Op-Ed

Given the enormous disaster of the U.S. onslaught on Iraq, the monstrous suffering engendered by the occupation, the violence around the world that this same occupation has spawned, how strange it is that the counter-attack on the Bush administration should have come most effectively in the form of the Plame scandal.

Millions of words have now been written about the outing of Valerie Plame, CIA-tasked wife of Joe Wilson, who undercut the claims of the Bush administration that Saddam's Iraq was on the edge of having nuclear capability. A special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, has now labored for months. A female reporter on the staff of the New York Times, Judith Miller, is in jail for not answering Fitzgerald's questions. Bush's senior political adviser, Karl Rove, stands in danger of indictment for lying to Fitzgerald. He already has been exposed as a liar.

These are all big events, yet after all these months I find it hard to understand what the fuss is all about and to take the Plame scandal seriously.

From the moment the John Roberts nomination was announced, the media called it a done deal. NPR and the New York Times gushed over his humility, humor, and congeniality. With Roberts’s belief system barely mentioned, you’d think Bush had just nominated Mister Rogers.

In the wake of this media love fest, I keep encountering people who oppose everything Roberts has stood for, but see no use in trying to stop what seems his inevitable confirmation. But we can make a powerful impact by raising the discomforting truth that Roberts may be closer to a smiling Antonin Scalia. However the Senators vote—and it’s not foreordained, the more we raise key issues and principles, the more they’ll echo down the line around future nominations and policies.

Roberts is being hailed as the brilliant Harvard lawyer who gets along with everyone. He’s conservative, but reasonable. He doesn’t froth at the mouth. He barely barks. Unlike Bush’s three most recent Appeals Court appointees, he hasn’t led a right wing ideological charge. He’s being praised as a nomination Bush should be proud of.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Sheesh, all I knew about John Roberts was that everyone says he has lovely manners -- and already I was prepared to be against him. Knee-jerk liberal? No, congratulations to the White House, Sen. John Cornyn, Fred Thompson and everyone else involved in "managing" Roberts' confirmation process. Can't these people do anything without being devious about it?

My first reaction to Roberts was: "Sounds like that's about as good as we can get. Quick, affirm him before they nominate Bork, Bolton or Pinochet." A conservative with good manners and no known nutball decisions or statements on his record? Hey, take him. At least he's not (whew!) a member of the Federalist Society.

No such luck. Cornyn, who I would have sworn is not this stupid, apparently signed off on having the nominee "forget" he was a member of the Federalist Society, and Roberts obliged, which is strange considering his reputation for brilliance and a spectacular memory.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Solidarity Forev ... ooops, make that, Solidarity Later.

Organized labor is weak, but unorganized labor is a hell of a lot weaker. That's what's splitting the AFL-CIO. You may think this is none of your beeswax, but if you work in this country, you owe labor, big time. And I'm talking to you, white-collar worker.

This is not about the old stuff -- 40-hour workweek, unemployment insurance, health benefits, safety regs, etc. This is about right now, today. The money that controls this administration is out to screw you -- it's your pension on the line, your salary on the line and your job on the line. If your company can replace you cheaper, you are gone, buddy. And this administration is pushing jobs overseas just as fast as it can.

The split is not a case of good guys versus bad guys -- it's good guys versus (we hope) some better guys.

Unless they discover John Roberts dropped acid at Harvard or had been funneling insider stock tips to his wife, it looks as though he's a shoo-in for confirmation as a member of the U.S. Supreme Court. In his last job in the private sector, as a partner at Hogan & Hartson, an elite Washington, D.C. law firm, his gross income in 2003 was $1,044,399.54, so his gamble in accepting a seat on the federal appeals court on the D.C. circuit has certainly paid off. Already he's being talked up as maybe the next chief justice, replacing William Rehnquist, the justice he formerly clerked for.

Both the liberals and the Christian Right had amassed colossal war chests of around $20 million, expecting a convulsive confirmation hearing stretching far into the fall. They'll be hard put to spend the money, since Roberts's footprints have been purposively indistinct almost since he left the cradle.

