Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Indictments Near and Far

No one this side of what's left of Wilma is going to be interested, for the next 48 hours or so, in anything but the Fitzgerald indictments, which The Washington Note is reporting have been issued (the targets of indictment have already received their letters") but which may, according to CBS' John Roberts, have more to do with an unexpected Mr. X than with anything Rovish or Libbish. So even the Invisible War's 2000th American death will pass for a ghost, much like the 1,999 deaths that have preceded it. Lucky for our Lord and Savior President on either count: The knave escapes again. Shades of 1987 and Ronald Reagan's eventual slime (because it wasn't exactly a graceful or legal slide) out of the muck of Iran-Contra and his knavery.

Wasn't it As-Safir or Al-Shiraa or one of those obscure little Lebanese newspapers that broke open the Bud McFarlane-Oily North missile-salesmanship trip to Iran, and with it the whole Iran-Contra affair? Shouldn't there have been a Polk award or a Peabody or something for those broadsheets? In honor of small Lebanese newspapers, which once in a while do get the story right before their American counterparts do, here's today's commentary from The Daily Star's Rami Khouri, just back from three weeks in the United States, with a few observations and a mild though unsurprising prediction: "When I saw the 'George Bush is a goddamned idiot' bumper sticker in Boulder, Colorado a few days ago, I knew the American president was in serious trouble. When I asked to buy a copy of that particular political statement (to place it in my office alongside my 'Syria get out' placard that I had picked up during one of the many anti-Syrian demonstrations in Beirut last spring), I was told that the anti-Bush sticker was unavailable, because the shops could not keep up with demand." See the rest...

As always the real indictments of the Bush presidency (2000 of them in one time zone alone, half a world away) have never been handed down inside the Beltway. What's worse: Nor are they heard much inside the nation's insular, self-satisfied borders. The proof is in the raptness over the Fitzgerald indictments. The focus and dismay is at least one election too late, even though the evidence--the lies, the treachery, the imperious contempt for law, the smug, joystick leveraging of power--was all there for all to see well before 2004. For those with eyes, it was obvious in 2000.