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Volume 1 Issue 140             Today’s News and Views         Wednesday, May 17, 2006

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Update of US Casualties in Iraq: 2450

Update of US Casualties in Afghanistan: 295

Figures provided by the Iraq Coalition Causality website

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Today's News and Views

How Republicans Think: It Only Took Hitler Four Years to Exterminate 6 Million Jews, So It Should Only Take U.S. Eight Years to Deport 12 Million Mexicans

Posted by Jon Ponder | May. 15, 2006, 1:59 pm

“If it took the Germans less than four years to rid themselves of 6 million Jews, many of whom spoke German and were fully integrated into German society, it couldn’t possibly take more than eight years to deport 12 million illegal aliens, many of whom don’t speak English and are not integrated into American society.”

Writing in the rightwing “news” site WorldNetDaily, a genius named Vox Day, whose bio says he is “a novelist and Christian libertarian. He is a member of the SFWA, Mensa and the Southern Baptist church, and has been down with Madden since 1992,” posits that the United States could model the Nazis’ effiency at population control in dealing with the illegal alien crisis:

[President Bush] plans to address the nation tonight, a speech wherein he will almost surely attempt to deceive citizens into believing that he does not wish the mass migration from Mexico to continue unabated. He will likely offer some negligible resources for law enforcement and border security – resources which will never materialize – in return for an amnesty program that will grant American citizenship to the Mexican nationals who have helped lower America’s wage rates by 16 percent over the last 32 years.

And he will be lying, again, just as he lied when he said: “Massive deportation of the people here is unrealistic – it’s just not going to work.”

Not only will it work, but one can easily estimate how long it would take. If it took the Germans less than four years to rid themselves of 6 million Jews, many of whom spoke German and were fully integrated into German society, it couldn’t possibly take more than eight years to deport 12 million illegal aliens, many of whom don’t speak English and are not integrated into American society.

Copyright © 2006 Pensito Review

STEVE ALMOND

Condoleezza Rice at Boston College? I quit

By Steve Almond  |  May 12, 2006

An open letter to William P. Leahy, SJ, president of Boston College.

DEAR Father Leahy,

I am writing to resign my post as an adjunct professor of English at Boston College.

I am doing so -- after five years at BC, and with tremendous regret -- as a direct result of your decision to invite Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to be the commencement speaker at this year's graduation.

Many members of the faculty and student body already have voiced their objection to the invitation, arguing that Rice's actions as secretary of state are inconsistent with the broader humanistic values of the university and the Catholic and Jesuit traditions from which those values derive.

But I am not writing this letter simply because of an objection to the war against Iraq. My concern is more fundamental. Simply put, Rice is a liar.

She has lied to the American people knowingly, repeatedly, often extravagantly over the past five years, in an effort to justify a pathologically misguided foreign policy.

The public record of her deceits is extensive. During the ramp-up to the Iraq war, she made 29 false or misleading public statements concerning Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and links to Al Qaeda, according to a congressional investigation by the House Committee on Government Reform.

To cite one example:

In an effort to build the case for war, then-National Security Adviser Rice repeatedly asserted that Iraq was pursuing a nuclear weapon, and specifically seeking uranium in Africa.

In July of 2003, after these claims were disproved, Rice said: ''Now if there were doubts about the underlying intelligence . . . those doubts were not communicated to the president, the vice president, or to me."

Rice's own deputy, Stephen Hadley, later admitted that the CIA had sent her a memo eight months earlier warning against the use of this claim.

In the three years since the war began, Rice has continued to misrepresent or simply ignore the truth about our deadly adventure in Iraq.

Like the president whom she serves so faithfully, she refuses to recognize her errors or the tragic consequences of those errors to the young soldiers and civilians dying in Iraq. She is a diplomat whose central allegiance is not to the democratic cause of this nation, but absolute power.

This is the woman to whom you will be bestowing an honorary degree, along with the privilege of addressing the graduating class of 2006.

It is this last notion I find most reprehensible: that Boston College would entrust to Rice the role of moral exemplar.

To be clear: I am not questioning her intellectual gifts or academic accomplishments. Nor her potentially inspiring role as a powerful woman of color.

But these are not the factors by which a commencement speaker should be judged. It is the content of one's character that matters here -- the reverence for truth and knowledge that Boston College purports to champion.

Rice does not personify these values; she repudiates them. Whatever inspiring rhetoric she might present to the graduating class, her actions as a citizen and politician tell a different story.

Honestly, Father Leahy, what lessons do you expect her to impart to impressionable seniors?

That hard work in the corporate sector might gain them a spot on the board of Chevron? That they, too, might someday have an oil tanker named after them? That it is acceptable to lie to the American people for political gain?

Given the widespread objection to inviting Rice, I would like to think you will rescind the offer. But that is clearly not going to happen.

Like the administration in Washington, you appear too proud to admit to your mistake. Instead, you will mouth a bunch of platitudes, all of which boil down to: You don't want to lose face.

In this sense, you leave me no choice.

I cannot, in good conscience, exhort my students to pursue truth and knowledge, then collect a paycheck from an institution that displays such flagrant disregard for both.

I would like to apologize to my students and prospective students. I would also urge them to investigate the words and actions of Rice, and to exercise their own First Amendment rights at her speech.

Steve Almond is the author of the story collections ''The Evil B. B. Chow" and ''My Life in Heavy Metal."

© Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Groundhog Day in Iraq

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on May 15, 2006, Printed on May 16, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/36032/

As the architects of the Iraq war cast about for someone to blame for their debacle, they've turned their sights inward -- to the U.S. public. A lack of fortitude among the American people is to blame; only the folks back home can defeat our awe-inspiring military.

Others, despairing of the Bush administration's "soft approach" to the Iraq insurgency -- and casting hungry eyes toward Tehran -- have adopted a feverish, almost genocidal view of the war. If only we had the stomach to bring more firepower to bear on the Iraqi people, they say, "victory" would be assured.

In both formulations, the media is ultimately at fault for poisoning Americans' view of the war and sapping our national strength. But the war's advocates have no one to blame but themselves; we are in Iraq because of their delusion that raw military power can solve even the most complex transnational issues. They're incapable of grasping the importance of real moral legitimacy in modern warfare. Without that legitimacy, even the most powerful military in the world is likely to get dragged into a quagmire and, when it does, the public's weariness is entirely predictable. File it away as another error in post-war planning.

