Qui custodiat custos?

When Alberto Gonzales was first informed of the Fitzgerald enquiry, he was still serving as Bush's top White House counsel. Gonzales spent 12 hours rifling through the evidence before he informed other members of staff to prepare for the enquiry. Frank Rich suggests the potential criminality of such an act could be the reason Gonzales was not nominated for the Supreme Court post:

As White House counsel, he was the one first notified that the Justice Department, at the request of the C.I.A., had opened an investigation into the outing of Joseph Wilson's wife. That notification came at 8:30 p.m. on Sept. 29, 2003, but it took Mr. Gonzales 12 more hours to inform the White House staff that it must "preserve all materials" relevant to the investigation. This 12-hour delay, he has said, was sanctioned by the Justice Department, but since the department was then run by John Ashcroft, a Bush loyalist who refused to recuse himself from the Plame case, inquiring Senate Democrats would examine this 12-hour delay as closely as an 18½-minute tape gap. "Every good prosecutor knows that any delay could give a culprit time to destroy the evidence," said Senator Charles Schumer, correctly, back when the missing 12 hours was first revealed almost two years ago.

Asked to explain, Gonzales claims:

he had been given permission by the Justice Department to hold off overnight if he saw fit, which he did. But he did tell one man that night: Chief of Staff Andrew Card.

So that's Bush insider John Ashcroft giving Bush insider Gonzales the green light for a potentially criminal act, and the only other person in the know was Bush insider Andrew Card. Qui custodiat custos, eh?

Given that such an atmosphere of non-accountablity has now spread right across the highest levels of both government and the judiciary, what are the chances that those who deliberately leaked the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame will ever be punished? Far more likely, even assuming a case can be proven by Fitzgerald et al, is the scenario painted by Buzzflash today: a Bush White House pardon for all involved. And of course, this has all happened before:



Dubya's administration is packed heavy with people involved in Iran-Contra, and Contra terrorists who ripped innocent people's tongues out of their throats are still heroes of the US right. There was no real accountability then, and today we are seeing the consequences.

It's this lack of accountability which allows our so-called leaders to get away with the most gob-smacking hypocrisy. As Charlie Reese says:

President Bush and Great Britain's Tony Blair react so angrily when someone suggests that terrorist attacks are a response to American and British foreign policy. If they are a response, then obviously the attacks are the fault of the policy-makers.

So, to avoid any share of responsibility whatsoever, both Bush and Blair propagate the line that terrorists are complete nut cases acting purely irrationally because of crazy hatred of our wealth and freedom. This is particularly clever political propaganda since it asserts that we are hated, not for our faults, but for our very virtues.