Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

The former White House Press Secretary also wrote that there was a coordinated effort by the Bush administration to use propaganda to inflate the case for attacking and ultimately occupying Iraq and hide the projected costs of the war from the American people.

Congressman Wexler stated May 28:  

"Scott McClellan must be called to testify under oath before the House Judiciary Committee to tell Congress and the American people everything he knows about this massive effort by the White House to deceive this nation into war."

Last week a subpoena was issued for Karl Rove to testify before the Judiciary Committee.  It appears that the former top political strategist for the Bush-Cheney team will pursue every legal action to block this subpoena.  

According to Congressman Wexler, "The truth is that Congress has the right - and obligation - to hold him (Rove) accountable now - not months or years from now.  It is long past time to pass Inherent Contempt and bring Rove, Libby and others before Congress."

Wexler believes that we cannot ignore these recent developments nor postpone serious inquiry until after the election.  He realizes that there is a duty mandated by the Constitution to act under such circumstances, a necessity others in position of high trust need to also recognize and act upon with due speed and diligence.

More than 230,000 Americans previously signed up at the wexlerwantshearings.com site urging that impeachment action be expeditiously taken.

As for the Bush administration, its response to the McClellan disclosures show that nothing has changed since the tired old strategy of Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy beginning in the fifties extended to more recent times with Lee Atwater and Karl Rove.  When one cannot refute a message then the strategy is to form an angry pack, then loudly and persistently attack and seek to destroy the messenger.

When former Counterterrorism Coordinator Richard Clarke disclosed that the Bush-Cheney neoconservatives had pursued war with Iraq from the onset of the administration, he was attacked as a disgruntled partisan Democrat.  It was pointed out that this was odd since the Bush administration had invited him to remain after Bill Clinton left office.

When former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, after leaving office, wrote that Bush had a fixation about attacking Iraq, he was deemed to be a businessman out of his depth on foreign affairs.  Did this mean that he could not observe what was occurring regularly at Cabinet meetings?

When former Ambassador Joseph Wilson refuted the neoconservative charge that Iraq's dictator Saddam Hussein was seeking yellow cake from Niger to enhance its Uranium potential in seeking a nuclear arsenal, he was accused of seeking to polish his credentials to become a possible Secretary of State under John Kerry should the Massachusetts U.S. Senator win the 2004 presidential election.

Wilson had a very simple and plausible explanation.  He was seeking to prevent a war with Iraq waged on a false premise.  Later after his wife, a CIA nuclear weapons expert, was outed by neoconservatives in a column by neocon columnist Robert Novak, he pointed out that he had a right and duty to protect his wife from death after her identity was disclosed as an act of political reprisal.

Emerging at the top of the current pack to attack Scott McClellan is Fran Townsend, former head of the White House Counterterrorism Office, who said, "For him (McClellan) to do this now strikes me as self-serving, disingenuous and unprofessional."

Is it not self-serving to launch war on the basis of false intelligence?  Is it not self-serving for Cheney to hold private meetings dividing up Iraq in advance for the corporate sector, including the company he once headed, Halliburton, along with longtime major player Bechtel?

Is it professional to engage in a pattern of continuing deception on behalf of an administration that launches war based on a tissue of lies and tramples long practiced, cherished constitutional liberties on the pretext of fighting terrorism when we have never even commissioned an independent investigation to determine what happened on 9/11?

Is it professional to engage in widespread torture at designated prison camps like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo in violation of international law, including the UN Charter, the Nuremberg Principles and the Geneva Codes?

Is it professional to kidnap citizens of other nations and, under the guise of fighting terrorism, fly them to other countries to be subjected to long term interrogation and beatings under the guise of fighting terrorism?  

Is this practice of rendition professional?  Is it the practice of a democratic nation?