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TechnoratiHand Gonzales, Wolfowitz Pink Slips
In the real world, it takes about a week for someone who has disgraced himself like radio talk-show host Don Imus to lose his job. In Washington, World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales hang on to their jobs for what seems like forever.Wolfowitz was caught dissembling about how his girlfriend, World Bank employee Shaha Riza, got a raise that was double the size allowed and a guarantee of glowing reviews when she moved from the bank to the State Department to avoid cronyism charges. His legal team was unwilling to bend the rules, so he took it upon himself to dictate the terms.
Petty corruption is never good but is particularly bad for Wolfowitz, who has made ending corruption in foreign countries his signature mission.
Of course, nailing Wolfowitz for that is a little like getting Al Capone for tax evasion. Yet it's better than letting the architect of the war in Iraq and peddler of all its false pretenses get off scot-free and with a plum job to boot. After all, the Medal of Freedom was awarded to others incriminated in the Iraq debacle.
The World Bank post comes with a good salary, even higher prestige, sway over finance ministers and the opportunity to do good if you do the job well. It's not a place to park a former Pentagon official whose cockeyed zeal to reshape the Middle East will have Americans dying in Iraq for years to come.
Wolfowitz, already unpopular among many of the bank's 13,000 employees for his high-handed manner and hiring of unqualified cronies, was booed last week as he tried to address the staff. With the bank's normally reticent oversight committee, which includes finance ministers, expressing "great concern" about him, it's unlikely Wolfowitz will be able to raise the billions needed to replenish the lending fund anytime soon.
Yet if Gonzales can persist, why not Wolfowitz? In its own way, Gonzales's tenure at the Justice Department is as damaging to the country domestically as Wolfowitz's time at the Pentagon was internationally.
Gonzales went along with whatever President Bush wanted.
He reviewed the so-called torture memo that became Bush administration policy and rubber-stamped Bush's effort to bypass the Geneva Conventions and expand warrantless wiretaps.
He has issued so many contradictory statements about the firing of eight U.S. attorneys that it's hard to see how he ever reconciles them, even with a dozen attorneys on the government payroll tied up coaching him.
Gonzales has denied the firings were political. Yet testimony by his former chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, as well as e-mails show they were. U.S. attorneys were being discussed in terms of whether they were "loyal Bushies." Political adviser Karl Rove was personally involved.
Congress discovered there were more e-mails confirming politics was involved in a parallel universe of communications on a Republican National Committee server. Some of the messages, which were said to have vanished, have been recovered. Rather than hand them to Congress, the RNC sent them to the White House, the better to try a preposterous plea of executive privilege to withhold them.
Gonzales' defense that everybody does it isn't flying even among Republicans. It's true that at the outset Bush did what previous presidents had done: replace his predecessor's U.S. attorneys with picks of his own. With the cooperation of Gonzales, Bush went much further in his second term. He purged those Republicans he appointed who proved not loyal enough to bring voter fraud and other cases the administration wanted.
Justice must be blind because federal attorneys wield massive power with an alphabet of law enforcement agencies to help them. Some Bushies who wouldn't traffic in misusing that power are out of their jobs. At least one Bushie who kept his job didn't mind abusing it at all.
The facts and common sense are all it takes to see that both Wolfowitz and Gonzales should resign. Instead, they have barricaded themselves in their offices, with the president's approval, impervious to shame or calls from their own party for them to go. It's enough to give due process a bad name.
Margaret Carlson.
© 1998-2007 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
20 Comments so far
Show AllGonzo was just following orders. Impeach Bush, Cheney, Gonzales, & Rice. They all have to go!
Articles of Impeachment for those characters are here:
http://www.ImpeachBush.org
If an organization's workers are incompetent and/or dishonest you must get rid of them along with the guy responsible for hiring them. If you don't do a clean sweep the organization will fail. Goodbye, Alberto. So long, Paul. Fare as well as ya can, Dubya. I'd like to say it's been good to know ya'll but I'm not that good a liar.
"Gonzales' defense that everybody does it isn't flying even among Republicans."
The outcome of this hearing will determine just how much of Gonzales' pathetic defense is or isn't flying. It will also expose the level of integrity and ethics among the politicians we have voted into office.
In my opinion, if anyone in Congress, after swearing to uphold the Constitution, doesn't address and loudly proclaim how this man has weakened Constitutional protections, they are obviously lacking intellect or simply have no sense of integrity and ethics.
Political leaders that have no conscience do not deserve a seat in the House or Senate. It is up to the people of this country to eliminate the pervasive politics of corruption in this country and replace it with a politics of conscience.
In short, we must END corporate control of the federal government because removing dishonest politicians every few years isn't working in a system manipulated by, and carefully designed by elitists to breed corruption.
This MUST STOP!