Many military thinkers -- people like Colin Powell and Anthony Zinni -- learned the hard way, in Vietnam, how important it is to be right as well as strong. They appreciate hard power but also understand that wars of choice or ideological preference won't cut it unless they're over very quickly. Recent history is full of grim examples of the most powerful states launching wars with thin justification, only to find themselves bogged down by militarily weak resistance groups.

But America's foreign policy elite -- our strategic class -- seems incapable of learning from those experiences. For them -- both "hawks" and "doves" -- hard power remains the ultimate tool of the game; he who has the most raw force will usually prevail. It's a belief that's deeply embedded in the strategic worldview, and it's been reinforced again and again by political philosophers through the ages: Thucydides ("The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must"); Niccolo Machiavelli ("War should be the only study of a prince"); Thomas Hobbes ("Force, and fraud, are in war the cardinal virtues"); and Mao Tse-Tung ("Whoever has an army has power, and war decides everything"). And it remains a touchstone of international relations today; Hans Morgenthau, the "father of modern realism," wrote that "World public opinion as a restraint on the struggle for power is a fiction" and "International law … is a fiction as well."

But times change. Before the last century, it was largely (but not wholly) true that military might usually won out in the end. An army could, if need be, kill every man, woman and child in the enemy's camp without facing recrimination back home or condemnation abroad. Three developments in the 20th century changed the rules of the game.

First, the brutality of the two world wars drained much of the romance from warfare; after the second global conflict in a 20-year span, launching a war of aggression became the highest international crime.

Second, the concept of human rights took hold, embedding value in all human lives -- including the lives of foreign citizens. No longer do we view enemy civilians as sub-human, to be slaughtered with impunity.

Third, and most significantly, the world became wired for instant communication. Now, we watch wars unfold on CNN in real-time. And it's not just CNN; the news broadcast to the world is beyond the control of any government. Images of mangled Iraqi children are all over the internet.

For the United States, there's another factor: Since the fall of the Soviet Union, we've been at the top of the food chain, too powerful to fear attack from other states. As long as that remains the case, we'll always be fighting "wars of choice" based on shaky grounds that are open to debate.

The new reality -- elusive to a strategic class mired in pre-1900 thinking -- is that in asymmetrical conflicts, military force is only effective when combined with the legitimacy that can win over the hearts and minds of a world that's grown skeptical of the Great Powers' interventions in the developing world.

Lacking that legitimacy, home-grown insurgents can bring even the most powerful to a standstill; the United States had enough power to wipe out every North Vietnamese, the Russians could have slaughtered every Afghan and the Israelis have the ability to kill every last Palestinian. Today, we have the capacity to fulfill the most brutal fantasies of the Michelle Malkin set and turn Iraq into a sea of nuclear glass. But that capacity is meaningless in the context of modern warfare. So we lost Vietnam, the Russians lost Afghanistan, and Israel and the U.S. are bogged down in violent occupations in the Middle East that have no end in sight.

If only the hawks who lust after these wars could understand the limited utility of hard power. But they're blind to the fact that, lacking the kind of broad international consensus that the United States had during the "first" Gulf War -- another conflict launched under false pretenses -- the public will always give them just a brief window of flag-waving opportunity to wreak havoc on the weak (think Grenada in 1983 or Panama in 1989).

There was never much support for the Iraq war; a majority opposed it a month before it was launched, there was a spike of support as the attack began, and it's declined ever since. That was to be expected. As the premise for a war of choice unravels and the costs -- in blood and treasure -- mount, public support will always prove to be an illusion.

Instead of whining about how the American public's support for their war has eroded, the Rumsfelds, Cheneys and their cohorts would be better served getting their collective head around the fact that as long as the rationale is weak, power will only go so far.

If they can't figure that out, Iraq won't be our last drawn-out adventure in the global south; we'll shed blood on the soil of other far-off little countries that most Americans can't find on a map, the media will hype other tin-pot dictators as the next coming of Hitler, and the defense industry will have other opportunities to shake some silver out of the treasury. And we'll wake up in a decade or so facing another quagmire and realize it's Groundhog Day all over again.

Joshua Holland is an AlterNet staff writer.                             

© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/36032/

    Tuesday 16 May 2006

    A politician's reaction to dissent is often the true test of a commitment to democracy. Great leaders not only tolerate criticism, but welcome disagreement as part of a fair competition of ideas leading to the best result for society.

    Certainly, no one who truly cares about democracy favors punishing critics and demonizing dissenters. But just such hostility has been the calling card of George W. Bush and his backers over the past five years as they have subjected public critics to vilification, ridicule and retaliation.

    While Bush doesn't always join personally in the attack-dog operations, he has a remarkable record of never calling off the dogs, letting his surrogates inflict the damage while he winks his approval. In some cases, however, such as the punishment of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, CIA officer Valerie Plame, Bush has actually gotten his hands dirty. [See below.]

    The Bush-on-the-sidelines cases are illustrated by what happened to the Dixie Chicks, a three-woman country-western band that has faced three years of boycotts because lead singer, Natalie Maines, criticized Bush as he was stampeding the nation toward war with Iraq.

    During a March 10, 2003, concert in London, Maines, a Texan, remarked, "we're ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas." Two days later - just a week before Bush launched the Iraq invasion - she added, "I feel the President is ignoring the opinions of many in the U.S. and alienating the rest of the world."

    With war hysteria then sweeping America, the right-wing attack machine switched into high gear, organizing rallies to drive trucks over Dixie Chicks CDs and threatening country-western stations that played Dixie Chicks music. Maines later apologized, but it was too late to stop the group's songs from falling down the country music charts.

    On April 24, 2003, with the Iraq War barely a month old, NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw asked Bush about the boycott of the Dixie Chicks. The President responded that the singers "can say what they want to say," but he added that his supporters then had an equal right to punish the singers for their comments.

    "They shouldn't have their feelings hurt just because some people don't want to buy their records when they speak out," Bush said. "Freedom is a two-way street."

    So, instead of encouraging a full-and-free debate, Bush made clear that he saw nothing wrong with his followers hurting Americans who disagree with him.

    Pattern of Attack

    Other celebrities who opposed the Iraq War, such as Sean Penn, got a similar treatment. Bush's supporters even gloated when Penn lost acting work because he had criticized the rush to war.

    "Sean Penn is fired from an acting job and finds out that actions bring about consequences. Whoa, dude!" chortled pro-Bush MSNBC commentator Joe Scarborough.

