The Walls Are Caving In

I think I know why the President tried to run over the press corps with a bulldozer yesterday. He was acting out because there's so much going on around him that is damaging.

Just a few blocks from the White House, Scooter Libby is facing a jury in a case that, whatever the outcome, has painted a picture to this point of an Administration determined to go to war at all costs, and determined to punish anyone who got in their way, no matter if they had to break laws or reveal classified information to do it. And this mentality has seeped into all other aspects of the Presidency, only now there's a Democratic Congress that wants to get to the bottom of things.

Today John Conyers announced that he would investigate the use of Presidential signing statements to nullify Congressional legislation:

“We are not going to take no for an answer,” said Conyers, lambasting Bush’s use of the statements to sidestep the law.

He vowed to demand answers from the White House about its intention to ignore the ban on torture when needed and its right to open domestic mail when needed.

The White House has long defended the practice of using the statements as a way to express an opinion about legislation.

The Administration has already shown its willingness to respond to threats like these (in the back of my mind I feel like they respect it somehow) by caving on the release of the judgment of the FISA court in the domestic spying case:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales expanded Congress' access Wednesday to classified documents detailing the government's domestic spying program but still didn't satisfy several lawmakers demanding information about surveillance.

Investigators' applications, legal briefs and orders issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court are now open to the two leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Gonzales said.

Two weeks ago, the panel -- led by Democratic Chairman Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Republican Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania -- criticized the attorney general for refusing to answer specific questions about the secret court's new oversight of the controversial program [...]

Leahy and Specter both said they welcomed the Bush administration's decision to show them the documents, which could give insight on how judges on the secret court consider evidence when approving government requests to spy on people in the United States who have suspected links to al-Qaida.

But Leahy said he will decide after he reviews the papers whether further oversight or legislative action is necessary. Specter stopped short of calling for them to be released publicly but said "there ought to be the maximum disclosure to the public, consistent with national security procedures."

That's a really big deal. In just a week or so, we've gone from the executive branch unwilling to even stop the illegal wiretapping or comply with the FISA court, to compliance and release of the opinion. This is clearly being done to evade responsibility for past lawbreaking. In fact, the Justice Department is asking the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals not only to drop the case they're ruling on (an appeal of Judge Taylor's decision that the wiretapping is illegal and must cease), but to vacate it entirely, annul it, blot it out like it never existed so they would be free of any legal ruling that contradicts with their radical view of executive power.

But there are so many other examples of lawbreaking, the White House is getting it on all sides. An audit by the Inspector General for Iraq reconstruction details the waste of taxpayer dollars being thrown down a hole somewhere in Baghdad:

The U.S. government wasted tens of millions of dollars in Iraq reconstruction aid, including scores of unaccounted-for weapons and an unused camp for housing police trainers that has an Olympic-size swimming pool, investigators say.

The quarterly audit by Stuart Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, is the latest to paint a grim picture of waste, fraud and frustration in an Iraq war and reconstruction effort that has cost taxpayers more than $300 billion.

"The security situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate, hindering progress in all reconstruction sectors and threatening the overall reconstruction effort," according to the 579-page report, which was being released today.

The report says the State Department paid $43.8 million to contractor DynCorp International to build the residential camp for police trainers outside Baghdad's Adnan Palace grounds that has stood empty for months. About $4.2 million of the money was improperly spent on 20 VIP trailers and an Olympic-size pool, all ordered by the Iraqi Interior Ministry but never authorized by the United States.

My Rep., Henry Waxman, will hold hearings in the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on this waste, fraud and abuse, and Paul Bremer will testify. That'll be another day of heartburn for the White House spinners. The Army's investigating contractor malfeasance too. And the Defense Department's Inspector General is finding that the President doesn't support the troops where it counts:

The Inspector General for the Defense Dept. is concerned that the U.S. military has failed to adequately equip soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially for nontraditional duties such as training Iraqi security forces and handling detainees, according to a summary of a new audit obtained by BusinessWeek [...]

The Inspector General found that the Pentagon hasn't been able to properly equip the soldiers it already has. Many have gone without enough guns, ammunition, and other necessary supplies to "effectively complete their missions" and have had to cancel or postpone some assignments while waiting for the proper gear, according to the report from auditors with the Defense Dept. Inspector General's office. Soldiers have also found themselves short on body armor, armored vehicles, and communications equipment, among other things, auditors found.

"As a result, service members performed missions without the proper equipment, used informal procedures to obtain equipment and sustainment support, and canceled or postponed missions while waiting to receive equipment," reads the executive summary dated Jan. 25. Service members often borrowed or traded with each other to get the needed supplies, according to the summary.

Pentagon officials did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment.

The audit supports news reports and other evidence that U.S. troops have been stretched too thin or have performed tasks for which they were ill-prepared. It is likely to add fuel to the opposition to President George W. Bush's decision to send more troops to Iraq in an effort to quell the violence there.

I don't ever want to hear a thing about how Democrats don't support the troops, when they're practically being sent out into a target zone with a wool cap for a helmet and a windbreaker for body armor. It's a special kind of sickness to under-equip soldiers for "the greatest ideological struggle of our times." The more money that has to be put into the sausage, the less that the defense contractors can take for themselves, I guess.

This relentless investigation and oversight doesn't even stop at the water's edge:

Arrest warrants have been issued for 13 people in connection with the alleged CIA-orchestrated kidnapping of a German citizen in the agency's extraordinary rendition program, a Munich prosecutor said Wednesday.

Prosecutor Christian Schmidt-Sommerfeld said the warrants were issued in the last few days. He did not say for whom the warrants were issued, but indicated a statement would be issued later Wednesday.

Extraordinary rendition is a practice in which the U.S. government sends foreign terror suspects to third countries for interrogation.

Munich prosecutors have previously said that they had received from Spanish investigators the names of several U.S. secret agents believed to be involved in the kidnapping of Khaled al-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent.

Never mind the extreme pressure on the subject of the surge, where even the most devoted Bush defenders aren't giving the plan much more than six months to work.

Things are busting out all over, and this President is slowly becoming isolated and pressed at all sides. They ran on a radical theory of government and power for six years, and lost the trust of virtually the whole world. This is the result of acting the part of a cowboy-king.