Much Ado About Nothing

by Susan Lenfestey

Thank you Harry Whittington. Not only for surviving being shot, but also for apologizing to Vice President Cheney for causing him so much trouble.
Now those of us who find this administration an ongoing disgrace can continue to have fun with the best little quail hunt in Texas.

For one thing, it has such a Shakespearean overtone to it -- the desperately needed comic relief in the midst of carnage and mayhem, as if Sir Toby Belch and Malvolio, the priggish steward of Twelfth Night, were to go hunting in the middle of Julius Caesar, the bard's tragic tale of ambition and government corruption.

Then there's the undeniable schadenfreude, the naughty pleasure of seeing someone's thinly concealed bad habits blossom into fact right before your eyes.

Just as Monica's blue dress became the emblem of Bill Clinton's long-rumored womanizing, your pellet-peppered face has become the emblem of Dick Cheney's trigger-happy and secretive lifestyle.

So it's not surprising that this quirky story kept the public's attention for almost a week. What is surprising is that all the truly important stories about your political pals' failures and misdeeds have stayed in the public's consciousness no longer than the flicker of a dying fluorescent bulb.

The litany is too long, but consider just a few of the most recent news items:

• Paul Pillar, the CIA's national intelligence officer for the Middle East from 2000 to 2005, confirmed that the intelligence on Iraq was, in fact, molded to make a case for war. "It has become clear that official intelligence . . . was misused publicly to justify decisions already made…and the intelligence community's own work was politicized."

• Former vice presidential aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby reportedly told a federal grand jury that his "superiors" authorized him to leak highly sensitive intelligence to journalists. Scooter's superior was Dick Cheney. You decide.

• House Republicans released a report on the response to Katrina, citing government failure at every level, including the executive branch. As if to illustrate the ineptitude, it was reported that 10,770 new trailers, ordered by FEMA and costing over $431 million, are sinking into a muddy field in Arkansas -- because FEMA forbids placing them in a flood plain. Sources say it's likely that the fully furnished trailers will eventually be towed to a landfill and destroyed.

• Joseph A. Christoff, director of international affairs and trade at the Government Accountability Office, testified that insurgency attacks in Iraq are on the rise. ''There are peaks and valleys,” he said, "but if you look at every peak, it's higher than the peak before.''

• American commanders in Iraq reported that Abu Ghraib prison has become a breeding ground for terrorists, what one commander called "Jihad University -- a graduate-level training ground for the insurgency."

• The UN Commission on Human Rights called for the closing of America's holding tank at Guantanamo Bay, where prisoners are held without charges, and those on hunger strikes are strapped to chairs and force-fed through a tube down the nose.

Add to that the election victory of Hamas, Islamic extremists rioting over a cartoon and Iran burbling towards nuclear capability, and no wonder it was a real howler when the vice president shot you in the face.

Your friends in the Bush administration justify their unprecedented secrecy and snooping, their use of torture and imprisonment without charges, their reckless expenditures and managerial ineptitude, as well as the unforgivable loss of life in Iraq as a necessary part of the war on terror.

And while they can fairly say that fate handed them two staggering blows in the attacks of 9/11 and the fury of Katrina, they can only point to their own shallow ideology and arrogance for the failures of their response.

So as much as your apology went a long way toward giving this story a whole new life, you might try playing the role of Cassius, the nobleman in Julius Caesar torn between loyalty to his friend Caesar and loyalty to his country, who so famously reminds Brutus that the fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves.