The indictment of Vice President Cheney's Chief of Staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, in the CIA leak case says a lot about the integrity of the Bush Administration and its false portrayal of the threat that Iraq posed to the U.S. and the world. Unlike Watergate, Plamegate has significantly contributed to the waging of a war that most likely would not have had national support were the truth about nuclear weapons and other WMDs known.
When faced by a boisterous critic of the war in Iraq, White House spin doctors went into hyper-drive to discredit Joe Wilson and expose his wife's secret identity as a covert CIA operative. Their goal was to bury what they perceived to be the opposition, even at the expense of national security. What appears to be a deliberative action on the part of Libby and most likely others in the White House is characteristic of an administration known for its take-no-prisoner approach to its critics, particularly its pundits in the press.
On Capitol Hill, there is no better example of this spiteful world view than former Majority Leader Tom DeLay, recently indicted by a Texas grand jury, who worked to oust his enemies and install allies on K Street -- infamously known as the lobbying center of Washington, D.C. DeLay, nicknamed "The Hammer" for his ability to keep his party minions in line, had already been admonished by the House Ethics Committee for pressuring the Electronics Industries Alliance to hire a Republican as its president. Lobbying executives report that Republican aides and lawmakers, at the behest of DeLay, had repeatedly telephoned them to suggest that their top openings be filled with loyalists.
The politics of intolerance and suspicion in the White House and on Capitol Hill has created a culture of corruption among the Republican leadership. It has contributed to serious legal and ethical problems among many of the Republican powerful, including:
* The federal grand jury indictment of Republican super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff;
* Two Texas grand jury indictments of former Majority Leader Tom DeLay for conspiracy and money laundering;
* The federal investigation of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist for misuse of insider information in the sale of stock in his family's health care company;
* The arrest and charge of David Safavian, former head of the White House Procurement Office, for obstructing two investigations into whether he aided Jack Abramoff in his effort to acquire government property;
* The indictment of a senior House Appropriations Committee member, Representative Randy "Duke" Cunningham, accused of a sweetheart deal with a defense lobbyist that netted him $700,000;
* And, most recently, the indictment of Vice President Cheney's Chief of Staff, "Scooter" Libby.
The abuses of power by the White House and Republican congressional leadership are not random transgressions of ethically and legally challenged individuals. Rather, they are patterns of abuse that are the result of iron-fisted Republican dominance of the legislative and executive branches, the party's bubble view of the world in which group think predominates and dissent is not brooked, and a recurring theme of Greek tragedies: arrogance.