It�s time to investigate the Vice-President�s office

By News Team
ads@fillmorecountyjournal.com

Fri, Nov 4th, 2005
Posted in Commentary

Comments

President George Bush did the only sensible thing he could do in the aftermath of the latest debacle to hit his administration, he nominated Samuel Alito to replace Justice Sandra Day O�Connor on the Supreme Court. What better way to steal the front page news away from Lewis �Scooter� Libby�s loose lips sinks ships indictment than to nominate a conservative judge to the highest judicial body in the land. Now the news will be full of Senate infighting over whether Alito is an impartial call-it-as-I-see-it judicial nominee or an acceptable anti-abortion ideologue for the conservative right.

Alito�s nomination came four days after Bush withdrew Harriet Mier�s name as a nominee, and only two days after Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald charged Libby, Chief of Staff to the Vice-President, with making false statements to a grand jury, perjury and obstruction of justice.

The nation now pretty well knows as fact that the move to invade Iraq was a conjuring job done in Vice-President Dick Cheney�s office and that every effort was made to discount opposition to the war, apparently including outing CIA agents when their husbands speak out of turn against the administration�s reasoning for invading Iraq.

If Bush II wants to restore public trust, he can begin by naming a special prosecutor to look into whether the Vice-President�s office knowingly misled the American public on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?

Moxie

�Speaking of which: finally the Democrats found some moxie, forcing the Senate on Tuesday into closed session to ask whether the administration corked the intelligence about Saddam and WMDs that led us into Iraq.

Vietnam cover-up

�It is interesting to note that 40 years after the event, a 2001 National Security Agency study has concluded that communications intercepted in the Gulf of Tonkin incident that led to the Vietnam War were mis-translated and the error purposefully covered up so that it appeared that the North Vietnamese had attacked two destroyers on August 4, 1964. It is also interesting that this information is considered secret, too sensitive for the public�s ears.

Ethics

�It seems ironic now that President Bush was elected a year ago on moral values. A Washington Post - ABC News poll on October 30 showed that 64 percent of Americans rate the president�s handling of ethics in government as fair or poor.

Moral Values

�Speaking of moral values: Congress paying homage to Civil Rights icon Rosa Parks by having her coffin lie in state at the Capital was a noble thing for America. She was a true patriot by any 1776 revolutionary definition. But ironically there are very few in Congress who could carry Parks� lunchbox when it comes to courage and standing up for what is right and principled.

A day after Parks was buried in Detroit, the Republican controlled Congress was celebrating the cutting of food stamps and Medicaid for the poor as a victory in curtailing government spending. It seems to me that government should first be measured by how it treats its children, its elderly and its poor.

No Comments Yet. Be the first to comment!