Hersh busts Cheney and Co., again

Seymour Hersh, whose dispassionate, perfectly sourced stories have been exposing U.S. administrations' covert and corrupt activities since My Lai, has again pushed back the curtain to reveal President Bush and Vice President Cheney maneuvering the country into war. And he has exposed Congress' weak-kneed, lily-livered attitude toward oversight in matters most vital to the nation's security and interests of peace.

It probably comes as little surprise to those who read this blog that Cheney and Bush would be finagling a way to involve the U.S. in a shooting war with Iran. And it's not even past belief that some on the blue side of the aisle would be complicit in an election year. Most disappointing is that Democrats at the top, those assured of being re-elected, not only have reneged on promises to end the war in Iraq, but refused to close the door on what surely will be an even more tragic showdown with Iran. Hersh points out that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi single-handedly ended a previous attempt by refusing to agree to funding a secret war appropriations request.

Can we believe in the possibility that the Democrats in Congress will grow a spine? In the past weeks, they have agreed to hold telecoms blameless for spying on us and to funding, without conditions, the war they promised to end. And they have taken impeachment of Bush off the table. Perhaps they should stay out of session until after the election. Haven't any of them learned a thing from the Iraq mire? Why are they not falling over each other to block funding for anything that contains the words "regime change" and "fatal defensive tactic?"

McCain is moving ever toward Bush-Cheney, keeping his ties to the Ollie North-reminiscent National Endowment for Democracy, bringing on Phil Gramm as his economic guru. It should send a shiver up all our spines that Democrats, whose ability to lose elections can't be exaggerated, could open a door through which McCain could follow Cheney and Bush, dragging us all into disaster.