"Broken: From Watergate to yellowcake"

Laurence Lewis' front pager on Kos:

By interesting coincidence, the Bush mendacity road show is on the airwaves just when the film about Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson is in the theaters. Fair Game is well-written, well-acted, and well-directed, and it's hard to sit through without clenching one's fists in fury, as the entire nightmare again unfolds before you: the slow, unstoppable strategy of lying the nation into a war that has killed and devastated millions of innocent lives; the deliberate destruction of an important national security asset's career as retribution for her courageous husband's daring to tell the truth; and the right wing media machine, reflexively protecting its ideological allies by smearing and attempting to destroy two national heroes, caring not a whit for the truth, and once again putting the lie to its perpetual posturing of patriotic rectitude.

About halfway through the film, I recalled an earlier film about an earlier national scandal. But All The President's Men had a feeling of exultance about it. Because it had a sort of happy ending. A corrupt administration was forced from office. Criminals went to prison. The system worked. In some ways the current film is haunted by its earlier counterpart, because both films are so well done but only one recounts a story where the reality was well done. And with Bush on the road, hawking "his" book, one of the main stories making the rounds is of the supposedly difficult decision he made about commuting the sentence of rather than pardoning Scooter Libby. Poor Dick Cheney. Poor Scooter. And of course none of the media foofs interviewing Bush will go beyond that sordid level about personal loyalty and dare ask what Bush thought about an important national security asset's career being destroyed as retribution for her courageous husband's daring to tell the truth about Bush's lies. MORE...