Truths Inconvenient

These are actually (if unpopularly in some circles) truths:

That Valerie Plame was an undercover CIA operative.

That someone above Scooter Libby committed a felony in 'outing' her and that we all pretty much know who.

That it is illegal wiretap without going through the FISA court. Each instance is a separate felony.

That George W. Bush knowingly went ahead with massive illegal wiretapping after the Justice Department refused to "sign off" on it; even after Andrew Card, the White House Chief of Staff -- and former chief lobbyist for the oil industry -- and Alberto Gonzales -- offtimes a stranger to the concept of "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution" -- rushed to the hospital bed of John Ashcroft, then Attorney General of the United States, but NOT legally capable of signing off, since his then-deputy, and, acting attorney general, had refused to sign off on domestic wiretapping.

That the mainstream news is not merely an enabler of the 'talking points' outrages told about these events and more, but is an actual COLLABORATOR in these crimes, exempli gratia: Robert Novak.

That we (the Allies) HUNG men convicted at the Nuremberg trials* for having engaged in aggressive war, for having conspired to commit aggressive war, and other counts. On the other hand, the USA is hugely responsible for having enacting into the U.N. Charter the statement that every sovereign nation has the right to defend itself, which means, according to OUR law, that Saddam Hussein had a right to defend Iraq, no matter what you might have thought of Saddam.

[* see]

That Bush & Co. lied knowingly about going into Iraq.

That, having justified the war (and the FIRST Gulf War) because Middle Eastern oil is a matter of National Interest and National Security, our oil is much more insecure than it was prior to the war, when we were choking off Iraq's oil, with the assistance of every nation in the United Nations (some not very sincerely).

That the oil companies are gouging us, just like they gouged us after Katrina, just like they've been gouging us all along. The price of a gallon of gasoline has moved from under two dollars to over four dollars since Nighn-Uh-Lebb'n.

That there is now no rationale for continuing our Occupation of Iraq, except to save the face of several liver-spotted lifelong non-combatants.

That this "war" in Iraq is actually an occupation.

That the Iraqis WANT us to leave.

That anyone in Iraq who wants us to leave is called an "insurgent" or a "terrorist," preferably with "Al Qaeda" mentioned somewhere within the report.

That "terrorist" is whomever the GOP points at.

That the "mainstream media" couldn't find its ass in the dark with a map and flashlight.

That the few poor reporters who still break stories and do INVESTIGATIVE stories -- the Dana Priests, the Seymour Hershes, the Greg Palasts -- are more untouchable by the MSM than NAMBLA.

That despite the phony Wall Street numbers mystically repeated each night, this economy is in bad shape, and it's only getting worse. That the 'reason' given each night for the "Dow"s rise and fall wasn't divined by any means more sophisticated than reading tea leaves, nor any more scientific.

That the United States treasury is being looted -- often by those self-same persons and companies that invested heavily in Bush's alleged 'election' in 2000.

That the 2000 election was, in fact stolen.

That corporate crime and corruption are rampant; that we have seen troops holding M-16s in our airports, and that we still hover dangerously close to an outright police state.

That any protests are hushed up and covered up.

That secret prisons exist throughout the world. That we are openly operating an extraterritorial gulag at Guantanimo Bay, Cuba, and that torture is routinely practiced there.

That habeas corpus is a meaningless concept if one crosses these serpents.

That the alternative media of the internet came along just in the nick of time.

That lying baldfacedly is not merely the modus operandi of this regime, but is so much an unquestioned fact of life within it that any call for actual facts is not merely beneath notice, but that such a query is actively taken as an ill-mannered and rude affront to not only members of the regime, but an active collaboration with Osama Bin Saddam his-very-own-self.

That we Americans seem so stunned by the very magnitude of the criminality involved that we have no idea what to do about it.

That none of the above-mentioned facts must ever be uttered without the term ‘wild conspiracy theory’ immediately preceding or following their utterance, either singly or in combination. And that the room is filling with thousand pound gorillas at such an accelerating rate that we much soon vacate the room, or else be crushed.

That Bush is a tyrant.

And, that, while Virginia did not change its motto from "Sic Semper Tyrannis" after that unfortunate incident with its native son, John Wilkes Booth, and retains the venerable Latin phrase from its adoption in 1776, the sentiment has never been so applicable since as it is now:

Thus Always to Tyrants.

Courage.