It’s official. We have just entered into a new Cold War.

On Sunday, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev defined bold and assertive guidelines that would define its new approach to international relations. This new policy most notably contains what is effectively the Russian version of the Roosevelt corollary of the United State’s well-known Monroe Doctrine. Re-asserting itself as having special “areas of privileged interests”, Russia is effectively trying to turn back the clock to the pre-Perestroika era when the Soviet Union still had the economic strength to impose its will on Warsaw-pact satellites and other disobedient nations in their global neighborhood.

Insisting that the future “world must be multi-polar,” Medvedev rejected the notion that the any nation, particularly the United States, should be the sole decision-maker on the world stage. Stunningly, very few news organizations have even bothered to report on this latest assertion of Russia’s resurgence on the global stage.

Russia has been retreating for years from its experiment with democracy and liberty after President Clinton initially prescribed economic shock therapy and then largely wrung his hands and shrugged his shoulders while Russia disintegrated into a kleptocracy that fed the oligarchs, impoverished the nation, and devolved Russia into a nuclear armed third-world country.

America needed President Bush & Secretary of State Rice to have a strong, coherent, and comprehensive policy towards Russia that would pull them back from their slow slide back towards an authoritarian regime and a cult of personality. Instead we got a long gaze into Putin’s eyes by which President Bush divined “a sense of his soul.” Since then the Bush administration, full of unilateral righteousness, either ignored or rudely dismissed Russia’s concerns.

President Bush concluded after his new age evaluation of Putin that he was “a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country.” Given Russia’s recent actions, it appears that was one of the very few conclusions President Bush got right.

The political euphemism glossary, which is non-partisan and being built gradually, is a catalog of the tools, words, and phrases used by political minds to shape how we think or worse, lull us into such a complacency we fail to critically think at all.

The next euphemism to enter the complete glossary is below. Click on the word below for the political definition and description.

Enhanced Interrogation Techniques

Author’s Note: Now that President Bush is no longer in office, I have compiled an updated and complete list of what grew to be 42 Bush administration appointees who resigned in disgrace which also includes and supersedes the original list of 21 resignations contained in the post below. Click on the link above for the complete list. -Feb 11, 2009

Hardly a month goes by these days without a Bush administration appointee resigning under a cloud of controversy. So many have resigned that it actually has become difficult to remember every one of them. Some were well illuminated by the mainstream media while others were just a passing blip on the political radar. How many Bush appointees do you think have resigned under a cloud of controversy? Would you believe at least 21?

In order to refresh my memory and yours, I’ve compiled a list to track Bush administration officials who resigned under at least questionable if not dishonorable conditions. Sometimes the resignations are ethically based, sometimes legally based, and others are just a matter of sheer ineptitude.

Not all resignations are a result of impropriety and not all resignations of controversial appointees are a result of the controversy. Mr. Karl Rove has number of controversies surrounding his tenure at the White House but his resignation does not appear to be related to any them. Not everyone who has resigned will be found below. Just the resignations that were nothing but cover for being fired or attempting to escape a controversy.

The descriptions below are mostly, but not entirely, quoted or paraphrased from the referenced source reporting. This list also does not address resignations that fall outside of the scope of the Bush administration, such as those in Congress.

In no particular order, here is the rogue’s gallery.

I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby- Office of the Vice President Chief of Staff
As reported by the New York Times:

• He resigned after he was indicted by a federal grand jury on five charges related to the Valerie Plame CIA leak controversy.
• Mr. Libby was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice and was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
• His sentence was commuted by President Bush shortly before he was to report to prison.

David Safavian- Administrator for Federal Procurement Policy, Office of Management and Budget, Executive Office of the President
As reported by the Washington Post:

• He resigned and was arrested the same day on charges resulting from the Jack Abramoff corruption investigation.
• He concealed his efforts to help Abramoff acquire control of two federally managed properties in the Washington area.
• He also made repeated false statements to government officials and investigators about a golf trip with Abramoff to Scotland in 2002.
• Mr. Safavian was convicted of lying and obstruction of justice and was sentenced to 18 months in prison.

