This past week brought to light the two latest installments in the long-running comedy of errors that is this Administration, two more nuggets of truth for the ever-burgeoning stockpile of evidence in the case prosecuting their relentless incompetence. The first is the videotape obtained by the AP of a pre-Katrina briefing where President Bush is told about the very real threat -- or "very, very grave concern," to quote one of the officials on the tape -- of the levees being breached in New Orleans once the hurricane hit. The tape, which features presentations and discussions among several federal and state officials, as well as the President, is noteworthy for several reasons.

One, it shows the President as a true man of action, as engaged and inquisitive a leader as we've been taught to expect. During the entire briefing, one that included representatives from DHS, FEMA, and other major agencies and a category five hurricane bearing down on the coast, the President asked zero questions. None. For a topic as complicated and a situation as dire as this was anticipated (and explained) to be, to have nothing to say -- nothing -- is inexcusable. I have questions when I look at the value menu at Wendy's. You're telling me the President of the United States has nothing come to mind -- nothing he'd like to add to, have clarified, hell, have translated into Spanish or just repeated -- when sitting through a briefing that details how one of the largest hurricanes in history is going to slam into a major metropolitan city? My conservative friends must be right -- he is smarter than I give him credit for.

Second, and most importantly, the tape shows that while the Administration's post-disaster activity implies an utter lack of understanding of how bad things were going to be, they were told repeatedly, in this briefing and others immediately after, precisely how damaging a storm Katrina would be. There was no hemming or hawing about it. Talk of it being a CAT5 storm was abundant -- in "the top 10 or 15 [of all-time] when all is said and done," according to the National Hurricane Center's Max Mayfield in a briefing the following day -- worries about the ability of the city and state to effectively respond to were aired, even "Heck of a Job" Brownie, the former-FEMA head (who looks surprisingly good on the tape -- yet another reason to take notice -- and more like a scapegoat as time goes on), got into the act, fretting about the safety of the Superdome as a place of refuge due to its thin roof and its placement below sea level.

Yet what is of primary importance here is the threat to the levees the President heard I mentioned earlier. This little occurrence, not surprisingly, contradicts earlier statements by the President on ABC News, only days after the warnings had proved valid, that no one could have expected such a thing to occur. Now this little fudging of the truth might be forgiveable if we hadn't heard it before, hadn't allowed six or seven other instances to slide by on similar arguments, but as we've seen far too many times now, if we give this Administration an inch, they're going to take five miles.

Consider a few of the song's previous incarnations -- 9/11. "Nobody could have possibly known bin Laden was trying to attack the US." (See the Presidential Daily Briefing section from Aug. 6, 2001 titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US" for one contradicting instance.)

Iraq's insurgency and path towards possible civil war. "Nobody could have possibly known that we wouldn't be greeted as liberators and would be fighting an intensifying local resistance, compounded by our mere presence." (See the recent Knight-Ridder report that the newly declassified 2003 National Intelligence Estimate "concluded that the insurgency was fueled by local conditions - not foreign terrorists- and drew strength from deep grievances, including the presence of U.S. troops," for one rebuttal.) 

Saddam's lack of WMD. The absent connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam, between 9/11 and Iraq. The false assertions Iraq bought yellowcake from Niger. The denials that the main figures of the Administration started planning to invade Iraq before they even took power in 2000. That a system condoning, even encouraging, torture existed in Iraq or Guantanamo and all the other offenses I mentioned in last week's column and over the past two years. "How could we possibly have known they were untrue?"

This Administration has been caught in lie after lie -- or misstatement after misstatement if you still, for some reason, find yourself deferent to the esteem and honor the offices our elected officials hold should imply and unable to call a spade a spade --  and there have been no serious ramifications.

When does it stop, when does it change, and when do we finally demand it do so?

Time after time it has been shown that the members of this Administration had access to crucial information -- information they many times denied even having -- that should have significantly altered the decisions they ultimately made. They have consistently known what they should have, what in hindsight (or any logical, halfway intelligent digestion of the data) should have raised serious concerns or alerts, but didn't because they either didn't listen or didn't think important enough to warrant acting against their narrow self-interests. Serious debate and discussion of the facts in this Administration has become as passe as derby hats and brooches because to doubt the Infinite Ruler is to brand yourself as unpatriotic, unintelligent, and incorrect. (Not entirely surprising for a President who "equates disagreement with disloyalty," as Paul Krugman notes in his Friday Times column.) 

And this reality leads, as Krugman writes, to "our country...being run by people who assume that things will turn out the way they want. And if someone warns of problems, they shoot the messenger." (Wonder what Whittington was trying to tell the Vice President a few weeks back?)

