Harder! Deeper! Harder! Deeper.

Nope, still not deep enough yet.

Go read all of Bob Herbert in the NYT today; like someone or other says on “The Simpsons” about every nine episodes or so, he says what we’re thinking.

July 11, 2005
It Just Gets Worse

Back in March 2004 President Bush had a great time displaying what he felt was a hilarious set of photos showing him searching the Oval Office for the weapons of mass destruction that hadn't been found in Iraq. It was a spoof he performed at the annual dinner of the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association.
…
Close to 600 Americans had already died in Iraq when Mr. Bush was cracking up the audience with his tasteless photos at the glittering Washington gathering. The toll of Americans has now passed 1,750. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have died. Scores of thousands of men, women and children have been horribly wounded. And there is no end in sight.
…
The C.I.A. warned the administration in a classified report in May that Iraq - since the American invasion in 2003 - had become a training ground in which novice terrorists were schooled in assassinations, kidnappings, car bombings and other terror techniques. The report said Iraq could prove to be more effective than Afghanistan in the early days of Al Qaeda as a place to train terrorists who could then disperse to other parts of the world, including the United States.
…
Has the president given any thought to leveling with the American people about how bad the situation has become? And is he even considering what for him would be the radical notion of soliciting the counsel of wise men and women who might give him a different perspective on war and terror than the Kool-Aid-drinking true believers who have brought us to this dreadful state of affairs? The true believers continue to argue that the proper strategy is to stay the current catastrophic course.
Americans are paying a fearful price for Mr. Bush's adventure in Iraq. In addition to the toll of dead and wounded, the war is costing about $5 billion a month.
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Whatever one's views on the war, thoughtful Americans need to consider the damage it is doing to the United States, and the bitter anger that it has provoked among Muslims around the world. That anger is spreading like an unchecked fire in an incredibly vast field.
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The hole we're in is deep enough. We need to stop digging.

As always, a thick slice of perfectly grilled, bone-in steak from Mr. Herbert, who, if we weren’t living in Bizarro America, would have David Brooks’ office, salary and teevee gigs (not so much with the electric pink wardrobe however.) And BoBo would be plying his trade on the cold, 2:00 D.C. streets, offering up his famous bareback “Ownership Society” special for $25 though the anonymous open windows of the cars of Conservative Congressmen DownLow and Denial.

And what Bob Herbert is describing is, of course, exactly what a Responsible Adult would do. Our nation’s children, fortunes and reputation are trapped in a burning building called Iraq. The cause is arson, and the man still who started the blaze is still lobbing Molotov cocktails through the bedroom windows.

What we Liberals and Progressives will never forgive is that long after it was clear that this Administration had lied incessantly and catastrophically to get us into a war, the conservatives still stood beside him and backed his play. Long after it became glaringly obvious that the conflagration George W. Bush had voluntarily and unnecessarily started was making everything worse by any yardstick you care to use, conservatives not only refused to join the bucket brigade, they actually strolled around the block and carefully locked the doors so that no one could get out.

Then knelt on sidewalk to pray for Sweet Baby Jesus to send the Stay The Course Fairy, who will magically make everything OK. Or holed-up in the safety of a hotel bar in Vegas to pass fierce little resolutions expressing solidarity with the people that they would never in a jillion years support with their own skin, even if their lives depended on it.

Which, according to them, it does.

After Watergate, there were a fair number of people who opined that Nixon shoulda just owned up to it early. Should have taken some responsibility, fired some token deck-hands as over-zealous and gone on teevee to say he was truly sorry for the actions of a few underlings who were blinded by loyalty, and that that would have done it. It would’ve cauterized the wound and Nixon would have survived.

I think it might have worked, if only because it would have been a very astute political read of human nature American Style. Why? Because we love forgiving people in this country. We love surprise confessions and contrite villains. We love the drama of a redemptive Second or Third Act.

Iraqgate II: The Wrath of Cheney, OTOH, has dragged on far, far too long. Too many of the darkest speculations of the anti-War factions have proved to be irrefutably true. The lies, stacked atop one another like Party of Lincoln Logs, are now piled so high that any hope of climbing gracefully back down from them is gone.

The Bush Administration never gave a shit about this country except as raw material for their cronies to loot and political patronage for the Christopaths who gave them the White House. This country – the actual county; the complex, brilliant, diverse, maddening, potential of a place – is alien to them.

If they cared about the lives of the kids they piss away into the sands as they chase down their Imperial Mirage, they would have been straight with us from the start. They would have given us the facts – level and true – and then ask for our trust based on that essential act of faith between a people and its government. Or, at least, if for no other reason than raw political motivation, they would have come to us as a Nation once the truth was finally clear and tried to play it off as if they were as baffled as anyone else.

I mean, what was the plan here?

They had to know the lie would not last, so what was the plan – not for after Victory – but for after the treasonous charade that faked us into Bush’s War started to come apart?

Based on current behavior, I am compelled to believe that part of the strategery was to give the world that creepy Bush-giggle and basically say, well, fuck it! GW dropped hundreds of thousands of US soldiers into harm’s way and threw the world into chaos...which means he got what he wanted. He wove for us a noose of lies, dragged us into the desert, stranded us there and made us hostage to events, which I have to believe was the plan all along. Like a drunk driving a car into ravine, the Bush “plan” seems to be to make sure the situation is so disastrous that getting around to holding the criminals who caused the problems in the first place will probably only start long after GW has finished his Presidential Lib’ary.

I wonder? Can you court martial the Commander-in-Chief? Skip past the political difficulties of getting a neutered Republican Congress to hold him to account for anything, including war crimes?

Just curious.

The second party of the plan seems to be the Deny Everything. Deny Deny Deny Deny Deny Deny Deny Deny Deny Deny Deny Deny. And then Deny Deny Deny Deny Deny Deny Deny Deny Deny Deny Deny some more. I mean, let’s get serious; any party that goes out of its way to court fucktards in significant numbers that believe in Creationism will pretty much believe any crazy shit you tell them, as long as you bang a bible and bash a queer while you’re saying it.

Besided, the Republicans are the only modern political party to have impeached a President. Over trivia. They set the bar so stratospherically high in order to take their revenge on Clinton, they cannot afford any admission of error or falsehood of ANY kind.

No, as long as these thugs hold the reins of power, the Truth is off the table. And the resources of the government and the Nation will turn ever more away from attending to the People’s Legitimate Business, and ever more towards serving the Great Lie until covering up the Treasons of George Bush becomes the all-consuming job of the entire Executive Branch.

Which means we can look forward to another three years of lies spiraling ever wider and wilder, as the Bush Administration and their minions hunker down behind the bodies of the fallen, screaming “Everything’s Fine!!” as the fire rages on, the roof beams collapse and the walls come tumbling down.