Fault the Stars

Seems like just yesterday that Paul O’Neill was castigated for describing President Bush as a blind man in a room full of the deaf. Apologies are owed to the deaf and blind. They are better than that.

Yet, after screeching vitriolic denials at the time of the “famous quote,” here are the very same Republican apologists claiming just that, if you stop to think about it. To wit, that the poor White House was misled by its employees, the “intelligence community.” Never saw, never heard the warnings that they couldn’t tell for sure what sort of hand Saddam was really holding.

Funny. I clearly remember the uncertainty. I remember the nuclear weapon Niger business and how the White House shoved it into the mis-State of the Union Address. Watching the President cast about for someone else to blame, parsing what he knew and when he knew it, is sad really. It’s like watching a man who pulled the trigger blame the hand that held the gun.

Why, then, bring up Shakespeare’s “Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves…”

Because I remember that there is a wall in Langley covered with stars. Each represents a fallen member of a secret corps. The “Intelligence community.” Whether I agree with them or not, politically, is no matter. Whether I like them is no matter. They were American Patriots. They gave their lives for this country.

To hear a bunch of “deaf” chicken hawks and their “blind” leader, who almost to a man (Rumsfeld and Powell excepted) dodged the draft and a chance to serve this country when it was their turn, now cavalierly disparage the reputations of the dead and libel and slander the living in the “intelligence community” is too much, even for me, a running dog lackey of the antiwar Left who doesn’t much trust the spies anyway. These politicians, the front men for Halliburton and other war profiteers, sent soldiers into harm’s way, sent some of those men who now are only stars on a wall in Langley to their final resting place.

It was made perfectly clear to them (and pretty much to all of us) at the time that the intelligence was qualified. The Niger episode alone is a clear and simple example that CIA information was sufficiently well qualified with plenty of footnotes long before we decided to launch a preemptive strike on a despot.

It’s an act of despicable cowardice by the Administration to blame the predictable (and predicted) failure of their hapless “nation-building” strategy on brave patriots in the “intelligence community.” This community did its best to deliver accurate information at the risk of greatly displeasing its “deaf” and “blind” bosses, who had no interest then, or now, in reality (Shiite majority to take over Iraq and throw us out by Summer’s end, anyone?). That pundits of the press, on both sides, should participate in this witch-hunt only adds more guilty parties to this disgrace that should disgust real patriots everywhere.

Our President, so unwilling to face the dangers of combat when it was his turn, should immediately repudiate these cowardly attacks by his surrogates and minions on those brave enough to put their lives on the line in service of this country. The fault, Mr. President, lies not in the stars on that wall in Langley, nor in the carefully qualified information they gave you, but in yourself and the advisors you have surrounded yourself with.

Be a man, at last. No more hiding in the Texas Guard thousands of miles from the Front. Stop blaming real patriots. Stand up and take responsibility for your actions and decisions and taking this country into a preemptive war with Iraq now.

And if you can’t take the heat, maybe you should just get out of the kitchen. ¶ 11:49 AM