A snooty conservative professor called Roger Scruton, an Englishman, wrote in the Times Literary Supplement earlier this year that "human beings are alone among the animals in revealing their individuality in their faces. The mouth that speaks, the eyes that glaze, the skin that flushes, all are signs of freedom, character and judgment, and all give concrete expression to the uniqueness of the self within."

What nonsense! In comparison with 90 percent of the people I see, I detect vastly more individual expressiveness on the faces of my dog (Jasper), horse (Agnes) and cat (Frank). When it comes to the physiognomic resources of the leader of the Free World, I'd claim superiority for my cockatiel (Percy).

With Reagan, a man whose face -- to judge from public appearances, was entirely immobile 99 percent of the time, I'd put up even my Gouldian finches as have a more sophisticated range of facial resources. With their cocking of the head my Gloucester finches are on a par with the late Great Communicator.

After he died on July 18, front pages focused on the failures of William Westmoreland as commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam. Overall, the coverage faulted him for being a big loser, not a mass killer.

The Washington Post noted that Westmoreland “was called a war criminal.” But the deaths of thousands of Vietnamese people each week during his four years as the top American general in Vietnam counted for little in the media calculus. The main problem, readers were encouraged to understand, was that Westmoreland pursued a losing strategy. “Historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. called Westmoreland possibly ‘our most disastrous general since Custer,’” the Post reported.

From early 1964 until 1968, Westmoreland was in charge of a U.S. military machine that methodically slaughtered Vietnamese people. As the Post’s front page antiseptically recalled, “Westmoreland’s military strategy was to conduct a war of attrition, trying to kill enemy forces faster than they could be replaced.”

My first view of General William Westmoreland was from coach class. He was in first, sitting ramrod straight, impossible to miss.

We were headed to the University of Florida at Gainesville to debate the Bomb. Why the man who commanded the armies of the Crusade in Southeast Asia from 1964 to 1968 needed in 1984 to debate a lefty activist like me was a mystery. Maybe he needed the money. Maybe he needed the challenge.

He looked like he'd live forever. Certainly into his nineties, which he did, passing away this week at 91. He was tall, poised, flinty-eyed, with zero apparent body fat. Unbent, unbowed, you'd've thought him a conquering hero.

The debate was about the Nuclear Freeze, a great campaign. Why it failed to bury all nuclear weapons remains a great mystery of human nature. Today's world would be infinitely richer and safer if only it had been wiser back then.

That night in Gainesville I lived out a peacenik dream: I got to ask the man who commanded 550,000 troops in Vietnam why we should heed his opinion about needing nuclear weapons when he had so catastrophically led America to its first military defeat.

AUSTIN -- Now it's getting funnier and funnier. There is an elephant in the living room and we're sitting around having a conversation about whether there's an elephant in the living room.

"I think there's an elephant in the living room."

"Well, there's a lot of elephant poop around, but that doesn't prove there's an elephant in the living room."

The entire Republican Party is shocked (!) anyone would think that Karl Rove (!!) would leak a story to damage a political opponent. Oh, the horror. And Karl has always been such a sweet guy. Just to give you an idea, one time Rove was displeased with the job done by a political advance man and said, "We will f--- him. Do you hear me? We will f--- him. We will ruin him. Like no one has ever f---ed him!" (From an article by Ron Suskind). And that was a guy who was on his side.

Attacking an opponent's wife is standard operating procedure for Rove. Have Republicans actually convinced themselves that he wouldn't do such a thing? People, sometimes party loyalty asks too much.

During the Vietnam War, one of the peace movement’s more sardonic slogans was: “War is good business. Invest your son.”

In recent years, some eminent pundits and top government officials have become brazen about praising war as a good investment.

Thomas Friedman’s 1999 book “The Lexus and the Olive Tree” summed up a key function of the USA’s high-tech arsenal. “The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist,” he wrote. “McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the U.S. Air Force F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies to flourish is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.”