J. Steven Griles- Deputy Secretary of Interior
As reported by the Washington Post:

• Mr. Griles is the highest ranking administration member to be convicted as a resulted of the Jack Abramoff corruption probe.
• Pleaded guilty to lying to the Senate about his relationship with Abramoff and was sentenced to 10 months in prison and a $30,000 fine.
• An 18-month investigation by the department’s inspector general found that he had dealings with energy and mining industry clients of National Environmental Strategies Inc. even as he continued to receive payments from his former firm. The report did not accuse Mr. Griles of violating any laws or federal ethics rules.

Kyle “Dusty” Foggo- CIA Executive Director
As reported by the Washington Post, MSNBC, & San Diego Union-Tribune:

• Mr. Foggo resigned while he was being investigated for using his seniority and influence at his prior CIA job in Europe to steer business deals to his longtime friend Brent R. Wilkes, a California businessman and top Republican fundraiser.
• He has since been charged with fraud, conspiracy and money laundering.

Eric Keroack- Dept. of Health & Human Services, Chief of U.S. Office of Population Affairs
As reported by the International Herald Tribune, The Boston Globe and The Washington Post

• Oversaw the population affairs office which is responsible for providing women with access to contraceptives and counseling to prevent pregnancy and has a $283 million annual budget.
• Served for more than a decade as medical director for A Woman’s Concern, a Massachusetts nonprofit group that discourages abortion and does not distribute information promoting birth control.
• Massachusetts’ Office of Medicaid has taken actions against his private medical practice within the state ordering him to refrain from prescribing drugs to people who are not his patients and from providing mental health counseling without proper training.
• He resigned only five months after he was appointed.

Randall Tobias- Deputy Secretary of State
As reported by the San Francisco Chronicle:

• Mr. Tobias was the director of U.S. foreign assistance and U.S. Agency for International Development administrator and previously had been the White House coordinator for global AIDS relief.
• His name surfaced in connection with the so-called D.C. Madam investigation involving Deborah Jeane Palfrey, who is accused of running an illegal escort service in the nation’s capital.
• He abruptly resigned and stated that he had used the service to provide massages, not sex.

Kyle Sampson- Attorney General Chief of Staff
As reported by the Washington Post:

• Kyle Sampson, proposed selective removal of US attorneys based on performance reviews pegged to how closely the prosecutors adhered to administration policy.
• Mr. Sampson strongly urged bypassing Congress in naming replacements, using a little-known power slipped into the renewal of the USA Patriot Act in March 2006 that allows the attorney general to name interim replacements without Senate confirmation.
• He acknowledged that he did not tell key Justice officials about the extent of his communications with the White House, leading them to provide incomplete information to Congress.
• He resigned after his memos outlining a political strategy for the dismissals were disclosed.

Monica Goodling- Senior Counselor to the Attorney General & Justice Department liaison to the White House
As reported by the Washington Post:

• She refused to answer questions from Congress about the U.S. Attorney firings, invoking her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
• Mr. Sampson and Ms. Goodling worked closely together on the firings, particularly in the case of an Arkansas prosecutor removed to make way for a former aide to presidential adviser Karl Rove. Both participated in briefings for Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty and others prior to testimony before Congress that has since been shown to be inaccurate.

Michael Battle- Dept of Justice Director of the Executive Office for United States Attorneys
As reported by the NY Times & AP:

• Mr. Battle carried out the U.S. Attorney firings and had contradicted Attorney General Gonzales’ assertions that he had limited knowledge of the dismissals and that the firings were based on performance, according to Sen. Charles Schumer
• Mr. Battle told congressional investigators that a memo about the firings was distributed at a Nov. 27 Justice meeting that Gonzales attended. Battle also said he “was not aware of performance problems with respect to several of the U.S. attorneys” when he called to fire them, according to Schumer.
• Generally believed to have not played a significant role in the decision to remove the United States attorneys, although Justice Department officials said he had accepted it.
• Mr. Battle stated that his resignation had no link to the controversy. He resigned in March 2007 during the height of investigation into the firings.