    Scarborough, a former Republican congressman, cited as justification for Penn's punishment the actor's comment during a pre-war trip to Iraq that "I cannot conceive of any reason why the American people and the world would not have shared with them the evidence that they [Bush administration officials] claim to have of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq." [MSNBC transcript, May 18, 2003]

    In other words, no matter how reasonable or accurate the concerns expressed by Bush's Iraq War critics, they could expect retaliation.

    With Bush's quiet encouragement, his supporters also denigrated skeptical U.S. allies, such as France by pouring French wine into gutters and renaming "French fries" as "freedom fries."

    Bush's backers even mocked U.N. arms inspector Hans Blix for not finding WMD in Iraq in the weeks before the U.S. invasion. CNBC's right-wing comic Dennis Miller likened Blix's U.N. inspectors to the cartoon character Scooby Doo, racing fruitlessly around Iraq in vans.

    As it turned out, of course, the Iraq War critics were right. The problem wasn't the incompetence of Blix but the fact that Bush's claims about Iraq's WMD were false, as Bush's arms inspectors David Kay and Charles Duelfer concluded after the invasion.

    But the critics never got any apologies or repair to the careers. As CBS's "60 Minutes" reported in a segment on May 14, 2006, the Dixie Chicks were still haunted by the pro-Bush boycott three years later.

    "They have already paid a huge price for their outspokenness, and not just monetarily," said correspondent Steve Kroft. Sometimes, Iraq War supporters even turned to threats of violence.

    During one tour, lead singer Maines was warned, "You will be shot dead at your show in Dallas," forcing her to perform there under tight police protection, said the group's banjo player, Emily Robison. In another incident, a shotgun was pointed at a radio station's van because it had the group's picture on the side, Robison said.

    Though the Dixie Chicks are still shunned by many country-western stations, they have refused to back down. Indeed, one of their new songs - entitled "Not Ready to Make Nice" - takes on the hatred and intolerance they faced for voicing an opinion about Bush and the Iraq War.

    As Kroft noted, "Not Ready to Make Nice" received favorable reviews and became one of the most downloaded country songs on the Internet, but it still "fizzled on the charts" as Bush supporters called up stations and demanded that it never be played.

    Asked to explain why these tactics work, Maines said, "when you're in the corporate world, and when that's your livelihood, and when 100 people e-mail you that they'll never listen to your station again, you get scared of losing your job. And why did they need to stand up for us? They're not our friends. They're not our family. And they cave." [CBS's "60 Minutes," May 14, 2006]

    The Plame Case                                                                                                   

    But what's most troubling is that this intolerance toward dissent is not simply overzealous Bush supporters acting out, but rather loyal followers who are getting their signals from the top levels of the Bush administration.

    For instance, a new federal court filing by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald revealed that Vice President Dick Cheney apparently instigated the campaign to punish former Ambassador Wilson for his criticism of the administration's claims that Iraq had sought enriched uranium from Africa.

    After reading Wilson's July 6, 2003, opinion article in the New York Times, Cheney scrawled questions in the space above the article, according to the court filing. Cheney's questions would soon shape the hostile talking points that White House officials and their right-wing supporters would spread against Wilson and his CIA officer wife, Valerie Plame.

    "Those annotations support the proposition that publication of the Wilson Op-Ed acutely focused the attention of the Vice President and the defendant - his chief of staff [I. Lewis Libby] - on Mr. Wilson, on the assertions made in his article, and on responding to these assertions," according to a May 12, 2006, filing by Fitzgerald.

    Cheney's questions addressed the reasons why the CIA sent Wilson to Niger in 2002 to check out - and ultimately discredit - suspicions about Iraq allegedly seeking "yellowcake" uranium from Africa.

    "Have they [CIA officials] done this sort of thing before?" Cheney wrote. "Send an Amb[assador] to answer a question? Do we ordinarily send people out pro bono to work for us? Or did his wife send him on a junket?"

    Though Cheney did not write down Plame's name, his questions indicate that he was aware that she worked for the CIA and was in a position (dealing with WMD issues) to have a hand in her husband's assignment to check out the Niger reports.

    Over the next several days, White House officials, including Libby and Bush's political adviser Karl Rove, allegedly disseminated information about Plame's CIA identity to journalists in the context of knocking down Wilson's critical article. In effect, the White House tried to cast Wilson's trip as a case of nepotism arranged by his wife.

    On July 14, 2003, Plame was publicly identified as a CIA operative in a column by right-wing commentator Robert Novak, destroying her career at the CIA and forcing the spy agency to terminate the undercover operation that she had headed. A CIA complaint to the Justice Department prompted an investigation into the illegal exposure of a CIA officer.

    Initially, when the investigation was still under the direct control of Attorney General John Ashcroft, Bush and other White House officials denied any knowledge about the leak. Bush pretended that he wanted to get to the bottom of the matter.

    "If there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is," Bush said on Sept. 30, 2003. "I want to know the truth. If anybody has got any information inside our administration or outside our administration, it would be helpful if they came forward with the information so we can find out whether or not these allegations are true."

    Yet, even as Bush was professing his curiosity and calling for anyone with information to step forward, he was withholding the fact that he had authorized the declassification of some secrets about the Niger uranium issue and had ordered Cheney to arrange for those secrets to be given to reporters.

    In other words, though Bush knew a great deal about how the anti-Wilson scheme got started - since he was involved in starting it - he uttered misleading public statements to conceal the White House role and possibly to signal to others that they should follow suit in denying knowledge.

    Failed Cover-Up

    The cover-up might have worked, except in late 2003, Ashcroft recused himself because of a conflict of interest, and Fitzgerald - the U.S. Attorney in Chicago - was named as the special prosecutor. Fitzgerald pursued the investigation far more aggressively, even demanding that journalists testify about the White House leaks.

    In October 2005, Fitzgerald indicted Libby on five counts of perjury, lying to investigators and obstruction of justice. In a court filing on April 5, 2006, Fitzgerald added that his investigation had uncovered government documents that "could be characterized as reflecting a plan to discredit, punish, or seek revenge against Mr. Wilson" because of his criticism of the administration's handling of the Niger evidence.

    Beyond the actual Plame leak, the White House oversaw a public-relations strategy to denigrate Wilson. The Republican National Committee put out talking points ridiculing Wilson, and the Republican-run Senate Intelligence Committee made misleading claims about his honesty in a WMD report.

    Rather than thank Wilson for undertaking a difficult fact-finding trip to Niger for no pay - and for reporting accurately about the dubious Iraq-Niger claims - the Bush administration sought to smear the former ambassador and, in so doing, destroyed his wife's career and the effectiveness of her undercover work on WMDs. Plame has since quit the CIA.

    The common thread linking the Plame case to the attacks on the Dixie Chicks and other anti-war celebrities is Bush's all-consuming intolerance of dissent.

    Rather than welcome contrary opinions and use them to refine his own thinking, Bush operates from the premise that his "gut" judgments are right and all they require is that the American people get in line behind him.

    Bush then views any continued criticism as evidence of disloyalty. While Bush will tolerate people voicing disagreement, he feels they should pay a steep price, exacted by Bush's loyalists inside and outside the government.

    So, when Bush's supporters malign his critics as "traitors" and spit out other hate-filled expressions bordering on exhortations to violence, Bush sees no obligation to rein in the intimidating rhetoric.

    Instead, Bush almost seems to relish the punishments meted out to Americans who dissent.

    --------

    Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & "Project Truth."

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. t r u t h o u t has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is t r u t h o u t endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

May 22, 2006 Issue
Copyright © 2006 The American Conservative

The Weakness of Empire

History has not dealt kindly with imperial ambitions, and America, however benevolent her intent, cannot hope to be an exception.

by Michael Vlahos

Something remarkable happened on the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Commentators began to declare, in somewhat exultant tones, that America had at last become a true empire. America was of course also a benevolent empire, they insisted, but that nod to altruistic tradition could not hide their excitement that America had at last joined the greatest empires of the past.

Implicit in these giddy declarations was the assumption that empire was an exalted state of power and possibility, not so unlike Rome at its zenith. Ironically, and for a historical instant, they were right. But there is one inescapable aspect of empire that the commentators missed. Empires are weak. It is republics in contrast that are strong. The United States is a republic that has been operating like an empire, and it has suffered for it. If we look at the gold standard for empire—Rome—we can see why.

First of all, what is an empire? Empire has less to do with scale of realm or of power than it does with one single feature. Simply, it is a polity where politics itself revolves around the person of the emperor.

This differs from the politics of kingship. Kings represent and embody a densely woven social fabric. They preside over a society of aristocracy: an extended family of rule, where the king is also father. Empires in contrast often emerge from republics. Thus Rome has been a favorite model for American commentators precisely because its successful passage from republic to empire seems close to ours.

Such post-republican emperors often inhabit the complex politics of multiple competing constituencies. These groups and factions continue to do political business within a republic’s constitutional framework transformed. Thus emperors find themselves consulting with and cajoling senates or assemblies; and unlike kings, they may owe their very legitimacy to these bodies.

Weakness 1: The Imperial Person

But the making and the doing in politics swirl around the imperial person—indeed, politics is dependent on the imperial person. This is the first weakness of empire: because politics revolves around the emperor, the rise and fall, success and failure of state policy is ultimately his alone.

The imperial situation is thus one of continuing and always worrisome vulnerability because no matter how many supporters or factions an emperor marshals, they can vanish in an instant. No matter that they have been handsomely bought off with perquisites and gifts, no matter that they are kept in line with threats and periodic cruel example. Failure of an imperial venture puts imperial authority itself instantly at risk.

Thus emperors do their utmost to ensure that politics is stuffed with reliable personal retainers. Longstanding official empires are a bit easier on the imperial person: there may be a tradition of a submissive bureaucracy and a compliant senate, and so the emperor’s legitimacy is less at the mercy of policy failure. But crisis immediately opens up the prospect of rival claimants and coups, usurpations, and civil wars.

A republic’s robustness, in contrast, derives from its ability to replace an elected leader and his government with relative ease. This is consecrated in the U.S. Constitution by mandated quadrennial elections of its executive.

Our constitutional framework is still in place, but after 9/11 it shifted operating practice to the imperial. Basically, 9/11 created an imperial dispensation. Through it the president took on the mantle of the office of commander in chief, which under the circumstances was perfectly natural. But then he went further and announced a state of perpetual war—“a war of generations,” “a hundred years war”—and so transformed himself into an imperial person. The transformation here was from episodic commander in chief—when and where circumstances warranted—to permanent generalissimo. His primary identity was now that of the military commanding person.

U.S. tradition and precedent limited the office of commander in chief both to the duration of a specific emergency and in terms of presidential powers. The Cold War chipped away at congressional authority to limit presidential powers. But the breathtaking 9/11 attacks drove the president to expand these powers further and make them truly open-ended.

Here the imperial transformation was not simply about power. Even more persuasively, it operated in the realm of authority and expectation. The popular climate was such after 9/11 that Americans seemed to share the prospect that American energies now revolved again around a great world struggle. Here of necessity—or so everyone thought—the entire conduct and control of this struggle should be vested in the emperor. The president took full advantage of the new zeitgeist to lock politics into an imperial orbit. Moreover, Americans also believed that war was the new national norm and that it would last a very, very long time. Few questioned that the situation marked a historic shift in the inmost nature of American politics.

So the president, through the transformed office of commander in chief, became an emperor. But the war that made this possible was now an imperial war and so his exclusive enterprise. He deliberately denied national participation—“go about your business”—that would have put this war squarely in the tradition of the old republic. Now it was his, and the benefits were great, extending deeply into American society as much as they did across the globe.

But the president also took on this weakness of empire: the enterprise stands and falls with him.

Weakness 2: The Imperial Purse

In crisis, a republic can claim all the energy and resources of its citizens because in the end the citizenry and the republic are the same. In empires, however, former republican citizens have given over their political authority to the trust and keeping of empire—and also their deepest responsibility to the nation as well. The emperor now manages; the emperor now defends. This is the heart of the imperial compact, and it is expressive of a fundamental political transaction: the citizens yield over management powers to the imperial person in exchange for a release from civic responsibility.

In revenue terms, this means that although they will still pay a citizen’s normal taxes, they are no longer obligated for extraordinary levees. Formal empires, in fact, are unusually weak when it comes to squeezing the very top citizens, those who in a republic would have been the foremost contributors. Remember, an empire that succeeds a republic retains as a sort of sacred fiction the old constitutional framing. And behind this fiction is continuing reality: that the emperor is not all-powerful, but rather dependent on the same political constituencies that were players in the old republic. The emperor cannot do without them, and he cannot afford to alienate them. Thus the top citizens in effect have to be bought off. This president has done just that with his extravagant tax cuts. In other words, the emperor can have his war, which itself is necessary to his majestic exercise of imperial power, as long as he does not demand too much from the interest groups whose support he needs for the continued exercise of imperial authority.

