Mistakes Were Made

Has the NY Times declared war on the Bush presidency? When you open an editorial with all guns firing, it make one wonder.

We wish we’d been surprised to learn that the White House was deeply involved in the politically motivated firing of eight United States attorneys, but the news had the unmistakable whiff of inevitability. This disaster is just part of the Bush administration’s sordid history of waving the bloody bullhorn of 9/11 for the basest of motives: the perpetuation of power for power’s sake.

Time and again, President Bush and his team have assured Americans that they needed new powers to prevent another attack by an implacable enemy. Time and again, Americans have discovered that these powers were not being used to make them safer, but in the service of Vice President Dick Cheney’s vision of a presidency so powerful that Congress and the courts are irrelevant, or Karl Rove’s fantasy of a permanent Republican majority.

Wow! Don't hold back, say what you really mean.

Mr. Gonzales, who has shown why he was such an awful choice for this job in the first place, should be called under oath to resolve the contradictions and inconsistencies in his story. Mr. Gonzales is willing to peddle almost any nonsense to the public (witness his astonishingly maladroit use of the Nixonian “mistakes were made” dodge yesterday). But lying to Congress under oath is another matter.

These guys lie to themselves all the time, the FBI, Congress and the American public are no biggie at this point. Even after having one of their own convicted for perjury they will persist in thinking that it was a fluke or that they can prevent prosecution in the future.

Have you ever noticed that this administration uses the most obscure, little noticed, provisions to achieve their goals, but presidential daily briefs that warn there is an imminent attack blew right past them? Or that they could conjure and execute a plan to expose a CIA agent, lie about it and that nobody would notice or object? Add to that being unable to anticipate problems that people with no access to sophisticated information can see from a mile away (Katrina and the Iraq debacle spring to mind), a faulty interpretation of the separation of church and state and let's not forget their deliberate misunderstanding that their branch of government can override the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and you have a full kettle of hubris.

You bet mistakes were made. We weren't supposed to find out.