Paul McNulty- Deputy Attorney General
As reported by the NY Times:

• Mr. McNulty took one prosecutor off the removal list but acquiesced to the removal of seven others, according to Congressional aides’ accounts of his private testimony to Congress on April 27, 2007.
• He blamed himself for failing to resist the dismissal plan when Mr. Sampson brought it to him in October 2006, according to associates.

Michael Elston- Deputy Attorney General Chief of Staff
As reported by the Washington Post:

• Mr. Elston was closely involved in deliberations over the fate of a group of U.S. attorneys last December. He assembled one of the lists of prosecutors to be considered for removal.
• Four of the dismissed prosecutors said they later received inappropriate telephone calls from Elston, who allegedly warned some of them that they would suffer retaliation if they spoke publicly about their firings.
• Mr. Elston and his attorney have denied the allegations.
• He resigned June 2007.

William Mercer- Associate Attorney General (Acting)
As reported by the Washington Post:

• Mr. Mercer was nominated by President Bush as Associate Attorney General September of 2006.
• He also has had a permanent job as U.S. attorney in Montana since 2001
• Mercer was accused of spending much of his time in Washington over the past two years rather than in his permanent job as U.S. attorney in Montana. Mr. Mercer spent an average of three days a month in Billings, according to testimony.
• Montana’s chief federal judge often criticized Mr. Mercer’s absences and asked Attorney General Gonzales to replace him. The attorney general refused and assured the judge in a November 2005 letter that Mercer’s appointment was lawful.
• On the same day that letter was written, however, Mr. Mercer instructed a GOP staff member to insert language into a USA Patriot Act re-authorization bill allowing federal prosecutors to live outside their districts to serve in other jobs, according to documents and interviews. The provision — which retroactively applied to Mercer’s tenure in Washington — was passed by Congress.
• He withdrew his nomination for the job just days before he was scheduled to appear at a Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing in June 2007 and returned to Montana and his U.S. attorney position.

Sara Taylor- Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Political Affairs at the White House
As reported by the Washington Post & PBS:

• Sara Taylor resigned from her position as the White House Political Director during the height of the U.S. Attorney firings controversy in May 2007 and appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee after being subpoenaed on the matter.
• Most of her testimony was either claiming to not remember events and conversations or claiming to have to adhere to the President Bush’s claim of executive privilege.
• In a revealing moment that displayed her frame of mind about her duties, she claimed to have taken an oath to the president after which Senator Leahy corrected her by pointing out that she took an oath to uphold the Constitution and not the president.

Paul Wolfowitz- World Bank President
As reported by the CNN & the Washington Post:

• A World Bank committee concluded Mr. Wolfowitz violated staff rules when he arranged a raise and transfer for his girlfriend, Shaha Ali Riza, a longtime bank employee.
• After Mr. Wolfowitz took over at the bank in 2005, Riza was transferred to a U.S. State Department job at a tax-free government salary of almost $194,000 a year.
• Mr. Wolfowitz said an ethics panel approved the deal, but the panel denies it. An investigative committee found that the deal was a conflict of interest.
• He resigned only after the bank board accepted his contention that he acted “ethically and in good faith.”

Harvey Pitt- Securities & Exchange Commission Chairman
As reported by the USA Today & Forbes:

• Mr. Pitt’s 15 month chairmanship occurred during the wave of accounting scandals that undermined global confidence in the transparency and ethics of corporate finance and the markets in general.
• Mr. Pitt was widely viewed as sympathetic to the accounting industry and took steps to undermine the effectiveness of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act which was designed to prevent future corporate accounting ethical lapses.
• Selected a man to head an accounting oversight board without telling his fellow commissioners that the man he was hiring was also the chairman of the audit committee of an Internet company itself under question for accounting improprieties.
  

