A Long Day at the Job Site 0

So the best I can do right now is come up with a list of recommended reading:

Dan Froomkin on Abu Gonzales:

It’s no secret in Washington that Gonzales is not an autonomous player. His entire career has been as an enabler of George Bush. He does what he’s told.

When he was White House counsel, for instance, he was widely seen as being under the thrall of vice presidential counsel David S. Addington on such signature issues as torture and presidential power.

It’s not as obvious who has been his minder since he became attorney general two years ago. But presumably either he or, more to the point, the staffers who write his speeches and draw up his talking points still get their marching orders directly from the West Wing.

Andrew Cohen on the Gang that Couldn’t Fire Straight:

If there are ultimately going to be honest answers to tough questions they are much more likely to come instead from the extraordinary internal investigation now underway at the Justice Department spearheaded by two honest and experienced professionals who know how and where to look for things they aren’t mean to find. Glenn A. Fine at the Office of the Inspector General and H. Marshall Jarrett at the Office of Professional Responsibility are together going to try to get to the bottom of what happened to those U.S. Attorneys and why. And if either or both men find something beyond mere politics (or the sort of routine incompetence we have come to expect from this Justice Department) we even could see a special prosecutor.

William Arkin distills different views of the ersatz “War on Terror”:

Controversies surrounding the war in Iraq — the manipulation of intelligence, ideology feeding overconfidence, mismanagement and potential failure — have so stained the Bush administration there is a tendency on the part of many to reject all of the government’s endeavors when it comes to the so-called “war” against terrorism.

The Bush administration’s manufactured connection between the Iraq war and the bigger “war” against terrorism has been made so politically explosive (and the actual connection is so strained) many fall into the trap of seeing one pitted against the other. Get out of Iraq to “fight” the terror war, they argue. Get rid of the Bush administration to focus on Afghanistan and al Qaeda and the still unfinished Sept. 11 business.

Two pieces in The Washington Post should remind us that this is a false and even dangerous assumption. One is an opinion piece by Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor that questions what the war against terror has accomplished other than creating a culture of fear in America. Who would have thought that once hawk and consummate ex-Cold Warrior Zbigniew Brzezinski would become one of the best minds today puncturing the bipartisan embrace of “war”?

Charles Krauthammer doesn’t recognize the difference between “politics” and “making stuff up to win elections.”

(Man oh man, it’s amazing how he contorts himself to defend the indefensible.

And, in the meantime, he tries to revitalize the discredited talking point that Clinton’s firing all the US Attorneys at the beginning of his term, something the Current Federal Administrator also did, with firing sitting U. S Attorneys appointed by the Current Federal Administrator at the beginning of his own malfeasance term during mid-term (something that has happened extremely rarely) , because they “weren’t loyal Bushies.”

There are lots of pretzel factories in Lancaster County, Pa., who can use Mr. Krauthammer, should he retire from being a Bushie apologist columnist.)

It’s not a question of probity, but of competence. Gonzales has allowed a scandal to be created where there was none. That is quite an achievement. He had a two-foot putt, and he muffed it.

How could he allow his aides to go to Capitol Hill unprepared and misinformed, and therefore give inaccurate and misleading testimony? How could Gonzales permit his deputy to say that the prosecutors were fired for performance reasons when all he had to say was that U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president and the president wanted them replaced?

And why did Gonzales have to claim that the firings were done with no coordination with the White House? That’s absurd. Why shouldn’t there be White House involvement? That is nothing to be defensive about. Does anyone imagine that Janet Reno fired all 93 U.S. attorneys in March 1993, giving them all of 10 days to clear out, without White House involvement?

Wonder what Mr. Krauthammer would have had to say if Clinton fired a bunch of political appointees, not in 1993, when his term began, but, say, in 1997?

You know, I started out just to list some interesting links from today’s late evening reading.

I end up in shock and awe at the sophistry and duplicity of the apologists for the Current Federal Administration.