It is up to the emperor to marshal what national resources he can—and this is especially true in elective wars he has taken on and made his own. He cannot ask citizens to bear a burden that is exclusively his, and this limitation extends to money. As historian Mark C. Bartusis wrote, “In Byzantium there was never a general ‘citizen’s duty’ to fight for the state. In fact the very notion that a subject had an obligation to defend the state was foreign to the Byzantine mind set and antithetical to both Roman and Byzantine ideology that identified the emperor, through his army, as the Defender of the Empire.”

War expenditures therefore must exist in a “normal” fiscal context—which naturally limits the scope of imperial actions. Thus truly grand war by contrast and by definition is always a republican, or people’s war.

This limitation is even more keenly felt when it comes to soldiers. Here it is not simply a question of how they are paid, but also how they are recruited and retained. One of the key transformations of republic to empire is precisely in the shift from armed citizenry to imperial military. By fighting his own war, the emperor above all needs loyal troops: both figurative troops in politics and real shooters in the battle. The transformation from armed citizenry to imperial military is not simply a shift from conscription to volunteer force. In fact, it is necessary for the new army to become the emperor’s instrument, and thus it must be at some deep level bonded to the imperial person. In this way, the empire’s soldiers are also transformed. But it is often metamorphosis so nuanced as to be easily missed that they become the emperor’s retainers.

If they are native volunteers, then their emotional motivation to join is still patriotic—for the nation. But increasingly, their functional motivation as soldiers changes and is expressed through their direct allegiance to the emperor, in whose wars they fight. He is their benefactor, their protector, and their leader. Integral to imperial authority and imperial majesty is also the emperor’s overarching identity as soldier (hence in the original Latin, imperator meant general). Therefore, the emperor’s relationship to his soldiers must first be one of a general to his troops. He may not actually lead forces in the field, but his persona is anointed as generalissimo and war leader. For this president these ties were underscored in media interviews with troops on the eve of war: “We’re good to go when our commander-in-chief gives the word.”

This relationship has also been etched repeatedly in very public and very emotional images of the emperor with his army. The president would often give war speeches at posts and bases where his person was always staged with troops arrayed in back of him, as well as before him. There he would stand in camera-eye in a sea of battledress uniforms. The emotion would run high, encouraging him, lending steely drama to his voice. There are even images of soldiers in the round, outstretching their arms to him. At applause lines his troops would go further, washing his presence with whoops and hoo-yahs. The ties of the imperial person and his army were further consecrated by his ubiquitous short military jacket, emblazoned with its badge and title of supreme authority: “George W. Bush, Commander-in-Chief.”

Weakness 3: The Imperial Majesty

We have indicated that the personal politics of empire are surprisingly fragile, and that the politics of the emperor must therefore always be about reinforcing or shoring up his politics by the constant reminding exercise of imperial authority. This is best done not through attempting to acquire more statutory power—a risky and problematical pursuit—but rather through radiating more authority.

This is after all why people put up with emperors at all. People have come to believe that leadership of the polity and the nation requires a single, celestial man at the helm.

Imperial vesting happens because the emperor in his imperial person is the bringer of triumph, the vanquisher of foes in a world milieu of constant, “lurking” insecurity—a favorite term in presidential rhetoric because it helps to sustain the impression that enemies are everywhere, all the time, requiring constant, strenuous, and victorious executive action. In Rome this quality of the imperial person was famously styled as victor ac triumphator.

The emperor himself was anointed ultimately through the legitimizing concept of “eternal victory.” Rome’s very identity came to be couched in terms of perpetual triumph—over foes, adversity, backwardness, over what was not Roman. Moreover, the nation’s (res publica) triumph was achieved always through the intercession of imperial leadership. The emperor had to be the quintessential generalissimo, and victory thus became the essential hallmark of his reign.

The emperor’s authority was established through what became the central Roman imperial ritual: the imperial triumph. In the triumph, the emperor’s semi-magical persona that marshaled the forces of the nation and led them to victory was celebrated and revealed.

Central to a Roman imperial triumph was the conveyance of the imperial person to the sacred place where triumph would be celebrated—a stage entrance always freighted with grand symbolism. Our emperor’s landing on the flight deck of the USS Lincoln was no exception. Instead of a triumphal chariot, the president arrived on a military aircraft in which he was co-pilot, thus demonstrating to all his soldierly bona fides.

The Lincoln itself represented a grand symbol of American power and an enormous icon of eternal victory. In this triumph it is significant that the emperor chose to celebrate exclusively with his troops, where Americans were collectively placed outside as second-class onlookers—thus underscoring their depreciation of citizenship while elevating the military’s relationship.

In Roman times, of course, the army was often the source of imperial legitimacy. Just as the army would proclaim a new emperor by elevating him on a shield borne up by troops, so this emperor was raised up by “his own” (ton idion). In a supremely public moment, the emperor chose to have his own legitimacy ratified before the American people by the very military that represented “his own.”

The procession and prostration of the enemy leader is a common trope in Roman victory ceremonies. The vanquished leader undergoes ritual divestiture of his badges of authority and then is forced to prostrate himself before the imperial person. This ceremony was often associated with the army and took place in the camps. But Justinian transferred this ceremony to the imperial capital in 534. The public triumph over the Vandalic kingdom culminated in the divestiture and proskynesis of Gelimer, which served to signal to the Gothic kingdoms that their regimes too were illegitimate, that they were no better than usurpers, and that they were next.

When U.S. forces pulled Saddam out of his “spider hole” they made sure to videotape the filthy and disheveled dictator during a medical examination. This was no medical moment but rather a carefully orchestrated ceremony of divestiture and prostration. Like similar late Roman ceremonies, it took place in one of the battle army’s encampments, but it was also broadcast worldwide, to have the widest public impact, like an ancient victory procession in the imperial capital. Indeed, modern ceremony puts its ancient antecedents to shame. Not only was the entire world shown again and again the interior of Saddam’s mouth, but also the purposeful degradation of the former ruler went beyond even the old Roman act of forced proskynesis.

The emperor-president also addressed the people in carefully assembled, handpicked venues. These not only guarantee high levels of emotional support—visualized on-camera as positive energy —but they also bring forth comments that are less questions than they are petitions of support. In the president’s March 22 “town hall” meeting in Wheeling, West Virginia, one military wife exclaimed, “I ask you this from the bottom of my heart, for a solution to this, because it seems that our major media networks don’t want to portray the good. … And if people could see that, if the American people could see [the good], there would never be another negative word about this conflict.”