Julie MacDonald- Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior
As reported by the NY Times & Contra Costa Times :

• Ms. MacDonald oversaw the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.
• Inspector general investigation found she bullied biologists and improperly leaked documents to friends, political allies, and industry lobbyists including the California Farm Bureau, someone at ChevronTexaco and the Pacific Legal Foundation, a Sacramento property rights law firm.
• Federal biologists will reconsider several decisions affecting endangered mice, flies and the Canada lynx after an internal review found eight instances where MacDonald improperly altered scientific findings to change key decisions made in the Fish and Wildlife Service’s regional offices.

Francis Harvey- Secretary of the Army
As reported by CNN & Fox News:

• Mr. Harvey resigned after reports of substandard conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, a key facility treating troops wounded in Iraq, came to light.
• Troops recuperating from wounds they suffered in Iraq and Afghanistan were discovered to be living in substandard conditions in Building 18, an adjunct structure at Walter Reed that was once a hotel. There also were complaints of too much bureaucratic red tape.
• Senior defense officials speaking on condition of anonymity said Secretary of Defense Gates was displeased that the officer Harvey had chosen as interim commander of Walter Reed — Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley, the current Army surgeon general and a former commander of Walter Reed — has been accused by critics of long knowing about the problems there and not improving outpatient care

Donald Rumsfeld- Secretary of Defense
As reported by every news agency on the planet:

• Mr. Rumsfeld was 9 days shy of being the longest serving Secretary of Defense when he resigned.
• Numerous controversies surrounded his tenure as secretary. Only a few are listed below.
• Stated desire to attack Iraq and Usama Bin Laden at the same time in a meeting a few hours after the 9/11 attacks.
• He had a reputation for not tolerating dissent and ignoring advice from the military. This was most notably demonstrated when he publicly named the replacement for Army Chief of Staff Gen. Shinseki more than a year before he was to retire because of his public statements about the need for a much larger invasion force in Iraq than Mr. Rumsfeld wanted. This was just one of the many disagreements they shared about the Army of the future. Retired military leaders increasingly called for his resignation as the Iraq war wore on.
• The Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal as well as some of the interrogation techniques used at the Guantanamo Bay military detention facility that critics charge are torture have occurred during his tenure.
• Criticism of his handling of the Iraq war has been bipartisan and has come from both military and civilian circles. The criticism has focused on Mr. Rumsfeld not planning a post-invasion strategy, making several strategic mistakes, being unrealistic in his expectations, alienating national allies, and failing to bring the insurgency to an end, if not preventing it altogether.

Michael Brown- Dept. of Homeland Security Undersecretary of Emergency Preparedness and Response
As reported by Time:

• Mr. Brown’s handling of the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe can be at best described as anemic and at worst as criminally negligent. His inaction and bungled actions as FEMA Director turned a huge natural disaster into a national catastrophe highlighted by bureaucratic ineptitude which led to his resignation shortly thereafter.
• He was appointed as FEMA director despite not have any significant experience in emergency management.
• He lied several times on his resume and official biography claiming to have served as an assistant city manager with emergency services oversight for Edmond, OK when in fact he was an administrative assistant with no managerial duties or authority. He was a student at Central State University at the time.
• He claimed to have been a Political Science professor at University of Central Oklahoma but the university states that Mr. Brown was never a faculty member and was only a student.
• He claimed to have been a director of the Oklahoma Christian Home, a nursing home in Edmond yet no one in that organization has ever heard of him before.

Alberto Gonzales- Attorney General
As reported by the Washington Post:

• Mr. Gonzales resigned as a result of the controversy surrounding selective U.S. Attorney firings that appeared to be politically motivated.
• He was also mired in controversy regarding the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, his redefinition of what legally qualifies as torture, and other applications of the Patriot Act.
• He has been accused of destroying the credibility of the Justice Department’s political independence by politicizing the department’s hiring and prosecution priorities
• Repeated calls for his resignation came from both Republican and Democratic members of Congress.
• Mr. Gonzales repeatedly angered lawmakers by saying that he could not recall key episodes and details related to the U.S. attorneys’ dismissals, testifying nearly 70 times at one hearing alone that he could not remember specific events.
• Justice investigators have said they are examining whether Gonzales purposely misled Congress or attempted to improperly influence a witness in his employ.

