Bush: A Headless Chicken?

In the corrupted currents of this world, offence's gilded hand may shove by justice, and oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself buys out the law.

- Shakespeare

The Bush White House has been looking increasingly incompetent ever since Cindy Sheehan went and camped in a ditch outside the Bush ranch. Hurricane Katrina followed soon after that, of course, and now the Fitzgerald enquiry is really turning up the heat.

There has been a lot of specualtion that Bush has had a falling out with Rove, or Rove and Cheney are now in opposite camps, or whatever. It's impossible to know what's really going in in the Oval Office these days, but it sure looks like the wheels are finally falling off the cursed Bush Machine behommeth.

Here's Josh Marshall musing on yesterday's highly unusual media leak to the NY Daily News:

According to knowledgeable sources, those White House officials behind that story were trying to help the president, not hurt him. The story, in their view, was about his unhappiness with what Rove had done but his loyalty to those who work for him.

Now, the first thing you have to say on this is that there are some folks in the White House who are pretty stupid. Even a cursory knowledge of where the live wires lay in this story would tell you that those bits of information would lead to someone getting a very big shock.

Ordinarily, such an elementary mistake just wouldn't happen.

This part is just inference, not reporting. But I suspect that what we're seeing here is an example of various players in the White House trying to manage damage control without central direction, perhaps without the requisite experience in some cases and even more likely without all the key facts at hand.

The limbs keep moving even after the head is severed, but not with the same coordination.

Meanwhile, in a "retrospective and prospective" piece of analysis, Ray McGovern says Cheney's chickens are coming home to roost as the Fitzgerald enquiry swells into mammoth proportions (we hope!):

The investigation has long since morphed into size extra large, which is the only size commensurate with the wrongdoing uncovered – not least, the fabrication and peddling of intelligence to justify a war of aggression.

The coming months are likely to see senior Bush administration officials frog-marched out of the White House to be booked, unless the president moves swiftly to fire Fitzgerald – a distinct possibility.

TPM Cafe looks at worst-case scenarios for the Bush cabal. There is a lot of talk about media and Democrat complicity, and how far the Bush cabal would go to hold on to power, and whether Daddy will come bail George out of trouble. One commenter:

We need our democracy purged. Give it an enema, Mr. Fitzgerald--high colonic--and let it rip!

Another comment reminisces on the Nixon resignation:

That night I was at the Kennedy Center watching the Bolshoi (Russian) ballet do a rare performance of Raymonda. During an intermission a huge screen came down in front of the stage and we all silently watched Nixon resign.

When he finished you could hear a pin drop. I wondered how those Russians must be feeling to see a democracy at work. I felt a little bit scared, but I had been watching the hearings every day, and I knew Nixon was going out one way or the other.

Then the screen rolled up, the music played and the ballet continued. The next morning the sun came up and we were a better country for what had just happened...

It would be great to see Bush resign, but it will take more than one sunrise to set things right!

Elsewhere, Chris Floyd suggests the fix is already in:

If anyone in the White House is actually indicted and convicted for the high crime of exposing the identity of an undercover agent -- in wartime, no less -- they will certainly be pardoned when George W. Bush finally limps away from the steaming, stinking, blood-soaked ruin of his presidency...

And even in the unlikely -- not to say inconceivable -- event that the entire pack of jackals gets herded into the hoosegow for the agent-outing conspiracy, it will not bring back the innocent dead murdered at their command. It will not restore the shattered families writhing in the pits of grief and loss, from Baghdad to Burbank. It will not be recompense for the pointless sacrifice of soldiers and reservists sent on a criminal errand, plunged into a brutal and brutalizing hell -- for nothing, for a chimera, for ideological lunacy, for the enrichment of cats already so fat they can barely stand up and waddle to the dish for another slurp of cream.