Well, this certainly has been an enteraining an informative week hasn't it? After testimony from the purged U.S. Attorneys and continued email and doco dumps the call for the resignation of AG Abu Gonzales have even began to echo from the lips of hard-care right-wing bomb-throwers such as John Sununu and Dana Rohrbacher.
Abu has no choice but to start emptying his office right?
Wrong.
According to CBS news Bush is diggin in his heels and says...
No one is going to tell him who to fire.
So it looks like ole' Abu just might be staying around for awhile - at least until Congress finally decides to Impeach His Ass.
More from CBS.
Republicans close to the White House tell CBS News chief White House correspondent Jim Axelrod that President Bush is in "his usual posture: pugnacious, that no one is going to tell him who to fire." But sources also said Gonzales' firing is just a matter of time.
The White House is bracing for a weekend of criticism and more calls for Gonzales to go. One source tells CBS News he's never seen the administration in such deep denial, and Republicans are growing increasingly restless for the president to take action.
The've never seen such deep denial?
Deeper than their denial about WMD, links between Saddam and Al Qaeda, Global Warming, that we're just about to turn the corner in Iraq, Terry Schiavo's brain damage or their insistence that condoms don't work?
Ladies and Gents we have just reach a new lowering of the bar.
Although we all know that Bush has previously proclaimed lied to reporters that he wouldn't fire Donald Rumsfeld just a few days before told Rummy to hit the bricks. I believe the situation with Gonzales is different.
Bush needs Gonzales to help resist Congressional calls for Special Prosecutors to investigate any number of ongoing scandals such as ...
* The Walter Reed/VA Profiteering Scandal
* The Ongoing Katrina Scandal were $Billions have been lost and/or squander, yet the Levee's remain vulnerable.
* The missing $8.8 Billion from the Coalition Provisional Authority
* The missing $Billions paid to various U.S Contractors in Iraq such as Halliburton, CACI and Blackwater.
* The use of political litmus tests in hiring people to rebuild Iraq.
* The strong-arming of Whistle-blowers such as former NSA analyst Russell Tice.
* Why the FBI has documented but not investigated allegations of criminal abuse by U.S. Contractors and civilians at abu Ghraib, Bagram AFB and Gitmo for War Crimes Violations?
The Attorney-Purge has gotten under even the most ardent Bush lackeys skin precisely because they've already been on the receiving end of threatening calls from Bush's chief pit-bull Karl Rove. Like when Rove shutdown the Senate's Phase II investigation with a series of brutal arm-twisting.
Trent Lott on Rove. back in November 06.
In an interview this morning on Fox News, Lott intensified the growing discord between him and Rove, stating, "I’ve had problems with some of the conduct of Karl Rove." He added that he has a good relationship with "most of the people" around the President.
I think they realize that turning the AG's office and his 93 U.S. Attorneys into enforcement of the political wing of the Administration is a weapon that can swing both ways.
What's to stop such an Administration from using it's investigatory power against a member of thier own party if they don't tow the line on critical votes?
We've already seen, thanks to David Kuo, how they twisted the compassion of their Faith Based Initiatives into a tax-payer funded effort to get out the religious vote and swing it into their favor.
[Kuo writes] that Rove referred to evangelical leaders as "the nuts," and claims Rove deputy Ken Mehlman "knowingly participated in a scheme to use the office, and taxpayer funds, to mount ostensibly ‘nonpartisan’ events that were, in reality, designed with the intent of mobilizing religious voters in 20 targeted races."
Is it too dificult to imagine that while all this mobilization was going on there was some de-mobilization in the works as well?
This is what leads me to what may be the next upcoming scandal for Abu, and this one looks far more serious than Purge-Gate.
This past Friday Keith Olberman discussed a report that Alberto Gonzales had known that he himself may have been a potential target of the DOJ internal investigation of how information obtained without warrants via the NSA was being used by the Administration.
That apparently the AG had a little chat with Bush and the next thing we know - the Security Clearance needed by the members of the OPR (Office of Personal Responsibility) were denied, effectively shutting the investigation down.
Gonzales claimed clean hands to the Senate...
In testimony Tuesday to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Gonzales said that in matters involving access to classified programs, "the president of the United States makes the decision."
"The president decided that protecting the secrecy and security of the program requires that a strict limit be placed on the number of persons granted access to information about the program for non-operational reasons," Gonzales wrote in a related letter sent to the committee's chairman, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa. "Every additional security clearance that is granted for the (program) increases the risk that national security might be compromised."
A strict number eh? Then why did each member of the OIC (the DOJ's own defense attorneys) have full clearance in order to defend the program from an ACLU Suit? There's no good reason to take Gonzales at his word here - especially since he's lied to Congress before when he said all U.S. Attorney's would be "Senate Confirmed."
We've recently seen how the FBI has abused use of National Security Letters to obtain personal information about private U.S. citizens that had nothing to do with any ongoing investigation.
The inspector general's audit found 22 possible breaches of internal FBI and Justice Department regulations -- some of which were potential violations of law -- in a sampling of 293 "national security letters." The letters were used by the FBI to obtain the personal records of U.S. residents or visitors between 2003 and 2005. The FBI identified 26 potential violations in other cases.
Just how likely is it the the NSA information was being abused in exactly the same way - and like the Faith Based situation and the Attorney Purge - for decidedly political purposes?
Why is it that thousands of leads from the NSA have turned up nothing but dead ends? This hasn't been about protecting the U.S. from Terrorists - it's about protecting Republicans from angry voters.
The Administration certainly didn't protect Valerie Plame-Wilson, a key U.S. intelligence asset in the WMD proliferation. They didn't and still aren't protecting the survivors of Katrina. What makes you think they'll protect anyone but themselves?
Just how likely is it that the NSA data was being used to target potential republicans for their GOTV efforts and to purge potential Democrats from the Voter Rolls - Again?
Even if this isn't the specific reason for the cover-up, it's clear that there was still a cover-up. Olbermann's allegation that Gonzales may have had a hand in blocking an investigation through his good friend the President where he himself was a potential target is earth-shattering!
And with Bush also implicated in helping cover Abu's Ass he's about as likely to fire him as divorcing his wife Condi., uh Karl, er - Dick oh yeah - Laura.
People may want him to resign but it's simply not gonna happen.
Not unless Congress makes it happen with a serious investigation followed by Impeachment proceedings
...for Gonzales.
We can focus on the rest of The Bush Crime Family Administration soon afterward, with ample post-Abu ammunition and increased leverage.
Vyan
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