Crimes Have Been Committed

You may feel the beginnings of relief that we are emerging from eight years of disaster in 27 days. The occupied White House is scrambling around trying to save us all retrospectively. Giving interviews has suddenly become the modus vivendi of the most secretive executive branch there has ever been. Inevitably, in order to justify their crimes, the personnel are busily rewriting history.

Today the New York Times editorial writer gagged on the line being fed to the media by the Dark Side itself. Admirably, the editorial writer refused to regurgitate lies.

...it must be exhausting to rewrite history as much as Mr. Cheney has done in a series of exit interviews where he has made those comments. It seems as if everything went just great in the Bush years.

The invasion of Iraq was exactly the right thing to do, not an unnecessary war that required misleading Americans. The postinvasion period was not bungled to the point where Americans got shot up by an insurgency that the Bush team failed to see building.

The horrors at Abu Ghraib were not the result of the Pentagon’s decision to authorize abusive and illegal interrogation techniques, which Mr. Cheney endorsed. And only three men were subjected to waterboarding. (Future truth commissions take note.)

In Mr. Cheney’s reality, the crippling budget deficit was caused mainly by fighting two wars and by essential programs like “enhancing the security of our shipping container business.”

Well, no. The Bush team’s program to scan cargo for nuclear materials at air, land and sea ports has been mired in delays, cost overruns and questions about effectiveness. As for the deficit, the Congressional Budget Office has said the Bush-Cheney tax cuts for the wealthy were the biggest reason that the budget went into the red.

Some of Mr. Cheney’s comments were self-serving spin (as when The Washington Times helpfully prodded him to reveal that even though the world might have seen Mr. Bush as insensitive to the casualties of war, Mr. Cheney himself made a “secret” mission to comfort the families of the dead.)

Mr. Cheney was simply dishonest about Mr. Bush’s decision to authorize spying on Americans’ international calls without a warrant. He claimed the White House kept the Democratic and Republican Congressional leadership fully briefed on the program starting in late 2001. He said he personally ran a meeting at which “they were unanimous, Republican and Democrat alike” that the program was essential and did not require further Congressional involvement.

But in a July 17, 2003, letter to Mr. Cheney, Senator John Rockefeller IV, then vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he wanted to “reiterate” the concerns he expressed in “the meeting today.” He said “the activities we discussed raise profound oversight issues” and created “concern regarding the direction the Administration is moving with regard to security, technology and surveillance.”

The maladministration can't tell the truth now anymore than it could when it needed public support to make an illegal war. The truth doesn't serve its purposes, because it would be an admission of guilt.

The legal liability for its crimes is not going to be avoided by lies. The line that Dana Perino spouted at a White House press secretaries panel last week - that the White House got their attorneys to manufacture an opinion that torture isn't torture so it all just went away - won't wash. We are not fooled. The executive branch has committed real, actionable, crimes. Telling lies now doesn't erase eight years of crimes against the country.

Cheney and his puppets have themselves deluded, but the rest of us aren't buying what they're selling. The eight years just passed were full of criminal malfeasance, and they need to be punished for the immense damage done to this country. Twenty-seven days is all that we have left to suffer, and the war criminals are very afraid.