These are reminders of imperial authority flowing from popular acclamation. These events become all the more essential as imperial popularity wanes. No matter how selective and narrowly unrepresentative the audience, its enthusiastic acclamation is broadcast to all as though it were all-American.

But of course, modern America is not ancient Rome, and Americans are not generally even like old Romans. But it is rather astonishing how some of the rituals of imperial kingship—those that defined imperial authority 1,500 years ago—should have reappeared, unbidden and unrecognized, and yet with such crystal fidelity in our own politics.

Moreover these echoes, however strongly they have sounded over the past four years, may well be fading. The entire imperial enterprise erected around the global war on terrorism seems to be receding, if not heading toward wholesale collapse.

But the imperial moment was real. For a time at least the American Republic came close to being transformed—in operating politics if not in its actual constitution—into an empire.

We would be wise at the very least to acknowledge how close we came to the politically irreparable. We should also recognize what attends the transformation to empire. For a time, national politics came to revolve dangerously like old empires, and almost wholly, around the person of the commander in chief. Everywhere it was believed that the fate of the nation was in his hands, that he would protect us, that he would lead us to victory—and moreover that the people were passive onlookers in a great struggle run by the emperor.

Two convergent conditions made this happen.

The prodigal symbolism of 9/11—whose emotional power transcended Pearl Harbor—demanded a national narrative on the scale of America’s great wars, especially World War II. This was not simply a war narrative but a sacred war narrative. It alone seemed to demand a struggle between good and evil and an American national messianic mission of world redemption—or at least Islamic-world redemption.

At that moment, Americans were not only emotionally vulnerable, their emotions inclined them toward the comforting and the mythically familiar. We were ready for a great war that would unify the nation, vanquish evil, and lead to a better world. We were primed, in short, for a war of national transcendence.

And this administration was ready to give America a military catharsis. Americans were ready for the war leadership of a commander in chief. But the administration took the all-powerful Great War trope and shaped it into an imperial rather than republican vessel of authority.

Like Rome, the administration made victory the foundation of authority. It was implied that a series of campaigns would be necessary to achieve millennial goals such as “democracy in the Middle East.” The situation called for active and constant presidential leadership. Going further, the entire management of the war would be the president’s alone: there would be no government of national unity, no national mobilization, and no conscription. Not only was the president acting as commander in chief, he had undergone a metamorphosis: his person now fully inhabited an imperial station.

Furthermore, the administration also transformed the war into a permanent dispensation for imperial authority. The “long war” was designed to take normal politics and normal expectations off the table. By accepting the reality of the long war, moreover, Americans were encouraged to submit to a working imperial constitution. In practice this meant widespread expansion of executive powers at home as well as abroad.

But now “his own” closest retainers have deserted him, and even the military is no longer ton idion. And so, according to ancient story, the emperor is increasingly isolated, if not quite alone.

Our very strategy now founders because it was vested entirely in the cockpit of one man’s vision. So what is next? Where do we go from here? What lessons can we draw from the past five years?

First, the office of emperor as bringer of Eternal Victory is now a bankrupt, rotten concept. The quest to fulfill this triumphant identity did not bring victory but instead visibly weakened American world authority and domestic cohesion. Arguably no future leader will touch the model of triumphal rulership for a very long time. Therefore future executives will be less tempted to transform themselves into working imperial persons.

Second, even if the model of triumphal rulership has been discredited, the other imperial dispensation—the “long war” trope—is still alive and well, so even the next president might be tempted to renew a state of national emergency and become a permanent war leader. Then, if a real war rears up, the lure of triumphal rulership will beckon yet again.

But national emergencies are nonetheless real, and the political-military role of commander in chief was designed to deal with crisis. We must also remember that the slide beyond this, to imperial mode after 9/11, was more like an opportunistic pushing of norm and form rather than a permanent transformation. After all, we did not end up with anything like real triumphal rulership but only in contrast, its sordid failure.

Perhaps the lesson for all of us is in how quickly an imperial enterprise took root in the American presidency in the wake of a single—if pushing-all-the-buttons flamboyant—attack. Moreover, that enterprise was supremely confident: it was fully prepared to transform the office of president into that of an imperial victor ac triumphator. There was the real possibility, however remote it might actually have been, of an American political transformation.

Therefore, if nothing else, we should be all the more alert to future imperial temptation.   
______________________________________

Michael Vlahos is principal professional staff at the National Security Analysis Department of The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.

May 22, 2006 Issue

When the group met in the summer of 2004, it resembled a pep rally for Mr. Bush and his allies on Capitol Hill, and one session focused on how to use state initiatives seeking to ban same-sex marriage to help turn out the vote. This year, some participants are complaining that as soon as Mr. Bush was re-elected he stopped expressing his support for a constitutional amendment banning such unions.

Christian conservative leaders have often threatened in the months before an election to withhold their support for Republicans in an effort to press for their legislative goals. In the 1990's, Dr. Dobson in particular became known for his jeremiads against the Republican party, most notably in the months before the 1998 midterm elections.

But the complaints this year are especially significant because they underscore how the broad decline in public approval for Mr. Bush and Congressional Republicans is beginning to cut into their core supporters. The threatened defections come just two years after many Christian conservatives — most notably Dr. Dobson — abandoned much of their previous reservations and poured energy into electing Republicans in 2004.

Dr. Dobson gave his first presidential endorsement to Mr. Bush and held get-out-the-vote rallies that attracted thousands of admirers in states with pivotal Senate races while Focus on the Family and many of its allies helped register voters in conservative churches.

Republican officials, who were granted anonymity to speak publicly because of the sensitivity of the situation, acknowledged the difficult political climate but said they planned to rally conservatives by underscoring the contrast with Democrats and emphasizing the recent confirmations of two conservatives to the Supreme Court.

Midterm Congressional elections tend to be won by whichever side can motivate more true believers to vote. Dr. Dobson and other conservatives are renewing their complaints about the Republicans at a time when several recent polls have shown sharp declines in approval among Republicans and conservatives. And compared with other constituencies, evangelical Protestants have historically been suspicious of the worldly business of politics and thus more prone to stay home unless they feel clear moral issues are at stake.

"When a president is in a reasonably strong position, these kind of leaders don't have a lot of leverage," said Charlie Cook, a nonpartisan political analyst. "But when the president is weak, they tend to have a lot of leverage."

Dr. Dobson, whose daily radio broadcast has millions of listeners, has already signaled his willingness to criticize Republican leaders. In a recent interview with Fox News on the eve of a visit to the White House, he accused Republicans of "just ignoring those that put them in office."

