Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

"I don't need 60 minutes," Mahmud al Wadi exclaimed, adding that he needed "60 million minutes" to tell how he and his family live.

The Iraqi describes how it is to live within the specter of instant death 24 hours a day.  His children, along with being forced to stay inside other than going to and from school, have seen plenty of death in their neighborhood.

At one time the neighborhood was mixed and Sunnis lived side by side with Shiites, but in the current siege of unfolding tragedy Sunnis have forced Shiites to leave.  They sometimes are given 10 minutes to pack up their belongings and move elsewhere, the alternative being death.

Mahmud worries about what will happen if his daughter is kidnapped.  If his boy is kidnapped he realizes that death will be the result, but he fears that if his daughter is apprehended that she will be brutally raped.

Ultimately Mahmud took the same course that 2 million of his fellow Iraqis have taken, that of leaving the country.  He was seen waving as he drove off with his family at the end of Lara Logan's gripping report as he made his way in a long queue of cars toward the Syrian border.  

The 60 Minutes report of Lara Logan tells a vastly different story from the recent Kool Aid gulping expedition of Senator John McCain to Baghdad, when he incredulously presented a "look how easy it is to walk through downtown" mode while surrounded by a phalanx of heavily armed U.S. service personnel.

How did we get into this mess?  It happened through provable blatant misrepresentation, the kind that the UN and Nuremberg Charters define as aggression.  Not only have the miscreants Cheney and Bush not been brought before the International Court of Justice at The Hague, as Slobodan Milosevic and others have been; they have not even been investigated by Congress pursuant to impeachment.

What we have therefore is bipartisan culpability over the continuing Iraq tragedy, which, in addition to the death and bloodshed, has cost American taxpayers over $400 billion at a time when the nation is rapidly approaching the $10 trillion debt mark.  

The current political paranoia of a failed system was recently exposed when Newt Gingrich revealed that, even while he was having an extra-marital affair at a time when he was leading the investigation into President Clinton's encounter with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, he continued to pursue impeachment for one basic reason that overrode all other considerations.

That reason was that Clinton had lied under oath.  Yes, Clinton lied under oath on an affidavit pursuant to a civil lawsuit.  This is what offended Newt Gingrich's sensibility.        

That same sensibility has presumably been unaffected by the chain of actions of the Bush Administration leading up to the Iraq War and extending beyond to the currently unfolding tragedies.

Mr. Gingrich, what about the initial Project for the New American Century game plan that targeted Iraq and the removal of Saddam Hussein even prior to the beginning of the Cheney-Bush Administration?  

What about those secret meetings in Cheney's office with multi-national executives, including the company that Cheney formerly served as its CEO, Halliburton?  

Also, Mr. Gingrich, what about Cheney's visits to the CIA to generate pressure for reports pertaining to Saddam Hussein possessing advanced weaponry that could produce a mushroom cloud over America?  

The facts went the other way, Mr. Gingrich, and when the facts pass you by any propagandist worth his salt knows that you then go about manufacturing your own "facts."  

How about the experienced Middle East hands forced out of the State Department by Cheney, Liddy and other members of the neocon gang?  

They saw the Middle East and specifically Saddam Hussein's weapons capacity differently.  When reality and deceit converge in the Cheney-Bush Administration, Mr. Gingrich, tell us which side ultimately prevails?

Tough talking ex-Marine Scott Ritter was an experienced weapons inspector whose job responsibilities took him repeatedly to Iraq.  

Ritter had the decency and courage to say it wasn't so, that sanctions and strategic bombing forays into Iraq had destroyed the former capability that he had achieved through the largesse of Rumsfeld, Cheney, Reagan and other generous Republicans in the past.

All the Bush propaganda machine could do was question Ritter's sanity.  After all, they could not challenge him on the facts and realized that it would be difficult to have "computer warriors" like Bill Kristol, Rich Lowry, Jonah Goldberg and George Will refer to former Marine Ritter as "a wimp" frightened by the prospect of confrontation.

When things get really tough, Mr. Gingrich, such as after Joseph Wilson performed a public service by revealing the truth about Saddam's alleged purchase of yellow cake to enhance the creation of weapons of weapons of mass destruction, the neocon machine went immediately to work.  

Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, a CIA operative with a specialty in weapons investigation, saw her identity revealed by Robert Novak, Washington's most notorious Republican journalistic propagandist, her life being risked in the process.  Novak was naturally willing to serve the neocon cause after all other journalists who had been contacted refused to write this damaging story.  

Then again, there were revelations about Saddam Hussein from prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.  They said all kinds of things about Saddam's Iraq as well as Iran.  They also were tortured in contravention of the Geneva Code.  

America's brilliant international law authority, Alberto Gonzales, assured one and all that everything was legal because these individuals were perceived as "enemy combatants" according to Patriot Act terminology.  

Lies, Mr. Gingrich?  I mean, where do we start?  There are so many.  Mr. Clinton's deceit rattled your sensibilities and jolted your conceptions of honesty and propriety.  What about Bush and Cheney, Mr. Gingrich?

According to a recent report by an Australian scientist 1 million Iraqis have died since the first Donald Rumsfeld "shock and awe" assaults were launched.  An earlier Johns Hopkins University figure put the number at better than 600,000.  

As for the refugee report, as indicated earlier, that stands currently at 2 million, but stay tuned since there is so much current activity on that front.

We see only too clearly, Mr. Gingrich, where your sensibility lies, with the perpetually truth-challenged Cheney-Bush Project for the New American Century globalists.  Will they strike next in Iran?  If so, when?

It is a tragic shame that Democrats who should have challenged Cheney and Bush for proof of an alleged Saddam Hussein weapons buildup instead gave a tyrannical neocon regime a "blank check" in Iraq.  History should have revealed what granting such authority would entail, given the example of the Vietnam War and the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and resulting unchecked power ceded to Lyndon Johnson.

There is a constitutional responsibility to submit articles of impeachment against executive leadership flaunting the U.S. Constitution and international law with impunity.  If the late Congressman Henry Gonzales were still alive such a resolution would have been introduced long ago, such as he did prior to the start of the Gulf War under George Bush the Elder.

Sadly Henry Gonzales is no longer with us.  Instead we have Nancy Pelosi ruling impeachment "off the table" and a frightened group of Wimpocrats who believe that, if they follow the law and do what the Constitution mandates, that Karl Rove will run impeachment-oriented attack ads against them in 2008 and damage prospects of victory.

Since when has Karl Rove done anything other than launch attack ads?  Do such fears override constitutional responsibility?  Do we ignore the Constitution because we fear Karl Rove?

How truly pathetic!  They may speak of gridlock but sadly a tragic and destructive form of bipartisanship has prevailed concerning the Iraq War in the final analysis.  

Oh sure, there are those votes and speeches against the war, but Bush has said that any such measures employed by Democrats, even when passage is secured, will be ignored and that he will do what he has always done, act as he sees fit.

It is easy for Bush to talk tough when the so-called opposition has, in the final analysis, demonstrated a failure to resist executive tyranny.  Democrats can run away from the facts, but they ultimately cannot hide.

Democrats cannot hide from the ultimate reality that the only viable option under current circumstances is impeachment.