Now Can We...?

If, per former Bush Administration Press Secretary Scott McClellan, El Presidente himself authorized the Valerie Plame covert CIA identity leak, can we impeach him now? Per Emptywheel:

Thus far, though, we only had Dick Cheney's word that he had actually asked Bush to declassify this information. We didn't have Bush's confirmation that he had actually declassified the information. In fact, we've had Dick Cheney's claims that he--Dick--had insta-declassified via his super secret pixie dust declassification powers.

But now we've got George Bush, confirming that he, the President of the United States, authorized the leaks of "this information."

Now, though Scottie refers, obliquely, to "this information," he explicitly refers only to the NIE. But as I've described over and over again, it's not just the NIE Bush authorized Dick to order Libby to leak.

Here's McClellan seeming to let this slip on the Today Show. According to him, Bush was fine with having done it, treating Scottie as inner circle, having come from Texas, his mother a GOP stalwart -- until the last election.

What appears to have happened here is that McClellan was young, idealistic, and more the older type Republican, probably more like Bush Senior. He's put in the middle of this thing after Ari Fleischer broke in the job through the selling of the Iraq War and then wisely jumped ship. Fleischer had seen what was being passed around Air Force One the night or so before Cheney set Libby loose to smear Wilson, having run it by the President with a bunch of other slightly less impeachable deception plans, and (a very smart, if misaligned guy) must have gone home to his family after with every Spidey sense in his head going off at once, panic vertigo, got to get out of there before he ends up on a executive prison farm, got to protect myself and my family.

Then, I imagine, as Scottie got these weird moments of revelation, mainly that Karl Rove and Scooter Libby had hung him out to dry, he must have leaked it back to his mom, the old hand politico. Just imagine what that did to her Party alignment -- I could tell you what it would do to mine if one of my boys was played the patsy that way, by people so powerful.

So mom's approval must have given him the courage to put out the book. To let loose the truth, no matter the rusted bullybats of the disparate remaining pieces of what was once Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld's character assassination machine. Just as Paul O'Neill. He did an hour tonight with Olbermann. He hits The Daily Show on Monday. Assuming he stays healthy.

John Dean says this may be prosecutable. Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL) has been pushing for impeachment hearings for awhile, now has new evidence to pursue. Rove has been subpoenaed, not looking good for weaseling out.
But even if we don't get our impeachment, our public flogging (and with Bush's escape pod ready), maybe we'll get, looking ahead to November, the most important thing of all. Per gpack:

If one thing is clear, it is that McClellan just confirmed that Obama was right from the start - the war should never have been waged. McClellan has destroyed McCain's argument that there is any reason to remain in Iraq. Even Pat Buchannan said that the core principle of the GOP has always been to avoid foreign entanglements. He added that going into Iraq, which he too opposed, is not a conservative ideal. It is the product of neo-conservatives who developed an ideology best described by McClellan as "coercive democracy." Knowing that this idea would not even float in the Republican Party, McClellan presents the story of how it was sold as a lie to the American people.

I'll take it.

More Traitorous Behavior

While the manic U.S. rightwing continues to howl and cry that somehow anti-War Americans are traitors to our country, there's that Republican Bush/Cheney Administration leaking willy-nilly for political gain, no matter the damage to our country's anti-terrorist intelligence efforts:

A small private intelligence company that monitors Islamic terrorist groups obtained a new Osama bin Laden video ahead of its official release last month, and around 10 a.m. on Sept. 7, it notified the Bush administration of its secret acquisition. It gave two senior officials access on the condition that the officials not reveal they had it until the al-Qaeda release.

Within 20 minutes, a range of intelligence agencies had begun downloading it from the company's Web site. By midafternoon that day, the video and a transcript of its audio track had been leaked from within the Bush administration to cable television news and broadcast worldwide.

The founder of the company, the SITE Intelligence Group, says this premature disclosure tipped al-Qaeda to a security breach and destroyed a years-long surveillance operation that the company has used to intercept and pass along secret messages, videos and advance warnings of suicide bombings from the terrorist group's communications network.

Leading to White House spin fury. Remember Scooter Libby getting off for leaking the identity of Valerie Plame? Or their 2004 election campaign leak regarding Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan?

Putting the safety of America after their dreams of political domination has been their m.o. all along.

Will anyone ever bring them to justice?

