Month: March 2007

Congress demanding answers about potential wrong-doing and a president stonewalling while claiming that executive privilege is being threatened, and so he’s trying to offer half-assed compromises that will leave his people the option of lying privately with no chance of consequences instead of lying publicly and facing perjury?

Am I the only person who’s flashing back to Nixon/Watergate?

Because if that’s really what we’re seeing here, then the next thing to happen should be that there’s a Deep Throat who conveys to a newspaper reporter/reporters a chain of evidence that leads directly to the President, i.e., that the President ordered the attorneys fired because they weren’t in lockstep with his policies and furthermore ordered his AG to lie about it. I think we’re going to see the questions being raised of just how much the President knew, when he knew it, and what he did about it. And something tells me Bush doesn’t want us to know the answers to those questions.

PAD

The Democratic National Committee excoriated John McCain because he said on “David Letterman,” in regards to the 3000+ soldiers who have died in Iraq, “Americans are very frustrated and they have every right to be. We’ve wasted a lot of our most precious treasure, which is American lives.” They asserted that MCain had insulted “our brave troops.” McCain subsequently apologized, believing that “sacrificed” would be the better word.

McCain should have told the DNC to sod off. But since he obviously didn’t want to risk an extended imbroglio, he said he used the wrong word. Okay, I’ll do it for him: Sod off, DNC. McCain’s gut instinct was correct, and furthermore the DNC knows it.

To say that young lives have been wasted isn’t to diminish their sacrifice or to demean them. It isn’t to say that they themselves threw away their lives in an empty pursuit. It’s to say that those who were entrusted *with* their lives, to not put them in harm’s way unless absolutely necessary, shirked their responsibility. They’ve done as crap a job at safeguarding our troops as they did safeguarding the Constitution. McCain’s comment was clearly not aimed at the troops; it was aimed at those who sent our troops into a war where they were assured we would be greeted as liberators and be out in no more than six months…while simultaneously destroying our international reputation at a time when, thanks to worldwide sympathy due to 9/11, we could have transformed that tragedy into some sort of true international coalition to fight terrorism.

Wasted opportunity. Wasted lives. The DNC should be ashamed of trying to spin McCain’s word choice into political opportunity and push him into using one that is less loaded…and less accurate. “Sacrifice” implies nobility, but there was nothing noble in the administration’s actions, nothing noble in lying to the American people, nothing noble in declaring “mission accomplished” while thousands more died.

But if “wasted” is off the table, then fine.

How about “squandered?”

PAD

I know I haven’t been around lately, leaving you guys to (tragically) have to think for yourselves (I know, I know…the cruelty). I’ve been buried in finishing my latest “Star Trek” novel, “Before Dishonor,” my first STTNG tale in quite some time. It’s due out in November.

I barely finished before I was off to Wizard Con. Had a great time, both on site and off. Off site I had dinner with Harlan and Susan Ellison, along with a couple of intriguing new acquaintances. On Friday I got together with Bill Mumy and family, whom I haven’t seen in a dog’s age (son Seth has shot up to six feet tall and daughter Liliana, whom some of you may recall from the “Santa Clause” films, continues to look uncannily like her dad.) Saturday night was a Marvel Comics-sponsored dnner gathering where I was seated with Tom Brevoort, Andy Schmidt, Paul Jenkins, Jeph Loeb, Humberto Ramos and Mark Guggenheim (who is, among other things, a writer for “Brothers and Sisters” and convinced me to give that series another shot after the less-than-impressive pilot.)

The convention itself seemed busy but still underattended somehow. Then again, aside from the New York Con, San Diego, and Dragon*Con, “underattended” sums up most of the conventions I’ve attended these days.

PAD

VP Cheney is scolding the Democrats for failure to “support the troops” simply because they’re disinclined to give President Bush an indefinite amount of money for an indefinite amount of time…in other words, because they won’t let Bush do whatever he wants. And if there’s one thing we’ve learned about this president, he HATES it when someone stops him from doing whatever he wants.

The thing is, when I think of supporting the troops, I’m thinking of supporting their right not to be mired in an ill-defined mission that treats their lives as easily disposable commodities. I support their right to keep sucking oxygen. I support their right to an honest government that should admit they were sent over there on a political pretext, to search for weaponry that wasn’t there, and is now operating on fumes in the middle of an ongoing civil war that’s going to be waged whether we’re there or not.

As opposed to Cheney, for whom “suporting the troops” is code for “giving Bush carte blanche.”

I think I’ll take my definition over Cheney’s, thanks.

PAD

The latest issues of two titles I write, both of which had the previous issues sell out.

Whad’ja think?

PAD