Where Left Is Right / The Old Site

From the New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy:

To be “three sheets to the wind” is to be drunk. The sheet is the line that controls the sails on a ship. If the line is not secured, the sail flops in the wind, and the ship loses headway and control. If all three sails are loose, the ship is out of control.

Something else besides a ship's sails that comes in a threesome is, of course, the branches of the ship of state here in the US. And in recent weeks, it has seemed increasingly clear that these sheets are wildly a-flap indeed, on just about every front. The centerpiece of the impending wreck is the misAdministration's Iraq fiasco.

Tonight, W will be addressing the nation on Iraq. We don't know specifically what he will say (although John Kerry, of all people, has some ideas on what he should say, and fat chance on that). Mark Sandalow of the San Francisco Chronicle, though, points out the likely message, regardless of what the actual words might "say":

The best clue to what President Bush wants to tell the American people about Iraq today can probably be found in his selection of the nation's largest Army base as a backdrop for his prime-time address.

Even as he tries to rally a nation increasingly skeptical about the war's progress, there is no signal from the White House that Bush plans to offer a new direction, acknowledge missteps or reach out to critics.

If past speeches at military bases are any guide, Bush's nationally televised address before troops at Fort Bragg, N.C., will feature soaring words about the accomplishments of the U.S. armed forces, the political achievements in Iraq, and the high stakes for America's security.

"It is a critical moment in Iraq,'' White House press secretary Scott McClellan told reporters Monday. "The American people (will) have the opportunity to hear from their commander in chief about the nature of the enemy we face in Iraq, the situation on the ground, and the way forward to victory.''

The falseness and growing desperation of this campaign to convince us No, really, things are just fine, in fact they're better than fine -- it's almost too painful to watch.

Coincidentally, I have finally gotten around to reading John Dean's Worse than Watergate. (And believe me: you need to read it, too, if you haven't already done so.) Here are some relevant excerpts from his Chapter 5, "Hidden Agenda":

Not only does [Bush] consider the reasons he went to war to have become irrelevant, he apparently cannot recognize his own deceit and hypocrisy and that he has adopted precisely the sort of ends-justify-the-means thinking that Nixon belatedly admitted adopting. Famed sociologist and student of politics Max Weber's take on such thinking is as valid today as it was when he wrote it many years ago: "From no ethics in the world can it be concluded when and to what extent the ethically good purpose 'justifies' the ethically dangerous means and ramifications."
[...]
Congressman Robert W. Kastemeier, a Democrat, had been sufficiently troubled by Nixon's actions to look to the Founders for guidance [at the time Congress was considering impeaching Nixon]. He reported:

The question is really a constitutional one: if, in fact, the President did issue false and misleading statements, engage in deception and concealment concerning a matter of such great importance to the country as the conduct of war in which thousands and thousands of Americans were killed, irrespective of how Americans now view that war, and then, in fact, he has committed an offense for which he is accountable. I would only say that going back to the earliest times, one James Iredell, one of the Framers of the Constitution, stated the proposition that the President, and I paraphrase, must certainly be punishable for giving false information to the Senate. He is to regulate all intercourse with foreign powers, and it is his duty to impart to the Senate every material intelligence he receives. If it should appear that he has not given them full information, but has concealed important intelligence which he ought to have communicated, and by that means induced them to enter into measures injurious to their country in which they would not have consented to had the true state of things been disclosed to them, in this case I ask whether an impeachment for a misdemeanor would lie.

It is doubtful that Bush and Cheney secretly advised key members of Congress that they were going to lie about Iraq. And the evidence is overwhelming, certainly sufficient for a prima facie case, that George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney have engaged in deceit and deception over going to war in Iraq. This is an impeachable offense.

Of course, the whole Watergate/impeach-Nixon business took place during the halcyon days when we could count on the reassuring stability of at least one branch of government to keep the other branch(es) from flopping too wildly, for too long. With the end-to-end lock which conservatives have effected, talk of impeachment can be expected to go exactly nowhere.