1-12-04

	The trouble with Executive priveledge is, it enables 

unaccountability, and even conspiracy (as often maligned as 

that word now is, it has a specific meaning, which is 

forgotten, much like the word propganda, thanks to the 

efforts of some to align them to particular worldveiws). But 

when a group of leaders in a democratic country possess the 

nearly unlimited ability to conceal vital information and 

make the revealing of that information against the law, a 

situation primed for abuse sits in wait. The problem with 

this system is that, let's face it, sometimes our leaders are 

liars, and do things behind our back that they know damn well 

we won't support. Then, when some good soul has the nerve to 

point it out, he is now in the awkward poistion of being a 

criminal, too. The criminality of the corrupt executive is 

now transferred on anyone able to catch them in the act. A 

legal loophole, or lubehole, as I like to call them, much 

like the sedition laws in England around revolutionary times. 

If you said anything about the king he didn't like, you were 

guilty of sedition. And that is what the Bush administration 

is now basically accusing John O'Neill of. 
	
      O'Neill was Secretary of the Treasury until he 

resigned last year, when his office released a report, which 

the Administration quickly shelved, which suggested that two 

major tax cuts while engaged in multiple wars and facing a 

massive Socical Security crisis in the long term was, 

perhaps, not wise. He had also gotten quite a bit of flack 

for being too honest for international markets to handle. One 

time he said "we're not going to give Brazil money if it's 

just going to end up in a Swiss bank account". The next day, 

the Brazilian currency tumbled by 5%, after which the US did 

bail them out. Now, he's taking aim squarely at Bush. He 

paints a picture of a President disconnected, signing policy, 

making prepared speeches, and asking few questions. O'Neill 

claims that during his first meeting with Bush as Secretary, 

he brought in a list of about an hour's worth of material to 

discuss with the President, hoping to engage him in frank 

dialogue. Instead, he described an hourlong monologue, as 

Bush stared at him blankly. O'Neill went so far as to call 

Bush's performance at cabinet meetings "like a blind man in a 

room full of deaf people". 
	
      More ominously, he also shows in the book documents 

marked "Secret", documents dated early 2001, and bearing 

names like "Plan for Post-Saddam Iraq"", and "Foreign Suitors 

for Iraqi Oil". Now, the Treasury department is requesting a 

probe of how more secret documents ended up on an interview 

with 60 minutes. The probe request brings to mind another 

probe, from which Attorney Gerenal John Ashcroft recently 

recused himself, in which someone leaked the identity of 

former ambassador Joepsh Wilson's wife as a covert CIA agent, 

to CNN comlumnist Bob Novak, which is a felony. Wilson claims 

it is retribution from the administration for his debunking 

of forged documents from Niger claiming to sell unranium to 

Iraq. He even went to so far as to speculate that "this one 

has Karl Rove written all over it". 

	Which brings me to my point, that the Bush 

administration can do whatever it wants without too much 

domestic pressure, as long congress doesn't overstep its 

bounds of protocol, and the public is kept pliable through 

daily doses of fear and synthetic patriotism. That this sort 

of speech has already been labeled by some un-American and 

even treasonous is proof of just how far we've slid into the 

realm of authoritarianism.