Dr. Dobson cited the House's actions on two measures that passed over the objections of social conservatives: a hate-crime bill that extended protections to gay people, and increased support for embryonic stem cell research.

"There's just very, very little to show for what has happened," Dr. Dobson said, "and I think there's going to be some trouble down the road if they don't get on the ball."

According to people who were at the meetings or were briefed on them, Dr. Dobson has made the same point more politely in a series of private conversations over the last two weeks in meetings with several top Republicans, including Karl Rove, the president's top political adviser; Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the Republican leader; Representative J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, the House speaker; and Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the majority leader.

"People are getting concerned that they have not seen some of these issues move forward that were central to the 2004 election," said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, who attended the meetings.

Richard D. Land, a top official of the Southern Baptist Convention who has been one of Mr. Bush's most loyal allies, said in an interview last week that many conservatives were upset that Mr. Bush had not talked more about a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.

"A lot of people are disappointed that he hasn't put as much effort into the marriage amendment as he did for the prescription drug benefit or Social Security reform," Dr. Land said.

Republicans say they are taking steps to revive their support among Christian conservatives. On Thursday night, Mr. Rove made the case for the party at a private meeting of the Council for National Policy, participants said.

In addition to reminding conservatives of the confirmations of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court, party strategists say the White House and Senate Republicans are escalating their fights against the Democrats over conservative nominees to lower federal courts, and the Senate is set to revive the same-sex marriage debate next month with a vote on the proposed amendment.

But it is unclear how much Congressional Republicans will be able to do for social conservatives before the next election.

No one expects the same-sex marriage amendment to pass this year. Republican leaders have not scheduled votes on a measure to outlaw transporting minors across state lines for abortions, and the proposal faces long odds in the Senate. A measure to increase obscenity fines for broadcasters is opposed by media industry trade groups, pitting Christian conservatives against the business wing of the party, and Congressional leaders have not committed to bring it to a vote.

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform and another frequent participant in the Council for National Policy, argued that Christian conservatives were hurting their own cause.

"If the Republicans do poorly in 2006," Mr. Norquist said, "the establishment will explain that it was because Bush was too conservative, specifically on social and cultural issues."

Dr. Dobson declined to comment. His spokesman, Paul Hetrick, said that Dr. Dobson was "on a fact-finding trip to see where Republicans are regarding the issues that concern values voters most, especially the Marriage Protection Act," and that it was too soon to tell the results.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Weekend Edition
May 13 / 14, 2006

At Last, a Scandal We Can Enjoy!

Hookergate

By Dr. SUSAN BLOCK

Wake up and smell the sex! That sizzling aroma wafting up from Washington penetrates the nostrils like the scent of hot dogs grilling on the barbie. And just like that sweet meaty bouquet of backyard BBQs on Memorial Day, it's hard to tell, from a distance, just whose backyards are having all the fun. Fortunately, the FBI, a few bloggers and even some mainstream reporters are sticking their noses into this pork-laden sex scandal we're calling "Hookergate" (as well as "Fornigate," "Tailgate" and "Watergate-gate").

We do know that one of the smoked sausages belongs to freshly incarcerated Republican Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham, former Vietnam War "Top Gun," and House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Hot Dog from San Diego who was sentenced in March to more than eight years in prison for taking $2.4 million in bribes from military contractors. Cunningham's personal booty (detailed by CounterPunch's Jeffrey St. Clair in his salacious new book, Grand Theft Pentagon.) included a yacht docked on the Potomac where he lived rent-free, cutely dubbed "The Duke Stir," owned by his "owner," San Diego defense contractor, Mitchell Wade. Wade's largesse paid off well for him, as the Dukestir brought home the bacon in the form of tens of millions of dollars in defense and intelligence contracts for Wade's fledgling company MZM Inc.

But this cozy arrangement that cost taxpayers millions wasn't just between Wade and Cunningham. Now the FBI is looking into just which U.S. government officials enjoyed the Wade-paid Poker 'n' Prostitutes parties at the Watergate Hotel (yes, that Watergate Hotel).

Yummy yum yum. Illegal sex between powerful congressmen and classy call-girls pimped by defense contractors flanked by card sharking spies. Who can resist the smell of high muckety-muck wieners roasting between hot hooker buns?

And from where else could that meaty stench be coming? Hm.Sniff, sniff Smells like there's another hot link on or about the person of one Porter Goss who was hustled out of his new job as CIA chief faster than a guilty husband could stash his lipstick-collared shirt in the laundry bin. Goss, a Yale Man who whooped it up with William H.T. Bush (uncle of President George W. Bush) as a Psi Upsilon frat boy before he followed in proto-Yalie Nathan Hale's hallowed footsteps and became a (rather hapless) spy, says he handed in his resignation so he'd have more time for "golf."

With a departure so abrupt and a reason so lame, twitching noses have to wonder if that spicy scent is indeed emanating from Porter's pants. It is certainly coming from the pants of his protégé Kyle "Dusty" Foggo who also suddenly resigned from his new post as the CIA's third highest ranking official (promoted to this job by Goss). Ol' Foggo of Foggy Bottom just happens to be longtime best buddies with Brent Wilkes, another defense contractor/pimp who is said to have helped pay for those poker 'n' poontang parties at the Watergate. Wilkes also seems to have heavily bribed the Dukestir, among other well-placed congressmen, to give juicy pork-packed contracts to his company, ADCS (Automated Document Conversion Systems).

Foggo admits to participating in the poker fests, but denies poking any prostitutes. At least, he didn't know they were prostitutes. But who knows who's a prostitute anyway? The contractor/pimps, Wade and Wilkes, probably didn't introduce the ladies as "prostitutes" nor were they so crass as to open their wallets and pay the hookers right in front of Duke, Dusty and the other government officials. This is the cream of America's crop we're talking about here; they know how to be cool in sensitive situations. Well, to a point.