Rats

I just saw Ratatouille yesterday, which is excellent and often astonishing and a lot of fun for adults, but it's funny how now I'm thinking about rats and there's Irving Lewis "Scooter" Libby and Fred Thompson.

With Libby there's been a lot of GOP mouthpiece bloviating about how Bush commuting Libby's sentence is somehow the moral equivalent of Bill Clinton as one of his final acts of office pardoning millionaire crook Marc Rich.

While sure, Clinton was wrong to do it, Rich wasn't material to a potential high crime perpetrated in conspiracy including Mister Bush and directed by President Cheney. In fact, there's ample evidence that the Libby defense team put the squeeze on Cheney and got the guaranteed fix from Cheney in return for not calling Dick to testify.

But the most delectable twist of all is this:

Guess who was Marc Rich's lawyer, instrumental in getting the pardon in front of then-President Clinton, and one of the first to call and congratulate Rich once the fix was in?

That's right. The Scoot.


Meanwhile, supposed GOP Presidential savior candidate Fred Thompson turns out to have been a rat who actually squealed, during the 1974 Watergate Hearings, which led to the last Republican President resignation. He was Minority Counsel. He leaked to Nixon and his henchmen what was going on in committee:

The day before Senate Watergate Committee minority counsel Fred Thompson made the inquiry that launched him into the national spotlight -- asking an aide to President Nixon whether there was a White House taping system -- he telephoned Nixon's lawyer.

Thompson tipped off the White House that the committee knew about the taping system and would be making the information public. In his all-but-forgotten Watergate memoir, "At That Point in Time," Thompson said he acted with "no authority" in divulging the committee's knowledge of the tapes, which provided the evidence that led to Nixon's resignation. It was one of many Thompson leaks to the Nixon team, according to a former investigator for Democrats on the committee, Scott Armstrong , who remains upset at Thompson's actions.

"Thompson was a mole for the White House," Armstrong said in an interview. "Fred was working hammer and tong to defeat the investigation of finding out what happened to authorize Watergate and find out what the role of the president was."

They can't handle the truth. They never could.

American Independence

Happy 4th to all U.S. citizens and sympathizers.

We have a great county which needs the resurgence of democracy in the new mega-wealth media web age. That's happening, but maybe not fast enough. Bush/Cheney's FTC has reportedly abandoned Net Neutrality, so I hope Congress saves that freedom. (Here's an easy explanation of what that means.)

America has a virus of which Mister George Bush is one of the most damaging symptoms and President Cheney is Typhoid Mary. Hopefully, in response to the latest infection (Libby's "Get of Jail Free" card), this will help lead to a cure:

The House Judiciary Committee, upset over President Bush's decision to grant clemency to I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, will hold a hearing on July 11 to examine presidential clemency power, Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), the panel's chairman, announced on Tuesday afternoon. No witness list has been released yet.

"In light of Monday's announcement by the president that he was commuting the prison sentence for Scooter Libby, it is imperative that Congress look into presidential authority to grant clemency, and how such power may be abused," Conyers said in a statement released by his office. "Taken to its extreme, the use of such authority could completely circumvent the law enforcement process and prevent credible efforts to investigate wrongdoing in the executive branch."

Let's hope the doctors are effective, and move quickly. America needs its rosy, glorious health back.

The Obstructer

Mister George W. Bush is now not only "The Decider," he is Obstructer-in Chief. Since Irving Lewis Libby was convicted of perjury, lying to Federal agents in order to obstruct justice, by commuting his sentence today, Mister Bush has proven that for the GOP to ever again call themselves the "Law & Order Party" is laughable on the face of it.

Per Steve Benen at Political Animal:

In conservative circles, there's a standard approach to law and order: we need tougher sentences, inflexible mandatory-minimums, and harsh punishment for those found to have broken U.S. law. But if you help expose the identity of a covert CIA agent during a war, lie about it, and are convicted by a jury on multiple felony counts, those standards no longer apply. Perhaps we should call this what it is: "amnesty."

Any Republican candidate who defends Mister Bush's actions is immediately disqualifiable for the Presidency, as they are essentially applauding a violation of the Constitutional Oath of Office. That means Rudy Giuliani for starters. The rest of the Republican field have so far been too cowardly to comment. But let it be known that for all their cable television bloviating, the rightwing is wrong to label it a left-only complaint:

Survey USA polled 825 Americans familiar with the Libby case immediately after the commutation was announced. Results are below (h/t TPM):

21% agree with President Bush's decision to commute Libby's prison sentence

17% say Bush should have pardoned Libby completely.

