The Plot Thickens

Oh, where to start? Let's get the trivial crap out of the way first, shall we? Remember that "benevolent June" phrase from earlier this month? Yeah, that's over with. Scorching hot yesterday, today, tomorrow, the next day... 90s as far as the forecasting eye can see. Oy vey.

And I'm not sure, but I think I heard just a tiny little snippet of a comment on the news about Tom and Katie getting engaged. Wow, they've been so stealthy in their epic two-month relationship, who even knew they were dating? I've strained my damned optic nerves rolling my eyes so much about these two. He proposed to her at the top of the Eiffel Tower? Gave her a huge ring? Good GOD. I'm surprised he didn't have a flock of news cameras on hand to record the entire thing and broadcast it to satellites from the backs of trained Asian elephants wearing turbans and sequined kneepads. And the pundits are all saying now that it MUST be serious, you know, since they're engaged and everything. No one would take a publicity stunt this far, they say. Here's a news flash for you lemmings: Engagements CAN be broken. Just ask, oh, I dunno... Katie Fucking Holmes herself, who broke off her yearlong-plus engagement to her boyfriend of nearly six years, Chris Klein. Yeah. And she did this less than a month before this whirlwind "romance" with Tom Cruise began.

On a much more serious note, here's the "Stupid Bush Quotation of the Day" (this from his weekly radio address, as reported by CNN): "We went to war because we were attacked, and we are at war today because there are still people out there who want to harm our country and hurt our citizens." This man is so arrogantly blind and misguided, I can't even grasp it. Does he still think Iraq attacked us, or had anything to do with 9/11? This is the same man who, in September 2003 said (and I quote), "We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the September 11th attacks." The actual 9/11 Commission came to the same conclusion -- that there was no link at all between Iraq and al-Qaeda. And does Bush seriously think that invading a Muslin nation for no reason and waging war in their cities and villages will stop people from wanting to harm our country? Over 1,700 dead Americans, 12,000 wounded, countless thousands of Iraqi citizens slaughtered, and a tab of well over $200 billion and counting (about $325 billion if you include the Afghanistan detour on the way to attacking Iraq. And it was all, it appears, predicated on an utterly ficticious story of weapons of mass destruction and al-Qaida ties, both of which have been soundly debunked, both domestically and internationally.

So my big question here is, and has been for awhile, where is the public outrage over this? Where is the call for Bush to be impeached? According to an increasing stream of leaked confidential memos from Britain (some of which are actual minutes of meetings at the highest levels of British government, such as the Downing Street Memo), Bush and his cronies had made up their minds to attack Iraq long before the actual invasion. They simply had to come up with a way to sell it to the Congress and to the American public.

Now this memo is indeed "old news," as Bush's spokespigeon Scott McClellan has said, attempting to completely dismiss this exceptionally damning document. But it hasn't become big news yet, which it absolutely must. Why is this not on the front page of every major newspaper in the country? Why are CNN and FOX and MSNBC not making this their lead story? Well, I think we all know why FOX ("fair and balanced," my ass) is burying this highly newsworthy story, but what of the others? I suppose they're too busy obsessing over "runaway brides" and the like. MSNBC did, to its tiny credit, have the blurb, "Memos Show U.K. Concern Over Iraq" on their home page today. Is that compelling enough to really get anyone to click on it and read this story, though? I long for the day when "BUSH DELIBERATELY MISLED PUBLIC ON IRAQ INVASION" is the lead story, in huge block letters. If a President can be impeached over lying about getting a hummer in his office, then surely you'd think one could be impeached over lying in order to start a war. [Note: As of the morning following this post, that story which I linked to above had been pulled, not only from MSNBC's home page, but from the main news page as well. The story may still be on their server, but there is no link to it on their website. Curious. There was, however, a riveting story about the "runaway bride" cashing in with her tell-all story.]

Keep in mind that even though Bush's press secretary--and indeed, Bush himself--have tried valiantly to brush off these memos, the absolute fact is that no one has refuted their authenticity or their complete accuracy. No one in the British government, no one in the U.S. goverment.

A few years ago, all the media could talk about was a stain on Monica Lewinsky's blue dress. Now, faced with the very real possibility that our President chose to go to war unnecessarily, and mounting evidence that the Bush administration was hell-bent on going to war with Iraq and used post-9/11 fears to falsely justify a war they had long since decided upon... well, that should tell you what a joke--and what a total myth--this whole "liberal media" label is.

Now clearly, I'm no Bush fan. I think he's a horrible President in virtually every capacity in which a President can be gauged. But this? Starting a war under knowingly false pretenses? That's flat-out criminal, folks. And it's telling that there are mounting numbers of even Republican members of Congress calling for an end to this quagmire in Iraq, and a substantial contingent of lawmakers (up to 122 at this point) demanding that Bush answer some hard questions about these leaked British memos.

If you haven't yet clicked on the Downing Street Memo link above, which takes you directly to the document itself, click on the banner below to go to the home page of this site. It's a good place to go and educate yourself. It's not anti-Bush, there's no huge Democratic slant, and it's not a bunch of ignorant people flaming each other back and forth. What it asks is, "Shouldn't this be getting more investigative attention?" The site itself is laden with facts and provides numerous links to other extremely credible sources of information. Once there, click on the link to sign your name to Congressman John Conyers' letter to the President, or address one to your own Representative. Already, 122 members of Congress have signed (Senator John Kerry is circulating a similar letter in the Senate), as have over 560,000 Americans.

If you're curious about the near-blackout on this story in the U.S. media (which is well over a month old now), there are also links to help you take action to get this important story front and center in the mainstream media. It's reprehensible and offensive to me that the media outlets in this country are overly willing to devote huge swaths of resources and newspaper/website space to pundits babbling about the Michael Jackson verdict or the latest non-development in the "pretty white girl goes missing in Aruba" story, but have turned a suspiciously blind eye to a story of enormous importance (to the tune of thousands of people killed and what will likely be a third of a trillion dollars spent by the time the final bill is tallied).

Rarely do I find a passion in my small voice for anything like this... usually, events and such are swallowed up by the inexorable march of time, and life goes on relatively unchanged. This, though, undercuts everything the United States stands for. Until Bush brought his grudge match with Saddam Hussein to the White House, we had never initiated a war, nor had we ever invaded a sovereign nation without clear and convincing cause. The government of this nation is accountable to those it governs, and when its integrity and credibility is so utterly questionable, and the catalyst for these questions is essentially covered up by the U.S. media and stonewalled by the President's administration, and when voting machines are moving towards more computerization with little or no paper trail, and when blanket laws are are passed in an atmosphere of desperate fear that strip citizens of their rights and grant fearsome privileges to the government... guys, these are serious issues for the country. Clinton's dalliances in his office didn't threaten to undermine the core of democracy and governmental accountability. Bush's actions do. So act accordingly... like the bumper sticker says, "If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention."

I close with this direct quotation from a U.S. Senator this week, responding to Bush's upbeat assessment of the situation in Iraq: "Things aren't getting better; they're getting worse. The White House is completely disconnected from reality.... It's like they're just making it up as they go along. The reality is that we're losing in Iraq."

The biggest surprise? These words are from a Republican Senator, Chuck Hagel from Nebraska.