George Deutsch- NASA Public Affairs Officer
As reported by the New York Times:

• Mr. Deutsch told public affairs workers to limit reporters’ access to a top climate scientist and told a Web designer to add the word “theory” at every mention of the Big Bang.
• Texas A&M University confirmed that he did not graduate from there, as his résumé on file at the agency asserted.
• Allegedly played a small but significant role in an intensifying effort at the agency to exert political control over the flow of information to the public.

I visited The Moving Wall this weekend. The Moving Wall is a half-size replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial that travels around the country so those who can not make it to Washington D.C. can experience the power, and hopefully the healing, of the memorial. As I was reflecting upon the wall, contemplating all the names, the sacrifice, the suffering, the bravery, and the controversy surrounding the war, I began to wonder what sort of memorial we will have for the veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The entire country was unified and clear in purpose for Operation Enduring Freedom, which is the military’s operational name for the invasion of Afghanistan. We knew why we were there and we knew what the goal was: to overthrow the Taliban and to destroy Al-Qaeda. It is a just war. And a just war deserves a memorial that befits the moral certitude of that war.

What the Afghanistan War memorial will look like is still shrouded in the future, but I imagine it will evoke a strong sense of pride and unity in our nation and in our brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters who fought there. No one will ever question whether their sacrifices were in vain.

What the Iraq War memorial will look like is being shaped right now by the actions we as a nation take over the next couple years.

Unlike the previous war, the Iraq war was morally suspect from the start and the evidence to justify it circumstantial at best. We were attacking a country that had not attacked us. But President Bush had shown such strength and certitude after 9/11 and during the morally just Afghanistan war, he had earned our benefit of the doubt. There were nuclear weapons to find and support to Al-Qaeda to disrupt. We would be greeted as liberators and we would pay for the whole war with Iraqi oil proceeds that would no longer be sanctioned. We rallied around President Bush’s battle cry and largely supported the invasion.

The American military invaded and destroyed Saddam’s military and security infrastructure and took over Iraq, freeing the people from a truly horrible tyrant. The American military did a brilliant job. They then turned control over to President Bush’s hand-picked civilian leadership in the Coalition Provisional Authority. And that’s where it all went to hell. Why? Because President Bush never had a plan for the aftermath.

It was clear early on that the CPA had no idea what it was doing. Their time in power produced an inexcusable litany of massive bureaucratic incompetence: dismantling the Iraqi army, disbanding the Iraqi police force, not allowing former Baathists to work in the new government, failure to restore utilities destroyed in the war in a timely manner, behaving in manners that were patently offensive to the local culture, bringing in American contractors to do work that Iraqis could, would, and wanted to be hired to do, and the list goes on and on.

Why was the CPA so incompetent? Two reasons- they had no post-invasion plan to implement and the CPA was staffed not based on experience or skill, but on loyalty to President Bush. This is precisely how President Bush has staffs his own administration.

If Iraq is to be lost, it will be lost because President Bush and his caravan of ideologues have shown themselves not only to be inept in running our government but tragically destructive in trying to run Iraq’s. It’s as if we dug a hole, threw the Iraqi people into it, and then asked them why they’re in a hole. There’s no doubt the current Iraqi government is not doing much to help itself but we did a damn good job of hobbling it before it even got started.

We may have gone in for the wrong reasons but we must stay for the right ones. The Bush administration’s cronyism and sheer incompetence led us to this tragic point but that is not as important as where we go from here.

