By Donald Kaul
These cannot be the happiest of times for our President, George (The Decider) Bush. Hardly a day goes by without a new administration scandal popping up or an old one rising from its shallow grave. Let’s look at a few of them:
Alberto Gonzales--The attorney general is in hot water for the firing of eight U.S. attorneys for reasons that have not held up under ethical scrutiny. He denies wrongdoing but it’s pretty obvious that he was carrying water for Republican politicians (Karl Rove, anyone?) who, for political reasons, wished these attorneys dead, in a figurative sense. Democrats keep calling for his dismissal-- shouts of “Bring me the head of Alberto Gonzales!” ring through the Capitol--but President Bush has said he’s doing a heckuva job and that he trusts him.
Paul Wolfowitz--The embattled World Bank president, who has made fighting corruption in the world a priority, is in hot water for, among other things, giving his girlfriend a cushy job at a fancy salary. He denies wrongdoing but the bank’s board members, perhaps prejudiced by his arrogant ways, are trying to tie a can to his tail. President Bush, who gave him the bank presidency as a reward for doing such a bang-up job in planning the Iraq war, has said he’s doing a bang-up job at the bank, too, and he trusts him.
George Tenet--The former CIA director has been relentlessly flogging his book, At the Center of the Storm, the inside story of the run-up to the Iraq War. He says that the decision to invade was not primarily the result of faulty intelligence but preordained by the administration’s unshackled lust to invade Iraq. The CIA made mistakes, he said, but the real dunces were the neo-cons--Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, I. "Scooter" Libby, Jr., and the rest of the Bush gang.
No word on whether the president still trusts Tenet.
Iraq--Despite repeated claims of “the surge is working” spinning out of the White House, Iraqis and Americans keep dying in record numbers. In addition, terrorist attacks on noncombatants in Afghanistan are up 53 per cent over a year ago and the Taliban seems to be gaining ground there. Also, our reconstruction projects in Iraq, into which we poured billions of dollars, are falling apart. The former chairman of the International Reconstruction Fund Facility for Iraq has called the situation “dire” and said that the rebuilding effort is all but doomed. The White House response has been to launch an investigation of the special inspector general for Iraq who has uncovered much of the corruption that has confounded reconstruction
But the scandal that most titillated official Washington had nothing to do with the president, Iraq or world politics.
It was the federal racketeering case involving Deborah Jeane Palfrey, who has been accused of operating a $300-an-hour call girl ring in Washington.
Ms. Palfrey has, unsurprisingly, denied everything. She says she merely provided an escort service to men who wanted company. What went on after the couple met was not her business.
She didn’t even know the names of her clients, she said. She did, however, have a 46-pound stack of phone numbers of clients, many of whom are believed to be prominent politicians, government officials and lobbyists. This she turned over to ABC News so that they could seek out people who would confirm her innocence.
Before you could say Randall Tobias, they had found Randall Tobias, a deputy secretary of state whose job included the promotion of sexual abstinence around the world.
And sure enough, he confirmed Ms. Palfrey’s innocence. He only got massages from her girls, he said, no sex. Then he resigned his job. I have no idea why.
“My hope [that] defense witnesses could be found by combing though the information indeed is being realized,” Ms. Palfrey said.
With official Washington atremble and atwitter, the alleged call girl madam stood bravely before the microphones and said: “I abhor injustice.”
You can’t make up stuff like that.
Don Kaul is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-losing Washington correspondent who, by his own account, is right more than he's wrong. Email: dkaul1@verizon.net
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