The Bush Doctrine

Aside from cronyism, corruption and sleaze, there’s a major running theme throughout Bush’s reign of terror.

He acted alone.

They are the most secretive tight-knit cabal of cronies in the history of this country until something goes wrong, and then it’s all – who’s that guy? I think I might have met that dude at a party once. When Abramoff went down, his BFF Tom DeLay acted as if he had never met him, and definitely erased the speed dial button from his phone. Lynndie England is caught Girls Gone Wild style pointing and grinning at some prisoner’s johnson and she’s the one bad apple. Pay no attention to the administration memos endorsing torture, the guy taking the photograph, the boots on people’s heads in the photos, or all the suicide attempts at Guantanamo. Now it’s Scoots. Scooter Libby participated in a treasonous act undermining our national security and then proceeded to cover it up. Dick Cheney, George Bush and Karl Rove are marching around as though it caught them off guard. They can’t believe that he would do such a thing. Bullshit. Everyone knows it’s bullshit, but there’s this burden of proof that they’re going to hide behind and in the meantime act as if they were completely unaware of his actions. No one acts alone in this administration.

When something happens often enough, it eventually gets called a pattern. How many times are we supposed to swallow the one bad apple theory? Ten times? Twenty? Bringing accountability to the White House indeed.