If we leave Iraq in the hole we dug for them, we will shame ourselves. If we pull out with the same rashness and lack of planning that we went in with, Iraq may not survive as a country. The chaos that would ensue will be our legacy in the region. Nobody will care that we toppled Saddam. All they will remember is how we abandoned the very people we claimed to liberate. Whatever moral high ground we once had will have been lost. America will be left with a somber and caustic national memory of what we had done to Iraq. Why would any nation ever trust us after that?

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial was designed to not reflect a position on a war that was so divisive to our nation and our military. It is a meditation on the people who wore the uniform, rather than on why they were there and what they did. If we abandon Iraq, there will be a push to have another war memorial designed with the same idea in mind.

Our military in Iraq has done everything it has been asked to do and done it supremely well. Though the fight for peace in Iraq may ultimately end up being lost, it won’t be because our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines. The battles they fought and the war they waged deserves recognition for what it was- a complete and just victory. They overthrew a bloody tyrant and freed an oppressed nation. Our Iraq war veterans deserve a memorial that reflects that.

President Bush has again displayed the nuance and diplomatic skills of a chainsaw. His flippant approach to Russian concerns about the deployment of an American anti-ballistic missile system in former East Bloc countries only serves to make it even more difficult to work with the Russians in the future. To underscore that, Russia has just frozen cooperation with NATO on the Conventional Forces in Europe arms control treaty and has threated to re-aim some missiles at Europe.

Russia is starting to re-assert itself on the world stage. It is displaying a longing for the level of stature and respect that it once had. The one thing that they always had to be proud of and knew commanded international respect is their nuclear ballistic missile arsenal. President Bush dismissive approach toward that pride can only backfire on America’s ability to negotiate with them. Russia has been somewhat insecure since the fall of the of the Soviet empire and the President’s backhanded diplomacy doesn’t help.

I agree with President Bush’s position of deploying a limited missile defense network in Europe, but it doesn’t have to be in Poland and the Czech Republic. Those locations were likely chosen more for political reasons than technical ones. Looking through the perspective of the insecure short-man syndrome that Russia is demonstrating, they claim that it is aimed at them despite the fact that even they admitted it could be overwhelmed with the sheer volume of ballistic missiles at their disposal.

Iran is the nation of most immediate concern to the U.S. and already have nuclear-capable missiles that can reach Israel and possibly far into Europe. Those same missiles also reach far into Russia. Given the recent boost in cooperation between Iran and a nuclear North Korea, a nuclear-tipped Iranian missile is a very real worry for both nations.

Diplomacy with a supposed ally such as Russia should not be handled in such a clumsy fashion. President Bush’s dismissive comment that “Russia is not a threat” could easily be construed by the Kremlin as a sign of disrespect to them and the potential threat they are. Not being taken seriously as a potentially powerful threat, even if it is between friends, can easily be seen as a public humiliation- especially to a nation insecure about its’ place in the world

It is clear that President Bush was unable to assuage Putin’s concerns during their recent meeting in Maine. Diplomacy is a game of patience and nuance, attributes neither Bush nor his administration has clearly demonstrated before. Russia is a proud and still powerful nation. If President Bush fails to grasp that a face-saving overture is needed help Russia agree to things they don’t like, then all he has done is needlessly stoke the flames of Russian nationalism and militarism when they could’ve been made a partner in missile defense instead. We already have enough missile worries in the world without having to add Russia to the list.

Think American confidence in the presidency is low? The public is even less confident in Congress. And that is also a result of the President Bush’s leadership.
Gallup conducts an annual poll of American confidence in 16 different societal institutions ranging from the military to religion, business to labor, the medical system to HMOs, news to government, and a few others in between. The confidence rate was measured by totaling up those who said they had a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in each institution. According to a June 2007 Gallup poll, the presidency has only a 25% confidence level and that’s in the middle of the pack- 9th out of 16. Congress came in dead last at 14%

As you can see, the legislative branch has not done well the last few years but the presidency has done so poorly that what was nearly a 30 point gap between the two branches in 2002 has shrunk to 10 points. Even the Supreme Court has lost significant confidence.

