Bending Like Beckham
July 7th, 2006George W. Bush is in Chicago this week, and he’s as bending the truth like Beckham bends soccer balls.
President Bush kicked off a two-day visit to Illinois Thursday night by celebrating his 60th birthday with Mayor Daley and business leaders at a South Loop restaurant. “Laura said, ‘What do you want for your birthday?’ I said I want to have dinner in Chicago with the mayor,” a jovial Bush told the press corps and his guests in a private room at the Chicago Firehouse Restaurant at 14th and Michigan. Daley is a regular there. “I’ve got a lot of birthday wishes,” Bush, dressed casually in a blue button-down shirt, continued. “I hope the troops are safe. I hope Roger Ebert does well.” Ebert, the Chicago Sun-Times’ iconic film critic, underwent emergency surgery earlier this week.
Let’s analyze, shall we? Does he mean to have us believe that he told his wife he wanted to come to Chicago for his birthday, seriously? He wanted to visit what is probably the bluest city in America, to talk to an old Liberal lion and fundraise for a Republican gubernatorial candidate that he didn’t fully support and that has no chance in Springfield of becoming the Governor? Give me a break! And, as if that wasn’t enough, I have it on good source that he is not only not a fan of Roger Ebert, but a Richard Roper man!
Actually, the reason he came, as I suspect it, is a bit humorous in its own way. Mayor Daley’s former patronage chief was convicted yesterday along with a few others for being crooked political hacks. Patrick Fitzgerald prosecuted them, and he is the same man who has the Bush Administration by the Libby. I’ll bet they’re having a randy old time discussing their mutual distaste for Fitzgerald. But I suspect that, when it’s all said and done, Bush will have far more reasons to hate Fitzgerald, especially considering that Patrick Fitzgerald keeps showing Bush to be a liar and a phony. From here,
Bush told Fitzgerald that he had directed Vice President Cheney in the summer of 2003 to counter damaging allegations being made by former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, and gave Cheney permission to disclose highly classified intelligence information to do so. Bush did not admit any connection to the act at the center of the criminal investigation. “Bush also said during his interview with prosecutors that he had never directed anyone to disclose the identity of then-covert CIA officer Valerie Plame, Wilson’s wife,” Waas writes. “Bush said he had no information that Cheney had disclosed Plame’s identity or directed anyone else to do so.” Publicly, Bush has consistently portrayed himself as not only uninvolved with the leak of Plame’s identity, but utterly in the dark about it — and determined to punish any wrongdoers.
The truth, of course, depends upon what the meaning of the word “directed” and “counter” mean. It all depends on which way the truth spins, and what semantics you want to play. All I know is, that if you direct a hitman to “take care of” your family, and they are killed, you’re absolutely liable for their murder. Bush is, then, liable for the death of Valerie Plame’s CIA career.
Richard Holbrooke is back in the news, and writing about international politics and domestic ones, too. As usual, I think he’s spot on, but I wanted to pass his article along for those of you who haven’t seen it.