He continues,

"Some commentators speak of the series of disasters now afflicting the Bush administration -- there seems to be a new one every week -- as if it were just a string of bad luck. But it isn't. If good luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity, bad luck is what happens when lack of preparation meets a challenge. And our leaders, who think they can govern through a mix of wishful thinking and intimidation, are never, ever prepared."

Absolutely right, but what do we do about it? Short of sitting on your hands and biding your time until the next national election in 2008, not much. Unless, that is, you consider much (or any) of what has transpired the past six years to be illegal -- unconstitutional -- and therefore an impeachable offense. That's the mindset of a growing number of people these days -- with nearly 70 percent of the country disapproving of the President, there's far more than there were even six months ago -- among them Representative John Conyers (D-MI) who has initiated House Resolution 635, a case for the President's impeachment on the grounds of fraud for his handling of the runup to the war in Iraq.

Detailed in Lewis Lapham's blistering account in the latest Harper's (an excerpt of which can be found here), you start to seriously consider it as an option when you consider the scope and degree of the offenses. Limiting his attack just to the topic of Iraq, Conyers and his staff on the Judiciary Committee created a monster of a case against the President that's as persuasive as it is detailed -- it's nearly 200 pages long and has over 1,000 footnotes, the contents of which can be found here. 

Besides laying out a damning account of the range of trangressions committed by the President and his men -- in the two-year span between March 2002 and March 2004, the report found that "various high-ranking administration officials made 237 false or misleading statements (55 of them from President Bush himself) connecting Saddam to Al Qaeda, exaggerating Iraq's biological and chemical weapons capabilities, [and] misprepresenting Iraq's nuclear activities" -- Conyers and Co. level some weighty criticisms, as well.

"In brief, we have found that there is substantial evidence the President, the Vice President and other high ranking members of the Bush Administration misled Congress and the American people regarding the decision to go to war with Iraq; misstated and manipulated intelligence information regarding the justification for such war; countenanced torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and other legal violations in Iraq; and permitted inappropriate retaliation against critics of their Administration."

With this and the weight of the report's mountain of evidence behind it -- not to mention the other aforementioned offenses, not the least of which is the NSA wiretapping and its dubious legality -- maybe it's not so far-fetched to begin calling for impeachment. As Lapham admits, "Before reading the report, I wouldn't have expected to find myself thinking that such a course of action was either likely or possible; after reading the report, I don't know why we would run the risk of not impeaching the man."

Lapham continues:

"We have before us in the White House a thief who steals the country's good name and reputation for his private interest and personal use; a liar who seeks to instill in the American people a state of fear; a televangelist who engages the United States in a never-ending crusade against all the world's evil, a wastrel who squanders a vast sum of the nation's wealth on what turns out to be a recruiting drive certain to multiply the host of our enemies. In a word, a criminal -- known to be armed and shown to be dangerous."

This, in contrast to the far less meaningful offenses we tied Clinton to the rack for. (A man "whose penis was known to be aimless and shown to be harmless," in the words of Lapham.)

And while growing numbers of people may indeed support a move like Conyers', especially in light of the recent NSA revelations, they find "no strong voice of dissent [in the news media]," as Lapham states, and "in the Democratic Party no concerted effort to form a coherent opposition." Which means the onus of action falls squarely on the shoulders of Congress, a place Lapham argues is exactly where our country's freedoms should ultimately be protected.

Conyers agrees, in the report:

"While the scope of this Report is largely limited to Iraq, it also holds lessons for our Nation at a time of entrenched one-party rule and abuse of power in Washington. If the present Administration is willing to misstate the facts in order to achieve its political objectives in Iraq, and Congress is unwilling to confront or challenge their hegemony, many of our cherished democratic principles are in jeopardy. This is true not only with respect to the Iraq War, but also in regard to other areas of foreign policy, privacy and civil liberties, and matters of economic and social justice.

It is tragic that our Nation has invaded another sovereign nation because 'the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy,' as stated in the Downing Street Minutes. It is equally tragic that the Bush Administration and the Republican Congress have been unwilling to examine these facts or take action to prevent this scenario from occurring again. Since they appear unwilling to act, it is incumbent on individual Members of Congress as well as the American public to act to protect our constitutional form of government."

Because, as Lapham quotes at the start of his article, "A country is not only what it does -- it is also what it puts up with, what it tolerates."

It's time to decide what type of country we want to be now, and what, exactly, we are willing to tolerate. Until next time, my friends...