The Gutsy, the Gutless, the Gutter

Cindy Sheehan has parked herself outside Mister Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas. National security adviser Steve Hadley and deputy White House chief of staff Joe Hagin went out to hear what she had to say.

Hagin told her that Mister Bush "really does care."

"If he does care," Sheehan said, "why doesn't he come out and talk to me?"

Well, heck, Mrs. Sheehan, the guy's on a working vacation, you know what I mean? And being a president on vacation is hard work, especially when you're trying to work and vacation at the same time. Mister Bush is on a very tight schedule, Mrs. Sheehan. He can't make time to talk to every mother of a soldier killed in action who camps out in front of the ranch. Shoot, if he did that, he wouldn't have time to care about the soldiers killed in Iraq, would he?

I'd like to have been a fly on the wall when Hadley and Hagin went back in and debriefed Mister Bush on their conversation

Dubya: Did y'all tell her I cared?

H&H: Yes, Mister President.

Dubya: Well good.

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I'm proud of Mrs. Sheehan. She's showing a lot of guts. A lot more than, say, Theodore C. Nicholas II, former senior intelligence officer at the detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan where two prisoners were beaten to death.

Last year, Nichols told investigators that interrogators were restricted to using methods outlined in an Army Field Manual 34-52. He said he did not recall seeing detainees shackled with their arms over their heads to derive them of sleep, but he did recall seeing shackles hanging from an overhead bar in a holding cell, and he recalled saying the guards better make sure the prisoners' feet could touch the floor.

Apparently, that line of gibberish made the investigators happy, because Nichols was later promoted from colonel to brigadier general.

Captain Carolyn Wood, leader of the interrogation group, didn't fare so well. The investigators recommended that she be charged with dereliction of duty.

I reckon that's what Captain Wood gets for not being a Skull and Crossbones classmate of George W. Bush.

At Fort Bliss, Texas, prosecutors are "moving swiftly" to dispense with cases filed regarding the deaths at Bagram. Nine soldiers have been prosecuted so far. None of the nine are officers.

I saw plenty of shameful things in the course of my military career, but this takes the cake.

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Speaking of shameful...

Last I heard, the Pentagon is still stonewalling a federal court order to release pictures and tapes of prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib.

Along those lines, the White House refuses to turn over any information to the 9/11 commission.

Thomas H. Kean, the former Republican governor of New Jersey who led the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission, said he was surprised and disappointed that the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and several other executive branch agencies had failed to respond to requests made two months ago for updated information on the government's antiterrorism programs.

The White House is still blowing off the Senate's request for information regarding Supreme Court nominee John Roberts, and we'll never see the info the Senate wanted to see on John Bolton.

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And from the "Irony is Dead" files, this from a 2004 speech given by Mister Bush:

In a free society, we will find out the truth, and everybody will see the truth. In a society that is a free society, there will be transparency in the process. People will testify; there will be fair trials, if there are trials; the truth will be known. In societies run by tyrants, you never see the truth. You never find out the truth. This country honors every individual. We believe in human rights and human dignity. And the example we will set for the world will confirm that.

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Who is left to hold the executive branch of our government accountable for its actions? At this point, it seems to boil down to two people: a special prosecutor and a dead soldier's mom.

And the Rovewell machine is launching a smear campaign on both of them.

Surprise.