60% say Bush should have left the judge's prison sentence in place.

32% of Republicans agree with the President's decision, compared to 14% of Democrats and 20% of Independents.

26% of Republicans say Libby should have been pardoned completely, compared to 21% of Independents and 8% of Democrats.

Per Orin Kerr, it wasn't liberals who tried and convicted Libby:

As I understand it, Bush political appointee James Comey named Bush political appointee and career prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to investigate the Plame leak. Bush political appointee and career prosecutor Fitzgerald filed an indictment and went to trial before Bush political appointee Reggie Walton. A jury convicted Libby, and Bush political appointee Walton sentenced him. At sentencing, Bush political appointee Judge Walton described the evidence against Libby as "overwhelming" and concluded that a 30-month sentence was appropriate. And yet the claim, as I understand it, is that the Libby prosecution was the work of political enemies who were just trying to hurt the Bush Administration.

Look, any American with half a brain knows exactly what happened here. The rich are different. The powerful help each other escape responsibility for their actions, even if treasonous. And, in this case, the criminal enterprise of President Cheney and Acting Don Bush have saved their henchman, who will sure have others pay the $250,000 fine for him, who will get work immediately, who has been given a Monopoly-style "Get Out of Jail Free" card.

Echoing the law & order hypocrisy at hand, The New York Times entitled their editorial, "Soft on Crime":

Mr. Bush’s assertion that he respected the verdict but considered the sentence excessive only underscored the way this president is tough on crime when it’s committed by common folk. As governor of Texas, he was infamous for joking about the impending execution of Karla Faye Tucker, a killer who became a born-again Christian on death row. As president, he has repeatedly put himself and those on his team, especially Mr. Cheney, above the law.

Within minutes of the Libby announcement, the same Republican commentators who fulminated when Paris Hilton got a few days knocked off her time in a county lockup were parroting Mr. Bush’s contention that a fine, probation and reputation damage were “harsh punishment” enough for Mr. Libby.

Presidents have the power to grant clemency and pardons. But in this case, Mr. Bush did not sound like a leader making tough decisions about justice. He sounded like a man worried about what a former loyalist might say when actually staring into a prison cell.

In an outrageously vile insult to our once-great democracy, those bastards currently occupying the White House turned off the phone lines today just as the news was released.

Senator Joseph Biden (D-DE) has quite rightly called upon the public to express our outrage by flooding the White House with phone calls starting Tuesday morning. For your convenience:

202-456-1111

Let's keep it up over the 4th, our Independence Day from tyranny.

If there ever was a time to storm the battlements, that time is now.

Republican Failure and Crime Update

My goodness, everywhere you look there's a story today about either how the GOP war policy has screwed America royally while they continue to sow Anti-Constitutional crime and public sphere pollution without end.

Here's the "Slow Vanishing of Iraq". Imagine your country ruined, the places and people you loved destroyed, supposedly for our own good. El Presidente's surge is everything this War has ever been:

Three months into the new U.S. military strategy that has sent tens of thousands of additional troops into Iraq, overall levels of violence in the country have not decreased, as attacks have shifted away from Baghdad and Anbar, where American forces are concentrated, only to rise in most other provinces, according to a Pentagon report released yesterday.

And how is the Bush Family sacrificing? Press Secretary Tony Snow says George W. Bush himself fights on the front lines.

No joke.

Snow say Bush is right there with, like, our soldiers who are getting blown up and maimed.

But how about the rest of our nation's current foreign policy?:

High officials of European governments describe U.S. influence as squandered and swiftly eroding (one minister went down a list of Bush administration officials, rating them according to their stupidity), the country's moral authority nil. Lethal power vacuums are emerging from Lebanon to Pakistan, and Europeans are incapable on their own of quelling the fires that burn far closer to them than to the United States through their growing Muslim populations and proximity to the Middle East. They have no illusions that they will be treated seriously as real allies or that there will be a sudden about-face by the Bush administration. Their faint hope -- and it is only a hope -- is that they have already seen the worst and that it is not yet to come. Even worse than Bush, from their perspective, would be another Republican president who continued Bush policies and also appointed neoconservatives. That would toll, if not the end of days, then the decline and fall of the Western alliance except in name only, and an even more rapid acceleration of chaos in the world order.

