Monday, February 13, 2006
"The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight"
VP Cheney Shoots his hunting buddy * Saint Patrick, Fitzgerald the Dragon Slayer
*
Remember the hilarious novel "The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight" by Jimmy Breslin? It came to my mind when I read that Vice President Cheney accidentally shot one of his buddies during a quail hunting trip in Texas. The good news is that the victim, a Mr. Whittington, is doing fine. Lately nothing has gone right for the neocons who started the misadventure in Iraq. But the leaders who dodged Vietnam are charging ahead, blustering and lying. The death toll for U.S. soldiers: 2267, including 25 who have died this month.
* Plamegate Invesigation Refuses to Die
*
Republicans, including the Strangelovian VP Cheney probably curse the day when Patrick Fitzgerald was appointed as special prosecutor to investigate the leaking of information about Valerie Plame. Just imagine what would have happened if the smarmy John Ashcroft remained in charge of the investigation. Mr. Firzgerald is quite different than the other special prosecutor whose office leaked like a sieve and who revelled in appearing in front of TV cameras. No one knows how it will end but "Scooter" Libby has already talked about the VP's role and Karl Rove is still a part of the investigation. Uneasy nights for them? You bet. Perhaps the vice president had a bad night before the hunting accident. The Guardian (UK) carried a special report on Patrick Fitzgerald.
- But for now, Plamegate remains open. The powerful still dread a phone call from his office. 'He has been walking on soft-boiled eggs so far and he is still doing it well. I don't think the White House is off the hook,' Mikva said.
- Some think they see Fitzgerald planting the seed of a political career. One day, they believe, he may run for the governorship of Illinois, a possible springboard for the presidency. Others dismiss that as nonsense, but see him as the next head of the FBI. Then the Untouchable would be the lawman for all America. Yet perhaps Fitzgerald is just that rarest of people: an honest man in Washington. 'The mystery is there is no mystery. He has a finely honed sense of right and wrong, that's all,' said Jay Stewart.
- If so, he might want to consider a saying from the French essayist Charles Peguy: 'The honest man must be a perpetual renegade.' The strange and growing list of Scooter Libby, Abdel-Rahman, Osama bin Laden, Conrad Black, the Gambino family, and perhaps even President Bush himself can all attest that the Untouchable has fulfilled that brief so far.
