Plame Bolton

Arianna Huffington says the Plamegate investigation may be moving closer to UN Ambassador Bolton. Arianna gives us a peek into the inner workings of the Cheney sect of administration insiders. She introduces a CIA agent who, wearing two hats, also works for Bolton. The agent, Fred Fleitz, is a direct conduit of information from the CIA to Bolton who, of course, uses it to discredit rivals, settle scores and advance the Cheney agenda. This is, of course, Cheney’s crew and a dirtier bunch you could not find.

Sometimes I wonder how Cheney and his thugs so confidently circumvent the rules, ethics and morality to advance their own crackpot agendas. Are they true believers? Are they simply cynical and greedy? Is the goal really to simply move all the money from the working and middle class to the privileged plutocrats and take control of the world's energy? But then I come to my senses. I stop wondering and start trying to focus on how funny they are this cadre of bitter men simply driven by meanness itself dressed up as a grand scheme.

Cheney is a flabby, squishy muscled veteran of years of shuffling papers and resentfully sucking up to the top. It’s his time now and it is easy to imagine him hidden away with a list of enemies and scores to settle. It is even funny to think that he confuses shooting hundreds of caged pheasants, released on command, with actual hunting and even funnier to imagine his Victorian style safaris, with pal Scalia, to the duck blind. Does someone carry Cheney? Or is he floated along on a little rubber barge?

The whole Cheney trip of telling secrets, undercutting rivals, ghoulishly hiding away in bunkers and blowing caged birds to kingdom come would all be an uproarious riot of pompous silliness if it didn’t involve real lives and the easily anticipated and avoided stumble into the disaster of war.

The goofiest thing is that after all these screw ups the myth of competence is still attached to Cheney and his crew. It must be the deep voice and that sinister hand rubbing thing he does. Or maybe it's the simpler truth: shit rises.

Maybe Fitzgerald will nail Bolton and the despicable Judith Miller and the world will begin to right itself.

Go read Arianna and trust your own suspicions of how close to the truth of the scene she really is.