The whole Sidney Blumenthal article the excerpt is from is worth reading. Entertaining in an epic train wreck sort of way, except it's our train. With Conductor George...and Engineer Cheney.

Beside losing face to Vladimir Putin and contradicting him own statements one day after, Bush's worst crime was sinking German Chancellor Angela Merkel's climate change proposal, a final humiliation for outgoing British Prime Minister Tony Blair as well.

Al Gore hits it hard:

"It was a disgrace disguised as an achievement," Gore said at an event in Milan, where he praised Merkel for her efforts.

"The eight most powerful nations gathered and were unable to do anything except to say 'We had good conversations and we agreed that we will have more conversations, and we will even have conversations about the possibility of doing something in the future on a voluntary basis perhaps."'

A crime not only against America, but against humanity -- forget worst, most evil President ever.

Back in America, Bush backs his old buddies at signature Texas energy industry swindlers Enron:

In a lawsuit that harks back to the Enron scandal, the Bush administration is at odds with the federal agency that oversees securities markets as well as with state attorneys general and consumer and investor advocates.President Bush personally weighed in with his views before the administration decided not to support investors whose securities fraud case is now before the Supreme Court.

The president’s message was that it’s important to reduce ”unnecessary lawsuits” and that federal securities regulators are in the best position to sue, said Al Hubbard, Bush’s chief economic adviser and director of the National Economic Council.[..]

Crime, crime, crime...Libby!

Yes, a convicted criminal. Lied to the cops. Lied to the really important cops. Judge is sending to jail. Yet all the rightwing scumbags are creating a giant noise machine of pardon, so Bush/Cheney can walk away with it. Yes, just as Darth Cheney was behind the intentional leak blowing CIA Agent Valerie Plame's cover, he's reportedly now pressuring his puppet prince to closer the circle.

And who wants to "careful review" of Libby's case for Presidential pardon?:

Romney has said he refused pardons because he didn't want to overturn a jury.

Asked in last week's debate if he would consider pardoning Libby, Romney said: "It's worth looking at that. I will study it very closely if I'm lucky enough to be president. And I'd keep that option open."

I guess the sunny side of this is that at least we know that Romney will countenance lawbreaking if for raw GOP partisan political purposes before folks get the chance to vote for him -- unlike Bush, who never let on (prior to getting installed by the Supreme Court).

Speaking of the “the most intellectually dishonest human being in the history of politics” there's his fake-flop on a woman's right to control her own body, put out by the McCain campaign after Romney took the lead in some GOP Primary polls, with video that directly contradicts another one of Romney's lies.

Romney, by the way, feels like he has to be an even bigger asshole now to prove he's really Anti-Choice (the "He" is Romney, per a friend):

He said - What do you think you’re doing?

She said - Well, we have to abort the baby because I have these blood clots.

And he said something to the effect of - Well, why do you get off easy when other women have their babies?

And she said - What are you talking about? This is a life threatening situation.

And he said - Well what about the life of the baby?

And she said - I have four other children and I think it would be really irresponsible to continue the pregnancy.

And of course there's Bush's Attorney General, hack of hacks, the man who validates every sleazy lawyer joke you ever heard, illegally working to influence his aide's testimony before she appeared in Congress.

By the way, that whole fired U.S. Attorneys scandal? It really does lead right into Karl Rove's White House office.

Yeah, I know the Dems need to rally again after losing the 2/3 Iraq veto override. Sure, they aren't polling high because of it.

But is it any wonder that American hates this President, his partners-in-crime, henchpersons and the entire Republican Party?

Order in the Court

Al Gore's new book, The Assault on Reason, cautions against a news culture dominated by such distractions from the truly crucial issues facing our country as Britney's rehab or Paris' jail time. But even Al would have to admit that the crazy reversals in Hilton's time served -- from three days in jail to two days at home to a distraught ride back to the poky today -- is about something significant. Like John Edwards has been saying since 2004, there are Two Americas, and it's just too much for the lucky America to get house arrest in a mansion on an estate for a crime that could easily have led to somebody else's child's death.

Paris Hilton was convicted of driving under the influence of alcohol, then violated the terms of her suspended driver's license twice, finally getting punished the second time. Ms. Hilton is known for no great public acts, no U.N. missions or adopting of Cambodian kids, nothing but the glorification of conspicuous consumption and objectified sexuality. So by she's slipping out of jail on the excuse of some unnamed medical condition (Cocaine addiction? Low thread-count sheets? Anxiety about public facilities?) she has engendered negative public sympathy.

