Bye, bye, Gonzales

In less than a year, the White House-cleaning has come this far.

First there was the Iraq warmonger, defense secretary Don Rumsfeld. Then went the prince of Kiing George's neocon advisors, Paul Wolfowitz. The first to go this month was "Bush's brain," Karl Rove. And now Alberto Gonzales, the man who turned the Justice Department into a shambles to support the imperial presidency, is deparating the palace.

From the BBC this morning: "As well as the (U.S. Attorney) sackings row, Mr Gonzales has also been criticised for helping to expand presidential powers in connection with the administration's war on terror - from drafting the controversial rules governing prisoners at Guantanamo Bay to authorising a secret phone tapping programme He was censured by some human rights groups after writing a memo to the president in which he said the war against terror was a 'new kind of war' that renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders 'quaint' some of its provisions.The memo came to light after the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal in Iraq."

Bye, bye, Mr. Gonzales. Mr. Cheney, it's your turn now. Then the nation can get serious about impeaching Mr. Bush.

Flipping & flopping amid bloody chaos

Back in April, 2004, some big-shot pol in Washington got his feathers all ruffled and insisted that comparing Iraq with Vietnam was "a false analogy." Hey, wait a minute. That pol was George W. Bush.

Flip. Flop. Today the very same George W. stood before a VFW audience in Missouri and compared Iraq with (ahem) Vietnam, trying to make some incomprehensible case for the US staying in Iraq.

Meanwhile, some of Bush's top commanders are now saying that democracy might not be such a great idea for Iraq after all. Maybe they are being influenced by the political successes budding all around them. CNN summed up those "successes" today. Almost 50% of the parliament does not go to cabinet meetings. (That's when they're in town; right now they are on a month's vacation.) In Baghdad, water and electricity are shaky. Health care and the national police are run by separate militias connected with Iran. Death squads roam Sunni neighborhoods. Sectarian neighborhood cleansing is creating segregated enclaves. Thousands of civilians are being killed every month across the country. Two million Iraqis have already fled the country.

I wonder if the historians of the future will ever be able to fully measure the devastation unleashed by this man on March 19, 2003.

Tragedy and outrage

The day by day reports on the Utah mine tragedy clearly have brought on a deep national sadness. Just about everyone knows there is not much hope now for the six trapped miners. The death of three rescuers (three other rescuers remain in the hospital) has understandably caused the principal rescue operation to be stopped.

For many people, the sadness is accompanied by indignation. And it should be. George Bush's mine safety chief that we keep seeing at the scene is Richard Stickler. This former mining exec had such a poor safety record that the Republican-controlled Senate twice refused to confirm him. That was in August and September of 2006. The next month Bush used one of those sneaky "recess appointments" to appoint Stickler anyway. And this is the guy who will be in charge of the federal investigation of the present disaster.

So an awful tragedy leads to yet another corner of White House corruption coming under the spotlight. Maybe that is why all these "Bush team" resignations are happening one after another. Commentator Chris Cillizza said on MSNBC tonight that it is like the rats jumping off a sinking ship.

Devastating denial

The writing has been on the walls of Iraq for an exceedingly long time. And who is reading the writing? Just about everybody in the world outside the USA. And lately, finally, more and more ordinary folks in this our sad, bamboozled nation.

But not the Decider Himself. Nor the True Believers In The Decider. No, for them "victory" (whatever that is supposed to mean) is the only possibility. 3,699 dead US troops are just not enough. So do some more denial and send more exhausted troops back into the deadly theater of absurd chaos. And while their exhaustion is evolving into total burnout, go recruiting into the schools and literally bribe young people to sign up fast.

The writing on the wall--large letters written in blood--says CIVIL WAR. Shiites keep murdering Sunnis. Sunnis keep murdering Shiites. The sectarian madness goes even beyond that ancient rivalry. Today some Islamist group oerating near the northern city of Mosul went after members of the Kurdish Yazidi religious sect. At least four explosions went off; they killed at least 200 people and wounded another 200.

