Recent media appearances by Wolfowitz and Gonzalez have allowed two corrupt officials to demonstrate just how criminal the Bush administration is. However, what is most startling is the fact that no matter how corrupt and how incompetent they are and how transparent their corruption and incompetence, they can still hold on to power. These people are few compared to 300 million other Americans, and yet those 300 million and their representatives seem powerless or unwilling to remove the scum which has risen to the top.

Paul Wolfowitz, former Deputy Secretary of Defense and architect of the infamous Douglas Feith’s Office of Special Plans, arranged a US$193,590 tax-free job in the State Department ($10,000 more than Secretary of State Condolleeza Rice herself, with a security clearance unprecedented for a foreign national) for his “neoconcubine”, Shaha Ali Riza. It’s tax-free because she’s a “diplomat”. According to axisoflogic, Wolfowitz got the State Department to agree that the ratings of her performance would automatically be “outstanding.” It turns out she had previously worked in State for …guess who?… Elizabeth Cheney, Dick’s other daughter.

Here’s Wolfowitz seeking “understanding” from his inferiors:

Pardon me? He wants understanding? He’s paid an obscene amount of money to be a supposedly exceptionally brilliant administrator, able to comprehend and manage incredibly complex global situations. And because he’s taken on a new job his ability to distinguish what is ethical and moral from what is concupiscent and corrupt has flown out the window? Please….The reality is much more probably that he inhabits the world of privilege and entitlement and “the way things really get done” which Neil Chenoweth describes. In that world self-serving is so ubiquitous it seems natural; it doesn’t seem like corruption at all.

US Attorney General, Alberto Gonzalez –

Architect of some of the most heinous, monstrous, scandalous attacks on the US Constitution, the rule of law and freedom,

Protector of the President’s right to torture, to fly suspects to middle eastern and east European torturers, and to spy on American citizens in America, all contrary to the law and the US Constitution

Shredder of the right of habeas corpus¹ in the US

employed the famous AWB defence (“I don’t recall”) this week to explain how he had come to not sack the federal prosecutors he had sacked – or did not recall whether he had sacked them, or if he did when he did, and if he didn’t who did. They were sacked for professional incompetence and not at all for political reasons, of course (how could you say such a thing). And yet he could not grasp that he was, right there in the hearing, displaying the most extraordinary incompetence, especially for someone so high up in the administration earning so much money. He couldn’t even recall whether he had a meeting last November about it. You would think if he didn’t recall the exact date, he would recall the sense of the meeting, the general content. But no. He did a Lord Downer. 71 times.

If someone really had this much trouble with his memory he would be sent on leave to get specialist medical treatment. A person of character who really had this much trouble with his memory would do the decent thing and resign.

As Jon Stewart puts it, Cheney’s advice when Gonzalez was in his month-long, five hours a day training for this duel would have been,

“Ya gotta piss lightning and crap thunder, Alberto!”

Or, as Goebbels might have said, “people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it”.

Gonzalez

Here’s the MSNBC take on it.

^{Quicktime required}

Notice that he says he “misspoke”. What does that mean? What he said was a deliberate lie. What he did was he lied. But if you call it “misspeaking” it sounds like someone else’s fault. “It wasn’t me, my mouth made a mistake, my tongue slipped, my brain had a loose connection.” It’s no worse than an actor fluffing his lines, is it? He also apologised during the hearing for his earlier “lack of clarity”. What he meant was, he lied. He’s a liar. He’s the Attorney General of the United States of America and he lies to Congress and to the people fo America. His attempted trick was minimising the representation of negative effects. “You wouldn’t ask me to resign over something so trivial, would you? That would make you seem unreasonable.” He does the same thing with the “disruption” to the lives of the Federal Attorneys he sacked. Disruption? He potentially ruined their careers. It’s the Black Knight. “‘Tis but a scratch!”

When these people get caught, or caught out, they apologise. People who do bad things often apologise. Sometimes they ask for understanding. When most people do something bad and apologise and ask for understanding, the judge says,

“That’s nice, ten years with 6 months suspended for your insincere expression of remorse.”

Wolfowitz and Gonzalez seem to think that their apology makes everything better. They accept full responsibility while explaining exactly how it was someone else’s fault (Kyle Sampson’s in Gonzalez’s case. In fact how can Gonzalez take responsibility for things of which he has no recollection at all?). They expect everyone to say “Gee, you’re a great guy, sorry to interrupt, as you were, continue with whatever you were doing. $200,000 a year (or whatever) for mediocrity and incompetence seems reasonable to us.” (And of course that’s just about what they have been saying.)

Gonzalez was asked directly if there had been any suggestion that the firings were the result of political pressure. His eventual answer was

I now understand that there was a conversation between myself and the president.

(You mean it wasn’t clear a the time?)

Vernon Lee has a nice take on this:

Shorter Gonzales: I now understand, with the generous provision of flashlight and map and helpful reminder of my own possession of a pair of hands by the Senators present, that I have located my own ass.

Vernon Lee’s take is informative and includes this excellent demolition from the Huffington Post:

Perhaps the best one can say about Alberto Gonzales is that he sees himself as a steward of the president’s excellence. Cast such a man as attorney general, the highest officer of the law of the United States, and the visible touch of servility will naturally expose him to ridicule as a toady.
[...]
Exposed today, and in disgrace, with the personal marks of George W. Bush and Karl Rove visible all over his conduct and in the design of his discovered and probable actions — casual contempt for professional merit, indifference to proved ability, and the belief that genuine competence may be punished when not leavened by performances of truckling loyalty — Gonzales pleaded for a second chance. (He meant a third or a fourth chance.) The note of insistence was plangent, almost pitiable, but it meant less than it said. All honor has been unreal to Gonzales except the honor of serving the person and will of George Bush.

Why does Values Australia care about all this American stuff?

We care because our Prime Minister will support this utterly and unarguably corrupt administration with his dying breath. And we care because that impacts on all of us. We care because he and his cronies like Ruddock get ideas from what Gonzalez and others get away with in the US and put them into practice in Australia.

In other news…

He knows Iraq and the Iraq situation from the inside. He has been Iraq’s Minister of Defence and Finance.
He has been in great danger, targetd by a suicide bomber, six of his appointees killed.
He thinks Iraq should probably become a federation of three states – Sunni, Shiia and Kurd.
He has written a book about it all called The Occupation of Iraq.
He is Ali Allawi.
He has appeared on the Daily Show to talk about it. What you understand from listening to him is the depth of the ignorance of the neocons (and John Howard), their complete lack of understanding and awareness of the place they had decided to invade (in fact, to “fix”) and the potential consequences of that invasion, and the mindboggling arrogance not only of why it was done but how it was done.

Ali Allawi (1)

Ali Allawi(2)

¹Here’s an example of Gonzalez’s slime concerning habeas corpus:

…the Constitution doesn’t say that every individual in the United States or every citizen has or is assured the right of habeas corpus. It doesn’t say that. It simply says that the right of habeas corpus shall not be suspended.

Or to put it another way, you don’t have to suspend it, you can just make enough special exemptions so that, gosh! look at that! nobody to whom we feel like denying the right of habeas corpus has its protection in practice!

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