Post by Swamp Gas on Mar 29, 2004 20:19:52 GMT -5
www.progressive.org/webex04/wx032904.html
March 29, 2004
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Gangsters in the White House
There are gangsters in the White House.
Whenever the Bush Administration gets criticized, it responds like Tony Soprano, and Bush's capos put a hit out on whoever dares to question the don.
That's the way it was when Paul O'Neill, Bush's former Treasury Secretary, said Bush wanted to go to war against Iraq way before 9/ll. Within hours, the Bush goons were threatening O'Neill with prosecution for allegedly publicizing classified information.
That's the way it was when former ambassador Joseph Wilson went public with his account of how the Bush Administration played up the false story of uranium in Niger. Within days, the White House was outing Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA officer, with Karl Rove reportedly saying, "His wife's now fair game."
And that's the way it is today, with Bush surrogates unloading on Richard Clarke, the counterintelligence pro who has leveled two serious charges against the Administration.
First, that it was "lackadaisical" about Al Qaeda prior to 9/ll.
And second, that Bush's Iraq adventure has "greatly undermined the war on terrorism."
Rather than just debate the merits of these accusations, rather than have Condoleezza Rice testify in public before the Sept. 11 bipartisan commission, the Bush thugs have revved up the slime machine.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist slammed Clarke for being, in Frist's words, "consumed by the desire to dodge blame for the 9/11 attacks" and for "profiteering." But he didn't stop there. Frist went on to make very unsubtle threats about prosecuting Clarke for perjury, alleging that Clarke lied to Congress.
Then the White House began to blackball Clarke. "You're not going to make another dime in Washington again," said one White House staffer, Clarke told Tim Russert.
Hostile to the very essence of democracy, which is the freedom to dissent and to criticize our government, the Bush gang wants to rule by fear, intimidation, and goon squad tactics.
