No last rites for the U.S. Constitution as the U.S. nears the Iraq abyss

ray mcgovern's take on the gates confirmation...

At Tuesday's Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the nomination of Robert Gates to be secretary of defense, I felt as though I were paying last respects to the Constitution of the United States. But there was none of the praise customarily given to the deceased.

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It was a sorry spectacle Tuesday, as pretentious, patrician manners trumped courage and vitiated the advise-and-consent prerogative carefully honed by the framers of our Constitution for the Senate.

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The U.S. military announced that three more American soldiers were killed Monday, adding to the 13 killed over the weekend. Ten more US soldiers were killed on Wednesday. And five Marines were to be charged with the killing of 24 Iraqis, many of them women and children, in the village of Haditha in November 2005.

No such bothersome details about this misbegotten war were allowed into evidence Tuesday by the stuffed shirts sitting in stuffed seats in a hearing room stuffed with 80 stenographers from our domesticated press. Rather, the hearing room seemed to serve as a kind of funeral parlor for the Constitution. There were plenty of bouquets, but none smelled very genuine.

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Gates may have "fresh eyes," but if past is precedent he will add but marginally to the flavor of the self-licking ice cream cone that passes for Bush's coterie of advisers.

What Bush has done is replace Rumsfeldian Tart with Sugary Gates. Otherwise, the Cheney/Bush recipe is likely to remain the same as the U.S. draws nearer and nearer to the abyss in Iraq.

two disasters this week... one, the isg report and all the fol-de-rol that's going along with it, especially ridiculous when you consider that what it's REALLY calling for is iraqi oil privatization... two, the gates confirmation... so much for turning the corner after the mid-term elections...

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