Thursday’s New York Times story about the destroyed CIA interrogation tapes is just another crack in the dam holding back the giant pool of crap that is the Bush administration. Everyone knows there’s more there, the anticipation from most quarters has been whether the dam’s going to hold until the 2008 election or whether it’s going to break and cover everyone in its wake with a thick, oozy slime.
The Democratic leadership, by putting impeachment under the table before the 2006 election, has placed their bets on the dam staying intact. There’s been no serious attempt to breach it in nearly a year of investigation with the super-special dreaded “subpoena power.” They control the speed and depth of the investigations, and they’ve managed to run through almost a year without actually challenging claims of executive privilege. November is tantalizingly close.
This week’s revelations aren’t going to be the last news of administration malfeasance. The Times has already published further information linking the Justice Department and the White House to discussions about whether “hundreds of hours of videotapes” should be destroyed as long ago as 2003.
By the end of this winter, more and more cracks are going to have appeared in the dam holding back the crap. As the presidential races start shaking out (and there remains a lot of shaking to be done) by Super Duper Double Tuesday or whatever it is in February, one of the Republican candidates is going to be shocked and astonished by something the Bush administration has done in the waronterror. It’ll be something that people pushing for the impeachment of George W. Bush have known or suspected for years, but it will be as to a revelation for the Republicans, much as Oregon Senator Gordon Smith suddenly realized that he was sort of sad about the war a year ago this week.
At that point, the GOP will pronounce their own resolution to censure President Bush and/or Vice President Cheney. They will marvel at the fact that the Democrats, in over a year of investigations, didn’t manage to uncover this egregious practice, pointing to that failure as a sign of “Democrat incompetence”. They will essentially create a controlled flow of crap from the pool, and channel it into the house of the donkey.
At that point, Democrats will be faced with the choice of doing nothing, pressing for an impeachment that they didn’t want to pursue in the first place, or going along with a censure resolution that will take any steam out of an impeachment movement (not that they wanted to do that).
Republicans will be praised for their “courage” in standing up to Bush and Cheney by editorials across the country. Democrats will be excoriated for their bumbling inefficiency at the reins of power. All of the anti-impeachment folks here will be happy, because the Democrats “got real” and didn’t make the mistake the GOP did in the ’90s of impeaching a president who had violated the Constitution in enough ways to put the Kama Sutra to shame.
Then again, come November, they might not be quite as happy.
[UPDATE]
Sadly No’s Dr. Bradley S. Rocket summarizes Michelle Malkin’s take on the torture tapes:
The CIAs destroyed interrogation videos, what the Dems knew, and when
- The CIAs destruction of secret torture videos proves once and for all that the Democrats are pro-torture.
Just an added note: this is a pretty neat little act of contortion on Stalkin Malkins part. She begins by arguing that the New York Times has conspired to influence the torture debate by publishing articles demonstrating how the government has concealed its torture program (and yes, writing those words is extraordinarily depressing). She then wags her finger at the DEMONKKKrats who want to explicitly ban practices such as waterboarding — practices that, by any sane definition, are torture. Then she pulls off her coup de grâce: She flips the entire argument around and blames the Democrats for not doing enough to hold the CIA accountable for destroying evidence of torture! Its an impressive feat, especially when you consider that Michelle and pals have already transformed down-is-the-new-up-ism into an art form. Well played.