align="right">First Karl Rove, href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0807/5524.html" target="blank">and now Alberto Gonzales. The Bush administration
is clearing brush from its pathetic ranks, but let's not fool
ourselves: They're not doing it to save face. Or because they finally
saw the error of their ways.
George W. Bush may be many things, but contrary to popular opinion,
he's no idiot. With weights like Alberto V05 and Turd Blossom hanging
around his neck, there was simply no way he could ever compete with
the news cycle, which fed on those guys like Rupert Murdoch feeds on
apathy. Everything the Bush administration did or wanted to do would
have been filtered through those twin monsters and their flippant lack
of compassion and culpability.
But now with them out of the way, Bush can take better control of the
perception industry, and steer his doomed administration into the type
of "bipartisan" waters that the Democrats have been drowning in since
they took over Congress. After all, the Democrats did everything from
give Bush the keys to the Iraq War and greenlighting the Patriot Act
to exploding what terrorism can be with the Military Commissions Act.
In other words, we are still going to war with Iran. Or we're going to
at least carpet-bomb the shit out them, just as Bush's predecessor in
institutional lunacy Richard Nixon did to Cambodia, long after the
Vietnam War was an utterly lost cause.
Call it the last throes. Call it wargasm. But just make sure to call it
before Christmas. By then, we should be swimming in Bush's last plans
for his doomed legacy.
If you think that the Bush administration is going to sit idly by
while they have a year left to invade or assassinate someone, you need
to think again. The American people have won nothing at all with the
recent fleeing of Gonzales and Rove. Bush's hyperreal war machine is
still humming at optimal speed, and it could trample us all if we sit
back and chill, thinking that the loss of two losers amounts to
anything more than musical chairs.
Don't get comfortable. Our job isn't over. It's just beginning.