At the start of the Bush administration, Congress’ confidence rating was 26% and that has been nearly cut in half to 14% since. This was under a Republican-led Congress and presidency. Because of this, President Bush effectively became the party’s leadership and set the agenda and tone for the entire government. Mix in the fact that he also named two new Supreme Court justices, named one of them the new Chief Justice, and you have the entire government being largely led by one man and one party.

President Bush and the Republican party took advantage of all that power to synchronize policy and politics in an effort to secure not only their policy objectives, but the dream of a permanent Republican majority in Congress. This effort resulted in previously politically independent positions promoting political agendas instead of executing their jobs in the manner and spirit intended. The more recent examples of this have come from the Justice Department and the Office of the Surgeon General. This has politicized the government bureaucracy to such a degree that Americans have lost significant confidence in all three branches.

The more politically charged every single aspect of governing has become, the less we trust them to govern well. The Republican party’s attempt to develop a permanent majority has backfired. The Bush administration has politicized all aspects of the executive branch by attempting to have policy and politics work in sync like a well-tuned political machine. By ensuring that presidential appointees place allegiance to President and party ahead of the integrity of their position, the Constitution, and the nation, the Bush administration has undermined not only the confidence we have in him, but in the entire government.

Crooks and Liars has posted an excerpt from a PBS broadcast of Bill Moyers’ roundtable discussion of impeachment with a conservative guest and a liberal guest. While they may not agree on a lot of issues, they do agree on one thing.

I strongly recommend taking six minutes to view the video.

“Politics is the art of the possible” -Otto Von Bismark

There are growing number of folks with a full head of steam about impeachment. There’s impeachcheney.org. There’s impeachbush.org. The blogosphere is abuzz with the idea. The mainstream media is starting to discuss it. There’s actual articles of impeachment against Vice-President Cheney in the House, submitted by Dennis Kucinich and sponsored by nine other representatives. And it’s going to go nowhere.

Think it through. Let’s start with impeaching President Bush. Let’s say that someone introduced articles of impeachment in the House and the resolution began to take off. All you need is a simple majority to pass the resolution and since the Democrats control the 53% of the seats, it’s fair to say they can accomplish this.

Then it’s on to the Senate which is where the President would have to be convicted by a 2/3 majority. That’s a bit trickier. There’s 49 Senators from each party and two independents. It’ll take some convincing to get at least 16 Republicans to vote against Bush. But let’s assume you get 67 votes to convict and President Bush is removed from office or he resigns prior to the conviction.

The country would now begin to execute a change of course once President Cheney is sworn in. Right?

Impeaching President Bush is comparable to deposing the Queen of England- strongly symbolic but functionally pointless. President Bush is not this administration’s center of gravity. Dick Cheney exerts the real power and sets the strategic direction of this administration. Impeaching Bush without impeaching Cheney is nothing but political theater.

So impeach them both you say! Well ok. Let’s look at that.

Let’s say we got the articles passed in the House, and then the Senate voted to convict them both. Time to play “Hail to the Chief” for President Nancy Pelosi. The Democrat.

Do you think that the Republicans would willingly turn over the White House to the Democrats? Short of discovering Bush & Cheney in the Oval Office with pistols and machetes in their hands amongst bloodstained bodies, there won’t be anyone leaving office for the next 18 months. It’s just not possible.

Our political leadership, congressional and presidential, has turned the most urgent and critical issue facing our nation into a an exercise in sound bite governance and diplomacy. “Cut and run” and “stay the course” compete with “bring the troops home” and “support our troops” as empty slogans masquerading as policy. The nation deserves a well developed and nuanced approach towards this very difficult problem but instead we are getting simple minded pronouncements that are more political posturing rather than leadership, statesmanship, or governance.