Help me out here,someone. Isn't Margaret Carlson one of the "courageous" columnists who didn't realize the Bush administration was a bed of lies, corruption and incompetence until the 2006 election?
starof
I doesn't look like there is much to reclaim
The bastards have been so efficient.
Well, if only efficiency matters ...
We suffered enough to enjoy what little justice is, or may be, dished out to the neocons
I agree with jp. This really isn't about incompetance at all but Gonzales was willing to be perceived as such as a smokescreen for the skullduggery that tries to pass for policy in this Administration of thugs and thieves. His mild mannered responses were supposed to disarm and deflect the committe's attention from the real issues which include the dessimation of the Justice Dept, transforming it into another political tool of the Bushies. The prosecutor firings was just one of so many thigs "Justice" has done to turn it's name into a parody and a disgrace. Americans wake up and take your country back!!!! While there is still a country to reclaim!
"Bush Reich" That's the best recollection of history so far.Thanks jp
Gonzalez has a much more serious problem facing him than losing his job. As soon as he is either fired or resigns, he will be indicted for obstruction of justice in Texas where he squashed the indictments of a gang of homosexual rapist guards in the juvenile prison system. This is only the tip of the iceberg that may very well sink the Titanic.
I hope this is the beginning of the end for the Bush Reich. But I hate to see the focus on Gonzales' incompetence rather than the politically motivated obstruction of justice at the DOJ linked to the White House. I wonder if his pathetic performance wasn't deliberate to do just that.
I hope enough Repugnicans see that sticking with Bush is political suicide and momentum builds for impeachment.
I won't smile till the CEO of USA Corp, ONE oil under "god" is also given his "pink slip." Having read many spiritual books by fascinating mystics, I am convinced of the law of karma. It will take LIFETIMES for these people to pay back what they have done to so many. When the kid on the corner who does cocaine gets as much jailtime as a leader in high office responsible for death, weapons that keep on poisoning long after the wars are over, and environmental contamination (now complicated by global warming), the LIMITS of what we call justice become clear enough. Passionate indignation is natural in the face of such calamitous lack of reason, judgment or respect for life on the part of those sworn to serve at least as much.
There is a certain amount of satisfaction in watching the walls come tumbling down, but we've got 20 more months of this ahead of us ... and then how long will it take to rescind all they've done and get back to being a real country with a reality-based government? And the lives that have been lost or destroyed can never be returned. So disheartening ...
Thank you, Margaret Carlson, for reminding us that in the real world, it wouldn't be up to Gonzales or Wolfowitz to decide to resign--they would have been fired within 24 hours and accompanied out the building. If all else failed, the justification would have been: for the good of the company, the credibility of the World Bank, for the possibility of looking like there is credibility for the Justice Department. But no: everyone is held hostage until these two come to realize there is no alternative.
And while we wait, we enjoy the spectacle.
Is it okay that i'm enjoying this so much? You know, watching them fall, these evil SOBS. For the first time in years i'm looking forward to watching US political events unfold.
The next year and 1/2 will (hopefully) be passed watching the downfall of one neo-con(man/wo) after another. Is it wrong to enjoy this?
DKM
Great point! Boy, do I miss Mollys clarity. Still..........as Texans...Sorry About That!!
Next time listen up! Oh, belated apologies for Tom DeLay and Halliburton.
And guys, if Gov. Goodhair comes sniffing around Washington, loose the dogs.
Mr. More,
As another Texan, I do feel that we owe an apology for foisting this scum on the rest of the country, but also, I have to point out that many of us, remember Molly?, were quite explicit about what would happen if they were elected. So the rest of the country cannot blame us too much because We Told You So!!
As former federal attorney Elizabeth de la Vega has pointed out, getting rid of Gonzales is not going to correct the problem. It is only the start. A competent, capable person must be installed, which is not going to happen because Rove, I mean Bush, will only nominate someone who is willing to carry water for this administration (Harriet Miers' name comes to mind). Then the nominee will have to do a thorough housecleaning and bring in a new crew, probably better to rehire those who have resigned in disgust over the last six years, and reorient the department to its real job, protecting the American people, not the Bush administration. This will happen only in our dreams and will require that the Bush crew be removed in toto.
"But I hate to see the focus on Gonzales' incompetence rather than the politically motivated obstruction of justice at the DOJ linked to the White House. I wonder if his pathetic performance wasn't deliberate to do just that."
Nope.....Albert was just as much a lightweight in Texas before we unleashed him too on you kind folks. Darn.....Bush, Cheney, Gonzales....we're going to have to stay up late writing our apologies for letting them out of State.
Impeach them? yes. But do not let them leave the country.
After hearing his testimony at last weeks hearing, Gonzales' day-to-day contributions to the Justice Department seems less than George Costaza's contributions to the Penske file.