John Ibbitson tries to do his best impression of David Broder in this column in today's Globe and Mail in which he argues against the proposed commission to investigate the Bush administration's bad behaviour. There are two points in particular that I want to draw attention to. The first is this:
Because the Republicans sicced Mr. Starr on the Clinton administration, the Democrats forced the appointment of Patrick Fitzgerald to investigate the Valerie Plame affair. (If you've forgotten it, let it stay forgotten.)
Excuse me? In 2003, when Fitzgerald was appointed, the Republicans controlled both houses of congress in addition to the executive. Democrats weren't in a position to force anything on anyone. The Deputy Attorney General appointed Fitzgerald when the Attorney General, John Ashcroft, recused himself. This is the kind of nonsense that the Washington press corps makes up so they can draw a false equivalence between phony, GOP-inspired scandals and serious crimes. They have to prove that both sides are equally guilty in order to justify letting bygones be bygones, even if it means revising history to do it.
And let it stay forgotten? A senior White House official blew the cover of a CIA operative whose area of specialty was tracking the flow of weapons material into Iran, damaging the agency's ability to continue doing so. If Iran is the threat that those same Republicans claim it is then that caused serious damage to national security. I always thought Americans took that kind of thing seriously. The CIA certainly did. If Comey, the Deputy AG, felt pressured to appoint someone like Fitzgerald maybe it was because the CIA had formally requested an investigation into the leak.
The historical revisionism and false equivalence is bad enough but in the last paragraph we get to the real point.
When the United States invaded Iraq on what turned out to be faulty or false pretenses, suspicion turned to anger. Mr. Bush ultimately lost all credibility in the eyes of the American people, the highest price a politician can pay.
Wow. When regular people commit crimes, they go to jail. But when a politician commits a crime, incarceration isn't necessary. If he lives the rest of his life in comfort and ease, earning five or six figures for giving a speech whenever he needs some pocket money, we can still be secure in the knowledge that he's actually suffering horribly and in a way the rest of us couldn't possibly fathom. Because he's lost his credibility.
I can never tell whether blenderizers like Ibbitson really haven't taken the time to learn what they're writing about (as he clearly hasn't with Plame/Libby/Cheney) or whether they have some active interest in lulling or confusing people.
Fitzgerald got so close to being able to charge Cheney (and Rove) that we didn't know until midway through Libby's trial that Cheney would duck (ie, fail to testify for the defence, which testimony Fitzgerald was clearly prepared for). That is forgettable in Ibbotson's book?
By the time there were three presidential candidates left standing last year, every one of them, McCain, Clinton, and Obama, had answered repeated questions about Fitzgerald by promising that, if elected, s/he would keep Fitzgerald in place as USA in Chicago. That is forgettable? Conrad Black's conviction is forgettable? A former governor of Illinois in prison and another on the way -- that is forgettable?
I guess if you subscribe to the Villager talking-points it is, so you're right, pogge: Ibbitson does. We keep learning things that make whatever Plame and Brewster Jennings were doing re Iran look more and more interesting, although obviously we still don't know the whole story. But what Cheney and Libby were doing was treason -- it's just a shame that all Fitzgerald could get to court was obstruction.
And all the way through that column, Ibbitson keeps minimizing the crimes. He thinks he can tell us what was on those ninety-two tapes, does he? Just the waterboarding, and we already knew about that; nothing to see here; move along, folks ... Yeah? The CIA IG prepared an immense report in 2004 that has never been released, but the one thing you learn from heavily redacted statements about it is that waterboarding is the one thing they're willing to admit publicly. In seas of black ink, there will be little white islands that say "waterboarding." Think about that for a bit.
As I wrote in an earlier post, I also don't think that a truth commission will do to address either the torture regime or the assault on the U.S. Constitution and international law. But I'm not a softie like Ibbitson, and I don't need his sentimental memories of 9/11 to blur my memories of what has been done, what we already know, and what is still being hidden (note that he also makes it sound as though all the OLC opinions have been released, which is not true).
Great post. Spot-on!
Ibbitson tries, but ultimately his ideological preferences prevent him from the kind of honest reporting he has occasionally shown himself capable of.
Not that Ibbitson is a Marcus Gee, but he argued forcefully in favour of Bush’s foreign policy. He denigrated Canadian critics of that regime, pooh-poohing them as not serious, as hopelessly anti-American.
However indirectly, he contributed to an intellectual landscape which facilitated the Bush Administration’s actions. This at a time the Bush administration was promoting torture as official US policy.
If sanctioning torture isn’t illegal, what is?
Not that he's complicit in a legal sense, but in a reputational sense.
To be honest, he has accepted his earlier support for the Bush administration’s policies was wrong. But to accept those policies are worthy of prosecution would mean accepting an entire new level of culpability. Not just that he argued in favour of the worst strategic in American history, to admit that members of the Bush Administration ought to be in legal jeopardy, would mean admitting he gave legitimacy, rhetorical or not, to actions which were illegal.
That in John Ibbitson’s mind this is about torture is clear from his article’s last sentence. The implication is left hanging that maybe torture did help protect the United States from further attack. His premise being this hypothetical, if proved true, would justify the use of torture. And conveniently exonerating John Ibbitson’s loud and public support for the administration which made torture the official policy of the United States.
If there was any justice in the world John Ibbitson would be working right now in an Iraqi orphanage, trying to make right some of the horrific suffering he helped cause. But he’s not. Instead he’s the Globe and Mail’s Washington correspondent, helping all of us Canadians back home think about what is going on down there. I feel better.
About Fitzgerald and the actual circumstances surrounding his appointment: What do you think the chances are the Globe would publish an apology, not for factual error, but for misleading the reader? Zero? Less than zero?
I think the chances are less than zero. I'm betting that, if asked, the Globe would respond that this is an opinion column and no corrections are required on matters of opinion.
Even if that was the "highest price" a politician could pay, I fail to see how Bush paid it. After all, he still had enough credibility left with the American people after the Iraq invasion that they re-elected him in November 2004.
Something Ibbitson conveniently skips over is that in a society theoretically governed by the rule of law, we don't normally let ourselves make political decisions about whether or not to investigate crimes. Loss of credibility is not one of the possible sentences proposed by the law for punishing either torture or the various other potential criminal acts of the Bush administration. I also don't see anywhere in the law a political "statute of limitations" which says you only get to investigate a president for one crime, once, and after that you have to stop.
Imagine repeat offenders offering that laughable defence in court: "Your Honour, it would be inappropriate to charge me for theft now, because I was already charged for a different theft back in 2004."
The highest price a politician can pay?
What insufferable drivel!
bush II, as a politician, as a man, is responsible for a goddamned WAR!!! He was the [p]resident of the United States of America and he started a war based either on complete and utter stupidity, or [99.9999999 percent likely] on lies.
And now over 1 million are dead. 4 million are homeless. How many millions more traumatized, maimed?
He should be thrown into a concrete pit for the rest of his revolting life.