I've been reading through all the hoopla about how yet another Bush insider has defected and--even worse!--gone public with their howls of protest about the Iraq war and how their boy botched it up and how now they wish they'd never listened or spoken out or whatever the hell it is they did at the time to send almost 30,000 of America's brightest and best to get killed and maimed in Iraq.

The most recent treason was committed by Matthew Dowd, the man who ran Bush's re-election campaign in 2004 and then was SHOCKED SHOCKED I TELL YOU to discover that he'd been working for a paper-doll cutout instead of a real man.

So close was he to Bush, actually, that the Bush people have had to be very very careful into how they slime him.   Accustomed as they are to smearing sleaze all over anyone who is critical of their boy-king, even they are smart enough to realize that this particular man,  has documented true anguish and soul-searching and has been quietly disclosing his sense of betrayal to legitmate sources.  So they know they'll look like, well, just what he says they are, if they attack him.

So in his press conference, Bush allowed as how, well, the guy's son is "deployable" and that he is, clearly, "emotional" right now and therefore maybe not quite in his right mind.  In fact, Bush allowed as how he could understand that anyone in that position might be, well, EMOTIONAL.

Oh.  I see.  If we send our children off to fight and possibly die or be maimed in his lie of a war, we are too emotional to speak truth?

Well, wrap me up in a strait jacket and twiddle my toes.

If this were the only neo-CON who had spoken out in recent months, well, that would be one thing, a blip on the media radar.  But back in January, in a mushroom cloud seen round the media world, the true "architects of the war" spoke out in a Vanity Fair article called "Neo Culpa."  There, they poured out their little hearts to journalist David Rose about just how wrong they--and Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld--had been.

Not that they were APOLOGIZING or anything.

Richard Perle--author of the famous letter to President Clinton back in 1998 (signed by Donald Rumsfeld, among others) that urged an invasion of Iraq--David Frum--the guy who put the words "axis of evil" in the president's State of the Union address--Kenneth Adelman--the one who wrote in a famous New York Times op-ed that the invasion would be a "cakewalk"--they all did their dead-level best to make excuses for their own towering hubris, arrogance, ignorance, cultural blindness, historial stupidity, and unforgiveable short-sightedness.

Then they got pissed because Vanity Fair released parts of the interview in the online version of their magazine BEFORE the November elections.

Another, Vic Gold, is writing a book entitled, Invasion of the Party-Snatchers, How the Holy Rollers and the Neo-Cons Destroyed the GOP.

But you don't get do-overs.  Not in war.  Not in policy-making.  Not in speaking out.

Michael Kinsley wrote in Time:

You don't get to assume the success of your intentions and then plead a shrugging, "Who knew?" when they don't pan out...You can't turn sand into ice cream.  That is not a defect in the execution of the idea.  It is a defect in the idea itself...In fact, maybe their whole philosophy is mistaken.

And in the Baltimore Sun, Cynthia Tucker wrote:

The moment for political courage came and went.  Those who could not summon it up then, those who failed to speak out when their nation most needed them, find there is nothing they can do to make up for that failing.


But you know what?  I really don't give a damn what ANY of them have to say.  I hit the MUTE button any time I see one of their weasel-faces.  The catastrophic, colossal, monumental damage they have done to this country and to Iraq and to all the military families who have paid so dear a price is so harrowing, so despicable, that they have long since forfeited their right, in my mind, to say a damn thing.

They wanna talk, let them take a stroll through a Baghdad market and talk to the locals or to the soldiers there.  Only, without an advance guard of 100 American troops and five gunships hovering overhead.  Or a flak jacket.  Or camera crew.  They can talk all they want to then.

No, the ones I really want to write about are those who DID speak up, those who DID have the balls to speak truth to power.

And let me add:  There were brave men and women in Congress who spoke LOUDLY against this invasion in 2002 and 2003, when there was still time to stop it.

But only a very few people know about that because NOT A SINGLE MAJOR NEWSPAPER OR MEDIA OUTLET COVERED THEIR REMARKS AT THE TIME.

If they did, the individuals were dragged over hot coals for being...somehow...either not very loyal Americans or just not very well informed, since they weren't following the White House talking points.

Now, the Ken Adelmans and the Richard Perles--they got all kinds of stellar coverage, but not anyone who spoke against them.  War opponents were seldom even invited to tell their sides on talk shows.

That didn't stop them from speaking out, though, and I'm going to let their words speak for themselves.  And, I would like to point out, thanks to the November elections, some of them are now in positions of REAL power to REALLY do something about this travesty, and more power to 'em.

BARACK OBAMA:
"I don't oppose all wars.  What I am opposed to is a dumb war.  What I am opposed to is a rash war.  What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.
September, 2002

AL GORE:
"I am deeply concerned that the course of action that we are presently embarking upon with respect to Iraq has the potential to seriously damage our ability to win the war against terrorism and to weaken our ability to lead the world in this new century."
September, 2002

NANCY PELOSI:
"When we go in, the occupation, which is now being called the liberation, could be interminable and the amount of money it costs could be unlimited."
October, 2002

HOWARD DEAN:
"I firmly believe that the president is focusing our diplomats, our military, our intelligence agencies, and even our people on the wrong war, at the wrong time...Iraq is a divided country, with Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish factions that share both bitter rivalries and access to large quantities of arms."
February, 2003

(quotes provided courtesy of Paul Krugman, in his December 8, 2006, New York Times op-ed, "They Told You So.")

But it was not just congresspeople speaking out.  Army Lt. Gen. William E. Odom criticized the doctrine of preemption, said al-Qaeda had nothing to do with Iraq and predicted democracy would scarcely take hold there.  According to the Washington Post's Lynne Duke, in a February 4 article called, "No-I-Told-You-Sos," Odom was dubbed a "Benedict Arnold" after that.

She asked him how he felt now, about being right then.  He said:

"Emotionally, it's a very traumatic and unhappy outcome...How can you happy about the disaster that's been created?  Vindication is not pleasing...The more vindicated I've been, the more irritable I become."

Marine General Anthony Zinni also spoke out, and was thereafter disinvited from meetings at the Joint Forces Command.

And we all know what happened to General Eric K. Shinseki when he spoke truth to power.  He was shut out, shut down, and shuttled over to retirement.

Diplomats spoke out as well.  Former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski spoke out.  When asked if he felt vindicated now, he said:

"If vindication was accompanied by a sense that America is likely to undo the damage they have done and can dis-embarrass itself of the tragic involvement, then my answer would be yes."


Bottom line:  There is nothing EMOTIONAL about speaking truth to power.

Let me put it in a way every true Republican can understand, in terms of cold, hard cash.

In the first quarter of the fund-raising cycle for the presidential elections, the Democrats outraised the Republicans in money donated by more than $30,000,000--a figure unheard of since the 1970's.

Barack Obama, alone, raised more than $25 million, and he DID NOT ACCEPT ANY MONEY FROM ANY LOBBYISTS OR PAC GROUPS.  Hillary Clinton out-raised him by about a million more.  She raised more than any other presidential candidate in history.

I'm not going to get into whether campaigns should be publicly financed at this time.  What I'm trying to say is that these numbers--which also reflect hundreds of thousands of small-dollar Internet grass-roots donors--point out the overwhelming frustration the American public feels right now in the way the right-wing apologists have handled this country in their 12 years in power.

They're sick of it and they're sick of this war.

You know how, when a marriage is falling apart, simply saying I'M SORRY is no longer enough to stop the breakup?  Everybody's sorry.

Now get the hell out.