Beneath the choking smoke of this civil war, 2 million Iraqis are displaced in their own country. (Another 2 million have fled to crowded confusion in Syria and Jordan and beyond.) The UN reports that only one out of every three Iraqis has access to clean drinking water. 80% of the population lacks sanitation.

The White House's latest crutch for maintaining their morbid denial has been the call to wait for Gen. David Petraeus to report next month. But Petraeus himself already has said that "conditions in Iraq will not improve sufficiently by September to justify a drawdown of US military forces." If you work for George W. Bush, it is always "full steam ahead."

It is far beyond time for the minions of the Decider to see through the eyes of the rest of the conscious world. Iraq is three countries, not one. This is a civil war. The warring parties are not going to work it out by themselves. The neighboring Arab nations and the UN have to step in strongly. And the US has to get out...before we create countless more jihadists.

Ever deadlier borderlands

I have done pastoral and social work here in these Arizona-Sonora borderlands for 40 years now. Mostly it has been a great joy. But in recent years a terrible and deadly cloud has hung over this desert. Migrants have been dying a horrible death.

For decades U.S. business has openly invited countless migrants to cross the border to work here. It would be hard, perhaps impossible, to find a single citizen of this country who has not eaten food picked or prepared by these migrants, or slept in a hotel bed made up by these migrants, or lived under a roof built by these migrants. But over a dozen years ago the federal government began blocking the traditional border crossing points around border towns. In no time migrants began moving out into remote desert and mountain areas to cross into the US to look for work. And they began to die--mostly from agonizing dehydration in temperatures that can surpass 115 degrees Fahrenheit, but also from freezing in winter and overturned smuggler vehicles and drowning in canals. Just since last Oct.1 along Arizona's border with the Mexican state of Sonora, there have been at least 199 known migrant deaths. Anyone who knows this territory knows full well that the real number is much higher and many bodies will never be found. (One of the major migrant routes is the Tohono O'odham Nation west of Tucson; it alone is the size of Connecticut.)

These deaths are not just a tragedy. They are a crime. Decent, just, comprehensive legislation could turn the tables overnight. Instead we get congressional gridlock, pre-election posturing, and a strong dose of vigilantism, xenophobia and even racism. (Dig into the Southern Poverty Law Center's online documentation and you'll see what I mean--.

And now deportations are skyrocketing too. I just learned about two mothers, one in the U.S. 15 years and the other 13 years, being stopped at random and deported. Parents are being separated from their U.S.-born children. People like CNN's Lou Dobbs and Maricopa County's (Phoenix) sheriff Joe Arpaio are constantly fanning the flames.

The Iraq debacle and the attack on civil liberties and habeas corpus are not the only signs of government gone sick.

Cheney's cave

When people say "Impeach Cheney first," they know what they are talking about. Imagine impeaching Bush and waking up the next morning to find Dick Cheney on the imperial throne.

Everyone knows that Cheney has always been the principal power behind the Bush throne. Probably not many know how secretive he is. He stamps everyday documents as "top secret." He has never been willing to say who he meets with. (So how many of his fellow oilmen have been scheming in the bunker in the last 79 months?) The man whom Maureen Dowd calls "Vice" won't even release the names of his aides, not even their number.

Maybe the looniest move of all came in June when Cheney declared his office was not an entity within the executive branch. This screwball statement was made in a last-ditch effort to avoid giving required information about his office to the National Archives. (The requirement-an executive order-is part of government-wide rules for safeguarding classified national security information.)

The National Archives had protested Cheney's position by letter in June and August 2006. He ignored the letters, and in January the National Archives asked Attorney General Gonzales to act. Cheney's staff responded by trying to abolish the agency within the Archives that is responsible for implementing the disclosure rule.

And this is just one corner of the secretive cave of chaos. Looking all around, it would seem best to impeach Gonzales first, then Cheney, then Bush. ASAP.