Let's say that the Bush Administration wanted to topple Iraq's Saddam Hussein whether he had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or not, he was that bad an actor on the international stage, a currupting influence who played the U.N. and its sanctions for fools. In addition, he acted as though he had WMD. Bush, as leader of the free-pack-of-dogs was the big dog on the block, or rather the U.S. was. So Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Tenet, the head of the CIA, ginned up a case for war based on WMD. They conned Colin Powell, who wanted to be a team player more than he valued his own integrity, to look over the evidence for WMD and tell the world that it was good. The world, make that the American man-in-the-street, said if it was good enough for Colin Powell, it was good enough for me, and off we went to war. Iraq fell in short order, Bush proclaimed victory after landing in a jet on an aircraft carrier returning from the Gulf (under the "Mission Accomplished" banner), and then an insurgency developed that has cost almost 2,000 lives and counting.
But on the way to war a former ambassador, Joseph Wilson, gave the lie to the president on the Op-Ed page of the N.Y. Times. Dick Cheney apparently knew that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA as an agent, which is a secret. He passes the info along to his top aide, Scooter Libby, who gives it to Judy Miller, a N.Y. Times reporter, and other reporters perhaps, and soon reporter Robert Novak outs Valerie Plame, Wilson's wife. Our secret agent, Jane Bond, is outed. This happens to be a crime, IF, and only if, all of the elements of a complex spy-protecting statute can be proved, which remains open to question. Wilson goes ballistic and the president says that whoever burns one of our spies deserves trouble and cannot remain a member of his administration, which he later backs away from when it turns out that the main culprits are his right-hand-man, Karl Rove, the man he calls "the Architect" of his re-election victory, the only time he is elected president in his own right. The Supreme Court appointed him to the job in Bush v. Gore (2000). So now he's the legitimate president, if you don't count the value of the incumbency acquired by foul means, appointment by the Court 5 to 4.
A special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, is appointed to investigate the Plame affair. Miller goes to jail for 85 days but is released after Libby gives her the green light. Her reporting, which the NY Times apologized for as wrong, supported the case for war. It seems as though her decision to keep her mouth shut as to her sources may have had as much to do with protecting the Bush administration and its decision to go to war as it did to protecting the first amendment. Her fellow reporters didn't buy her FA case, interestingly enough.
Fitzgerald, with the term of the grand jury expiring Friday, must either indict or close up shop. The Washington pundits are scattered with John Dean opting for the latter and many others figuring that with so much smoke, Fitzgerald must be fanning a fire.
What does Pres. Bush do if his vice-president, the man behind the war, is indicted? Or his top aide, Libby? Or Karl Rove? The sharpest knives in the presidential drawer may find themselves standing before a federal judge pleading to indictments. That's how, in Watergate, the smaller fry rolled on the bigger fry. Vice-president Agnew was forced to resign in an unrelated bribery case. Attorney-General John Mitchell pled guilty to a felony. All the presidents men went to jail. Haldeman, Erlichman, Colson and Dean. Nixon resigned after the Supreme Court forced him to cough up the secret tapes that made him a conspirator to the Watergate coverup. The suffix "-gate" entered the language to indicate scandal arising from the prefix.
Constitutional law was being played out on the national stage and people were going to jail as a president resigned.
Pres. Nixon appointed a vice-president, as the 25th amendment provides, when Agnew resigned as V.P. Then Nixon resigned. He'd appointed his successor, representative Gerald Ford. Who promptly pardoned him as off he flew...well...a few weeks later...to bring repose to the festering sore that was Nixon and the Watergate affair. This made people wonder, Washington being Washington, whether the fix had been in from the beginning. Did Nixon appoint Ford in return for a pardon? Ford has always denied it and few if any care to challenge him on it for what's the point, Watergate is history, as is Ford, who was dis-elected in favor of Mr. Clean, Jimmie Carter, who was ousted, after the Iran hostage taking incident at our embassy in Teheran that lasted over 400 days, by Ronald Reagan, as the conservative revolution took flight and gave us Bush-41 as well as Bush-43, with a slight interruption by Clinton of Monica Lewinsky fame. The Republicans impeached Clinton for lying about sex in the Oval Office. It was a mess. Washington. And now it's even messier. Bush is in free-fall in the polls. And this week his whole crew of supporters may be en-route to jail. His nomination of Harriet Miers is on life support and that's before her hearing before the SJC begins next week. Her most avid attackers are Bush's most avid supporters. She, and he, are thus having their problems.
What's a president to do?
Well....he does have the pardon power, doesn't he. Clinton pardoned a bunch of big-bucks supporters of supporters on his last day in office, to Republican howls, and a few others, like Dems whose friends didn't get pardoned.
Does Bush wait to pardon Rove, Cheney, Libby? Until the last day?
Or is the pardon signed and sitting in his desk drawer as we speak?
Bush maintains that we needed to topple Saddam to protect American security. Rove and Cheney were advancing that goal when they attacked Wilson by burning his CIA-agent wife Valerie Plame. Thus their pardon is justified on grounds of national security, right?...Uh...right?
I dunno, but when you're playing with a deck that contains a game-winning joker, and you haven't seen the joker played, it remains in play.
Fitzgerald's indictment, if any there are, can be trumped by the Joker, a presidential pardon from a lame-duck president who has nothing to lose, not even a hand picked successor, as yet.
