Chili Peppers' song "Save the Population," on the band's Greatest Hits album released in November 2003.
2.  See the March 16 news release at Common Dreams News Center.
3.  For example, see the compendium of polls on Iraq at Pollingreport.com and the March 8 Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research poll, "Voters want Congress to mandate change—most troops out by early '08."
4.  'As war protesters marched toward Arlington Memorial Bridge en route to the Pentagon yesterday, they were flanked by long lines of military veterans and others who stood in solidarity with US troops and the Bush administration's cause in Iraq. Many booed loudly as the protesters passed, turned their backs to them or yelled, "If you don't like America, get out!"' So reported the Washington Post today. The new American face of Iraq War proponents is surely the angry Marine in this Marvin Joseph photo. Anti-war protests will not change the hearts and minds of such Americans.
5.  "How Congress Helped End the Vietnam War," The American Prospect, February 6, 2007: from the March print issue. The parallels between Iraq and Vietnam are deeply unsettling. History's so strong.