Who might those others be? With luck, we'll soon find out. Let the smell of sizzling "defense" pork be our guide. As Deep Throat used to say, follow the money. Some of the congressman who received money from Wilkes are: (on the Armed Services Committee) Duncan Hunter (CA), Chairman - $43,200, Jim Saxton (NJ) - $1,500, Ken Calvert (CA)- $8,000, (Appropriations) Jerry Lewis (CA), Chairman - $86,252, Bill Young (FL) - $6,500, Tom Delay (TX) - $70,000, Henry Bonilla (TX) - $19,500, Joe Knollenberg (MI) - $13,000, Robert Aderholt (AL) - $2,000, John Doolittle (CA) - $103,000, Don Sherwood (PA) - $1,000, Mark Kirk (IL) - $5,000, (Select Committee on Intelligence) Peter Hoekstra (MI) - $4,000, Heather Wilson (NM) - $3,000, Darrell Issa (CA) - $5,000, as well as Roy Blunt (MO) - $21,000, Larry Craig (ID) - $43,000, Benjamin Gilman (NY) - $42,146, Robert Livingston (LA) - $10,000, Devin Gerald Nunes (CA) - $13,000, Ronald Packard (CA) - $11,000, Charles Robb (VA-Senate and the only Democrat on this list) - $17,000, Billy Tauzin (LA) - $18,587 and Jerry Weller (IL) - $10,000.

Interestingly, in this list of over 20 power-wielding, wiener-sporting alpha males, there is only one woman, and Wilkes only gave her three grand. Something tells me she wasn't at the Poker 'n' Poke 'Em parties either, though I could be wrong about that.

To be fair, the genders of the prostitutes have not yet been revealed. Most of us assume they are female, but let's be open-minded. After all, one of the most famous hookers in Washington is Jeff Gannon, aka Jim Guckert, former White House Correspondent and Closet Gay Market Call-Boy specializing in Military Fetish Play. Not only did Gannon/Guckert have greased backdoor access to White House press briefings, according to official records of his signed-in comings and goings (compiled conveniently by Gary Leupp), he appears to have spent many hours beyond the briefings hanging out (in his briefs?) in the White House, including about a dozen *overnights* in which he signed in on one day and signed out on the next.

Not that anyone's pointing any fingers, greased or not ­ heavens, no! - but when one hears about those White House sleepovers, one can't help but envision a certain family-values-spouting President (who has been cheerfully outed by his own "Desperate Housewife" Laura for "milking a horsea male horse") playing "Brokeback Mountain" Military Cowboy with manly NeoConMan Jeff Gannon/Jim Guckert. Not that Jeff/Jim is a true Neocon, and he probably didn't con the White House (just the Press Corps). Remember, he's a hooker.

Most hookers are apolitical. It's the nature of being a good hooker. You work for whoever's got the cash. In Hookergate, the hookers are working for their pimps, Wade and Wilkes, who pay them. But the pimps are getting much more money from the johns, except instead of cash on the table, its defense contracts worth millions. Since the whole defense industry seems to operate like this ­ plus or minus a few whores, jokers, campaign contributions and stock options - one could say billions.

It's common wisdom among prostitutes, especially in Washington, that Republicans are better customers than Democrats. Democrats tend not to want to pay for sex. For various reasons, some having to do with "democracy" and some having to do with being cheap, Dems like to do it with interns and volunteers.

Republicans prefer to get their sex from professionals. They also seem to have more of an awareness/superstition that Sex is Bad - after all, that's what they're continuously and hypocritically preaching to their trusting constituents. Thus Republican officials tend to value the discreet privacy that professional prostitutes provide. The Hookergate hookers didn't blab about the Watergate Whorehouse like Monica blabbed to Linda Tripp. But thanks to the Dukestir's other more extravagant bribes, the whole game is being exposed anyway.

Who cares who Duke and Dusty and maybe Porter were porking? I don't. That is, I don't believe having extra-marital sex or paying for sex necessarily makes them unfit representatives or even incompetent spies (look at 007). But I must confess that I do care in the sense that I'm interested. I mean, its fun to read about ­ or better yet see hot pics of ­ illicit sex in the higher echelons of government. It's mildly arousing, serves up interesting tidbits about the official's sexual fetishes and provides good water cooler gossip. Republicans relied on this *interest* factor when they nailed Clinton with Monica (even though the poor dears never even fully nailed each other). That's the bottom line: Sex, especially illicit sex in high places, is interesting ­ oh, that delicious smell! Eau de Sex.

What about the fact that these are prostitutes we're talking about here? I support prostitutes' rights. I'm all for sex workers making an honest buck. I believe prostitution should be decriminalized, a position I'm sure the Duke Stir would have abhorred during his pious, high and mighty, tough-on-vice congressional days.

But keep in mind that Hookergate isn't even about government officials paying for sex with prostitutes. That would be an honest transaction. But the officials weren't paying! The defense contractors were paying. In turn, the defense contractors were getting paid, ever-so-much-much more, by We the American People. We are the johns in this affair, and we don't even get our buns warmed. We the People have been jacked, big-time. And - smoking pork bellies, that stinks!

Of course, people are comparing Hookergate to Zippergate or Monicagate or Clinton's Folly or Ken Starr's Porn (one name never really stuck, just like the charges didn't amount to much more than a dirty blue dress). True, Clinton was risking the public trust by playing naughty games with chatty interns whilst surrounded by Republican vultures ready to swoop down at the slightest smell of blood - or semen. But Clinton wasn't spending the public's money for his personal pleasure. Monica wasn't representing any interest groups or contractors.

Hookergate is different. It's the sex scandal burning at the center of a pork-stuffed $500 billion annual defense budget monster that keeps growing and killing with greater, more devastating incompetence and profligacy. The hooker sex is irrelevant to the real festering obscenity, which is how both our elected and appointed officials keep giving away American tax dollars to their cronies, most of whom seem to have something to do with defense (that's where the fattiest pork is). Whether or not Halliburton services Dick Cheney's dick is irrelevant. The important - and truly obscene - thing is that, thanks to Cheney's firm guidance of Horse-Milking Clueless George, Halliburton is making big bucks on America's disasters in Iraq, Afghanistan and New Orleans.

No, the sex angle on Hookergate isn't the meat of the matter. But then, it's not the steak that sells the steak, it's the sizzle. If the FBI keeps grilling those dogs, it could just wake up the dormant journalistic instincts of the whores that report for the mainstream press. The smell of hot flaming illicit sex, properly fanned by Big Media, might even awaken the somnambulant anti-war movement and everybody else that loathes this lying, spying, faith-based, warmongering regime, which is a large majority of the country, as evidenced by Dubya's and Congress' plummeting polls. Then maybe we could make some changes that really benefit the johns - I mean, the American people.

Of course, hookers, including media hookers, always work for whoever's got the cash, and corporate media bosses tend to be religiously Republican. So when it comes down to doing their jobs and actually reporting on the obscene Jacking of America, well, let's just say I'm not holding