Bush & Company

Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby were award recipients, Wednesday, October 21, 2009, at a Bush administration reunion at the neoconservative Center for Security Policy dinner ---Libby, for the "Service Before Self" award (for being a fall guy) and Cheney, for the "Keeper of the Flame" (for enhancing American security).

Scooter and Dick, felonious dudes,
By all rights should be royally screwed,
Justifiable sitting ducks;
Instead of that, each in his tux,
Is glorified for telling lies
And gets a highfalutin prize.

Though infamous malfeasants these,
Guests warmly toast those honorees.

Senator Joe Lieberman, independent/erstwhile Democrat, and his wife Hadassah, are both closely linked to the insurance industry, profiting royally from the affiliations. Meanwhile, the senator speaks against health care reform on the pretext of its costliness, when in reality, effective health care reform would save money, as Mr. Lieberman must know. He threatens, if a public option is included, to join Republicans in a filibuster that will kill the bill.

Aetna's hero Senator Joe,
Health care reform's most heinous foe,
With grossest perfidy and greed
To sufferers' needs he pays no heed.

Ensuring funds for his campaign
To keep his seat come 2010
And court those health moguls again,
Joe and Hadassah don't mind lies,

For they protect those precious ties.
Break out Beluga and champagne,
Joe and Hadassah, solemnize
Health care reform's woeful demise,

Amid your victims' fruitless cries.

by Elizabeth Gerteiny is hot-off-the-press!
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President Obama is determined to reform our chronically unstable and inhumane health care system in favor of proven-effective initiatives offering secure health protection, affordable, and available to all.

The current conflict is exacerbated by Blue Dog Democrats while the lunatic fringe of the population continues to be egged on by powerful hate-mongers, and extreme Republican leaders---lobbyist-financed---largely unrebuked by their party---hell bent on bringing Mr. Obama's presidency to defeat in 2012 or preferably to a violent, premature end.

House Minority Leader John Boehner, along with other conservative Republican representatives, wore a sour expression throughout the president's address to Congress September 9. He says not to rush into reform, that the Obama plan is too costly. He says big government is a threat, that looming socialism is a threat, whereas the real threats are media personalities who hawk paranoia and hatred and politicians who on false premises lead and voters who hysterically follow and carry guns.

Mr. Boehner, why so glum?
Just where are you coming from?
Seeming to condone what some
Of our citizens have become,

Eaten up by fear and hate,
Unyielding, mindlessly irate,
Conditions you helped to create
While preaching that reform can wait.

Although health care waste and abuse
May be in part just an excuse
To decimate the president,
Feigning legitimate dissent,

The party that keeps saying no
Aims to retain the status quo
As civic progress they ignore.
What do they think a government's for?

Either the American people are fickle or the polls are. Polls had indicated that the majority of Americans want war criminls prosecuted. Now polls say the reverse.

President Obama said that he would follow where Attorney General Eric Holder's investigation leads, presumably, to criminal prosecution. Then in his 100 days press conference April 29, he called waterboarding a "mistake" rather than the crime that it is. He called enhanced interrogation techniques both "techniques" and "practices" rather than crimes. These indulgences are perplexing and disquieting.

George Washington University constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley thinks the new president is "morphing into his predecessor."

We understand, Mr. President, your conflict between duty and expediency. We realize that you foresee a major distraction that could jeopardize your urgent agenda, that you want the support of those Republicans who might viciously undermine that agenda in revenge for punishing key members of their party, that you believe Americans are more concerned with universal health care, the economy, energy and other reforms than with penalizing the Bush officials who lured us into an illegal and devastating war, a collateral result of which was the use, aided by their equally responsible lawyers, of illegal and devastating torture. Yet a future president, as ruthless, ignorant and inhumane as George W. Bush---seeing what you neglected to do, should Attorney General Holder not follow through on his obligation---would interpret that as carte blanche to repeat the crimes, leading to the use of torture on our own captured troops.

Ther world is watching. Their low opinion of us has soared upward. What will they think of us if examples by the United States aren't made of our own perpetrators? Prosecution of the guilty is cathartic.. A heinous past must be dealt with thoroughly to achieve security as well as closure. Shielding the guilty is breaking the law. You appear to have the ability to anticipate consequences. Can you see the consequences of such an omission? Must we rely on other nations, such as Spain and Germany, to do the job for us? In fact, prosecution could only happen should the culpable visit those countries.

Your release on April 16 of the four Bush torture memos and the shocklinly matter-of-fact torture manual seemed to point toward a positive path on your part. Yet on May 13, you announced that you will not, after all, release the many never before seen torture photos. You said it might further enflame our enemies. Perhaps you're right, based on some high military advice.

Over all, however, your statement, "My sense is that this will be worked out over time" now seems like an evasion.

Dare we hope that in your heart you will welcome the opportunity, when you deem it politically feasible, to make the guilty accountable? Light must be shed upon the finagling by the previous administration of our democratic system and the law, their attempt, both pitiful and egregious, to make torture legal, while first denying the use of it, then defending it and its supposed efficacy.