Her tears of horror and being shipped back for maybe another twenty days hasn't helped her, either. We want our heroes to be strong, even if they violate the law and get punished. Especially. Compare to Robert Mitchum's 1948 arrest and conviction, from Pot Culture: Bob's Your Uncle:

Mitchum hired the hottest lawyer in Hollywood, Jerry Geisler, who managed to get his trial postponed until January 10, when he was found guilty of 'conspiracy to possess' marijuana. Despite submitting a written plea for probation - in which he did crawl somewhat to the judge - on 9 February, 1949, Mitchum was obliged to spend the next two months in the county jail. Laconic Bob wasn't too put out by it, though. A famous photograph records his reaction and Bob's sardonic expression says something like, 'Don't confuse me with someone who gives a shit'. He later described prison as being "like Palm Springs without the riff raff."

Mitchum was to cool to care. Photographs from the jail showed prisoner 91234 mopping floors, his quiff flopping over his famously lidded eyes. He did his time without complaining and emerged with his career miraculously intact after Howard Hughes of RKO bought out his contract and put out a shelved Mitchum movie, Rachel And The Stranger, to test public opinion. Audiences cheered and applauded whenever he appeared on the screen.

The pictures in the article tell the story, his hilarious hipster cool response to the verdict and the great publicity shot taken on the way out -- after his lawyer snuck in a newly pressed suit.

If I were the Hilton family I'd drop the stupid appeal and just make the girl serve the time before going back to a life of ruinous privilege and, if she's smart, a duck out of the public eye to a quick kingdom-merger marriage with some rich piece of Eurotrash who will keep her out of the country and away from any publicity at all.

Meanwhile, as discussed here as well, Irving Lewis "Scooter" Libby not only got the time from his judge, but in commenting on the letters of support by a host of notorious Neocon luminaries and fellow travelers in the most rarefied Washington air, Reggie B. Walton of Federal District Court in Washington has written what may go down in history as the most sarcastic footnote to a decision in American history (per paradocs at Kos:

It is an impressive show of public service when twelve prominent and distinguished current and former law professors of well-respected schools are able to amass their collective wisdom in the course of only several days to provide their legal expertise to the Court on behalf of a criminal defendant. The Court trusts that this is an indication of these eminent academics' willingness in the future to step to the plate and provide like assistance in cases involving any of the numerous litigants, both in this Court and throughout the courts of our nation, who lack the financial means to fully and properly articulate the merits of their legal positions even in instances where failure to do so could result in monetary penalties, incarceration, or worse. The Court will certainly not hesitate to call for such assistance from these luminaries, as necessary in the interests of justice and equity, whenever similar questions arise in the cases that come before it.

Mmm, I can't wait to see Robert Bork writing on behalf of Joe W. Schmoe the next time he's hauled in for lying to the FBI and obstructing Federal justice.

Bork, for those who haven't studied up, was Richard Nixon's Justice Department hack who carried out the orders that set the final self-destruction of that Administration in motion, the infamous "Saturday Night Massacre". He was then nominated to the Supreme Court by then President Ronald Reagan, and got voted down over his anti-abortion choice and anti-civil rights writings.

Now Bork is in legal news again. A strong proponent of "tort reform", aimed at reducing plaintiff rights and awards, he's now suing the Yale Club in NYC for $1,000,000 in compensatory + punitive damages. The charge the 80-year old Bork is leveling (per ACSBlog):

Judge Bork was scheduled to give a speech at the club, but he fell when mounting the dais, and injured his head and left leg. He alleges that the Yale Club is liable for the $1m plus punitive damages because they "wantonly, willfully, and recklessly" failed to provide staging which he could climb safely.

More evidence that we're living in the post-ironic age? Or just run-of-the-mill Conservative hypocrisy?

Nettertainment trusts that in this instance, just as with the two other cases cited herein, the court will deliver what we call, for lack of a better term...

...justice.

1 Sentence

It's only the first, and there's always the chance the crime lord will pardon I mean break his soldier out of prison, but unless that happens it's just 30 days before Irving Libby will be scoot-scoot-scootering off to the poky for two and a half well-deserved years (eligible for release after two) of incarceration.