All parties concede the following about the Iraq quagmire:

• a reasonable level of safety and security must be established.
• safety and security cannot be established by military action alone.
• safety and security requires a comprehensive diplomatic and political solution.
• a full military withdrawal before safety and security are established would be a debacle likely resulting in the catastrophic failure of the Iraqi state.
• a failed Iraqi state would descend into unrestrained civil war, become a safe haven for Al Qaeda, and possibly lead to an unraveling of what remaining stability there is in the Middle East.
• this scenario would likely require our military involvement again.

Yet the debate inside the beltway, if you can call it that, is whether to bring the military home or not. It has been already established that withdrawing the military from Iraq before there is a sustainable level of safety and security is only going to cause larger problems for the U.S on a global scale and probably here at home also.

Democrats need to stop trying to sell immediate withdrawal. Offering the opposite of what the Republicans propose is not policymaking. It’s knee-jerk politics. Republicans need to stop offering empty platitudes about staying the course. Continuing to repeatedly do the same thing while hoping for different results is not policymaking either. It’s desperate wishing while in a state of denial. It’s also the mark of a fool.

The President needs to swallow his pride, accept that U.S. is unable to unilaterally impose security in Iraq, develop a coordinated diplomatic and political solution, and make that the administration’s primary thrust. That means dealing with Iran and Syria to a certain degree. It may be distasteful to do so but they are the regional players with the most at stake in the outcome and an unrestrained Iraqi civil war is not in their best interest either. Keeping a low-grade civil war brewing that bogs down the U.S. military is.

We can’t immediately withdraw, though I wish we could. America made a promise to the average Iraqi to not leave them to the wolves, be they Sunni, Shia, or Al-Qaeda. We would do even more damage to our battered reputation and integrity to abandon Iraq after having gone in roughshod the way we did.

I’m not suggesting we go in with overwhelming force either, ala the Powell Doctrine, because President Bush repeatedly missed those opportunities long ago and it is now simply too late for that. Both nations are running out of patience with the war.

The reasons we invaded Iraq were thin, twisted, and resulted in bait and switch justifications from the Bush administration. However there are compelling reasons to stay in Iraq until we can reasonably expect that it’s not going to implode. But we must forge ahead with a sensible and nuanced policy that is rooted in diplomacy, realpolitik, and a more thoughtful application of military force.

If we leave Iraq to descend into civil war and wash our hands of the whole mess, it will be the harbinger of America’s permanently decreased moral stature in the world. Our credibility would be heavily damaged. Our ability to lead would be hampered by the global memory of what we did for generations. We would no longer be the world’s policeman, but rather its dirty cop.

Tony Snow bent over backwards during his July 3rd briefing to avoid saying that the President respects the justice system by proclaiming his faith in the “jury system”

But the President also believes, for those who were arguing on behalf of a pardon, that you need to respect the jury system. Scooter Libby was tried before a jury of his peers. And it is important to make clear our faith in what really is a pillar of the American justice system, which is everybody’s right to be tried before a jury of the peers.

So the President has faith in at least one pillar of the justice system, which is the jury. Perhaps I’m reading the text too carefully. Maybe Mr. Snow didn’t mean to imply that the President doesn’t have faith in the entire justice system?

I am telling you that this President approaches these very carefully as a matter of principle. And the key considerations were, let’s figure out what we think is appropriate — what he thinks is appropriate, in terms of punishment, and let’s also do it in a way that does not do violence, but, in fact, shows respect for a system of justice — not going in and overthrowing the hard work and the verdict of a duly constituted jury.

Oh, OK. So that was just a slip on Tony’s part. The President really does respect the justice system. Right?

Reporter: Could we talk about the two — trying to have it two ways, saying that we have faith in the justice system, and yet what the judge did was excessive, even though it’s within guidelines, according to the prosecutor.
MR. SNOW: What I said was with the jury system.

Hmmm. So Tony Snow feels the need to set the record straight when a reporter says the Bush administration has faith in the justice system, by correcting her and making a point of saying that he said “jury system.”

If you insist, Mr. Snow.