"More to the point, there's a criminal loose in the White House, a person (or persons) so dangerous,they would gladly jeopardize national security"

The Cancer Has Spread

The only cure is surgically removing the cause

by Alan Bisbort - November 10, 2005

Hartford Advocate

In the early days of the Watergate saga -- before Congress investigated the scandal on live TV -- John Dean, then the president's legal counsel, told Richard Nixon, "There's a cancer on the presidency." His advice, sage and pragmatic, was to surgically remove the cancer, come clean to the public and distance himself from the spreading disease. It is time for George W. Bush's own John Dean to level with him, to tell him in no uncertain terms that there's a cancer on his presidency and it is growing. More to the point, there's a criminal loose in the White House, a person (or persons) so dangerous that they would gladly jeopardize national security for short-term political gain.
If that sounds familiar, it's because I wrote the above words nearly two years ago in this space (Jan. 8, 2004, "Watergate Redux"). It was one of the rare times when I offered the president-select some advice. He didn't listen. He doesn't listen to anyone but Karl Rove and those wicky-wacky voices he hears in his head. In fact, while feigning cooperation with a Department of Justice probe when this Valerie Plame story first broke back in 2003 (nothing like swift justice for an act of treason!), Bush told reporters, with that trademark smirk on his face, "I don't know if we're going to find out the senior administrative official. This is a large administration and there's a lot of senior officials."

Meanwhile, two years have passed and I'll wager the mortgage that Bush knew then which "senior official(s)" leaked Valerie Plame's name to the press. He just thought that their fratboy prank would blow over, daddy would bail him out, or Jesus would bring him another terror attack which he could turn to his own devious ends. Last week, he seemed to be grabbing at just such a straw, as he pimped for an avian flu outbreak, no doubt hoping the fear factor of that impending doomsday scenario would cow Americans back into their duct-taped, plastic-sheeted mole holes. His solution was the usual one: reward his corporate friends with public funds to purchase overpriced Tamiflu vaccine (Donald Rumsfeld owns a $25 million stake in Gilead, the company that developed Tamiflu, and was Gilead's chairman of the board; where Rumsfeld goes, other GOP high rollers follow).

The Watergate analogy has now been picked up by the mainstream press, which has even coined the nickname Plamegate for this new dustup. The problem with the analogy, though, is that in Watergate, the coverup really was worse than the crime, but it's the exact opposite in Plamegate. The crime here was worthy of Benedict Arnold or Aldrich Ames. It compromised national security in a time of war, and we don't even know how deep the campaign of lies and deceit goes from there. For surely, the Plame outing was one small part of the larger crime of lying the nation into a war that has been so tragic, unnecessary and wasteful.

What does John Dean say now? On his findlaw.com site, Dean commented on Scooter's indictment last week, saying it "may be only Act Two in a three-act play. And in my view, the person who should be tossing and turning at night, in anticipation of the last act, is the Vice President of the United States, Richard B. Cheney." That is, Dean said, Libby is just covering for his boss and it was his obstruction of justice that kept Patrick Fitzgerald from slapping an indictment on Uncle Dick's head for violation of the Espionage Act. "Cheney provided the classified information to Libby," writes Dean. "Who then told the press É It appears he is trying to flip Libby -- to get him to testify against Cheney -- and not without good reason. Cheney is the big fish in this case."

The cancer has spread and it's untreatable now. The time for Bush to have acted like a real leader was in January 2004. Thus, the time is ripe now for me to offer my last bit of advice to George W. Bush: resign. Ditto Dick Cheney: resign. For the good of the nation, resign now, both of you, before you're impeached and this thing drags out into 2008.

Swiftly removing the cause of our nation's disastrous situation is the only option now, our last hope for saving the patient. The nation does not have time to waste dealing with a sideshow of Congressional circle jerkoffs one-upping each other for the next three years. Just walk, take all your Mayberry Macchiavellis and neocon artists with you, and we'll try to pick up the pieces on our own.


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