Then, $250,000 and two years of parole later, he'll have paid his debt to society for having perjured himself to a Federal agent, specifically lying to the FBI, a crime that would not be engendering calls for Presidential pardons if you or I had committed it.

Here's Irving doing the perp walk back from the sentencing. The judge seems disinclined to allow Irving to remain free pending appeal. So he has 30 days before walking in like Paris, only more dangerous to our Republic.

Irving Lewis Libby is a villain in the annals of history. His treasonous behavior, due it appears to personal and political loyalties over love of country, or perhaps the confusion of the two, has led us into a disastrous trumped-up war of choice, war of aggression, war of pure tragedy. He's guilty of the worst kind of idealism, the narcissistic one. Whether or not narcissistic to himself, and I don't have any doubts, certainly narcissistic to his Neoconservatism, his Neocon allies here and abroad, and most frighteningly to his liege, Richard Herbert Cheney.

Lewis is a Frank Nitti- type henchman figure, only much worse at his job. I can understand why his fellow scofflaws had sent the judge letters of support -- after all, like the mob, they value loyalty over law -- but while you expect Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton, it's a little more unnerving to see the unindicted war criminal who brought us Christmas bombings in Cambodia, Henry Kissenger linking the generations, and how sad to see former rockin' Dem James Carville's name thrown in via his wife, GOP dragon lady Mary Matalin.

Obstructing a federal probe. We're the ones who deserve the sympathy -- the American people, who sometimes against great and abused power only have the Constitution written by our Founding Fathers to aid us. Simple, moral, well-thought out, easy for a layperson to understand -- that's the beauty of our Constitution.

In the classic post-Vietnam War picture, The Deer Hunter, there's a key line uttered by DeNiro as an admonishment to the late great John Cazale:

Michael: Stanley, see this? This is this. This ain't something else. This is this. From now on, you're on your own.

This isn't a great noble heroic man. Look at all the dead in Iraq, us and their civilians, which is 99% of who's getting killed over there. The ends don't justify the means; the means just stoke the corruption of the ends.

This is this, Irving. This is a high crime, nothing else. We all know your bosses were directing the action, that of course they knew because it was their will and maybe someday they'll be punished, too, but you're the villain who carried it out.

We have laws like this because lying to a policeman is bad. We, as a society, have a vested interest in discouraging such actions, because it undermines the fundamental rule of law and, should it go unchecked, can lead to the downfall of the Republic.

You don't get to choose who gets to lie to the FBI, Scooter. That's not a power of yours under the Constitution, nor should it be.

This is this. From now on, Irving, be a man. Be on your own.

Boohoohoohoo

This must be seen to be believed.

The #1 Republican in the House of Representatives, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) cries like a little child over the Iraq War funding bill on Thursday, and not for the reason all the progressives Dems are crying, or the reason why so many Iraqi's have been crying since Bush invaded Iraq and their world has been destroyed, family members slaughtered, an entire secular way of life ruined.

Meanwhile, has Bush himself finally realized he's lost his grand war? After wiping his ass with the Baker-Hamilton Report, he's been talking about it for two days, while word leaks out of a 50% troop reduction next year.

He's done the rope-a-dope before, so as usual I treat anything that comes out of his mouth as a lie. When he says there are "a lot of things I like" in the Report, he's probably just thinking of a few things that he can twist and turn around and pretend like he's actually reasonable, not an egomaniacal menace.

Or maybe it's trying/lying to keep the GOP at bay, now that they're starting to openly challenge him. The visit by the Congressmen, Ron Paul getting attention, the likelihood of losing the next Presidential election. Cheney's henchman staring down three years in prison. Final confirmation that our intelligence agencies did indeed report that this is how it would turn out in Iraq -- it's all his fault.

His very own Chief of Staff for the selling of the war and debacle following openly booed by hundreds of students and professors when he's just trying to get his honorary degree at UMass.

Hundreds. In public. At commencement.

Hey, Andrew Card, here's an interoffice memo for you: Lying is wrong.

Boohoo, John Boehner and your $100,000,000,000. Boohoo Scooter Libby and your scooting off (one can only hope) to the pokey. Boohoo Andrew Card up on that stage, naked and ridiculed in cap & gown.

Boohoo Georgy-Porgy and your great big failure as a warrior, as a President, as a human being.

Boo-hoo.