Another Angle on Cheney's Culpability

Like Picasso, I am trying to shift points of view to more realistically render the overall phenomenon we are all trying to observe while impatiently waiting for the hammer to fall on the Chimpie Outlaw Cabal. Over at Alternet author Stephen Pizzo guides us through another passage through the crimes at the White House in the runup to war. Along with the great insights, Mr. Pizzo also drops one of the best similes I've read in a while, this time in regard to Patrick Fitzgerald's relentless pursuit of his quarry.

Letting a fellow like that loose on the Bush administration is like turning a bloodhound free in sausage factory -- his nose must have begun twitching the moment he arrived.

So the question is not "if" he found anything, but how much he found. Because when you find a fresh sausage there's almost always another one connected to it -- and another, and another. In this case the first sausage in that string is not the Valerie Plame affair, but war -- specially, how the administration justified invading another nation.

I love that--"like turning a bloodhound free in a sausage factory." As the pal of my two dogs, one of whom is part hound, I have a vivid picture of the excitement with which Mr. Fitzgerald must be pursuing the bad guys.

Mr. Pizzo also gives an excellent analogy as to the technique by which the cabal will be taken down.

First, understand that Dick Cheney was the maestro of that crime. Libby was his Sammy "The Bull" Gravano, the guy who got his hands dirty doing the boss's work. When tough-guy Sammy faced years in prison he rolled over on boss John Gotti. Sammy looked his old boss right in the eye in court as he dropped dime after dime after dime on him. Sammy got out of prison. Gotti died, alone and ranting, in a federal prison hospital.

That's why when Cheney looks at his old pal Scooter these days, he must shudder. Gone are he "atta boy" backslaps, between boss and sidekick. Gone are the "nod, nod, wink, winks," between two soul mates who think so much alike they seldom have to explain. Now when Cheney looks at Scooter he sees a guy who knows where all the bodies are buried -- because he helped bury them. When Scooter looks at Cheney he must see a guy who could spend his golden years luxuriating in his Jackson Hole mansion, while he, Scooter, spends his retirement filing appeals from a cell at Camp Beefcake -- where a nickname like "Scooter" would be a real liability.

So, it must be awkward between the two old friends these days.

If I learned anything about crooks from my years of covering such folk, it's this - good crooks always take out insurance. In the world of white collar crooks, insurance amounts to incriminating evidence - secretly tapped conversations with co-conspirators, copies of documents, notes and emails. The message is, "don't sell me up the river because I have the goods on you too."

So now we have even greater suspense as we await our Fitzmas. What indictments will come down from the Grand Jury? Will Fitz flip Libby and finally get Cheney dragged kicking and screaming from his quarters at the former house of the Superintendent of the Naval Observatory. At last, perhaps, the crooked smirk will become a scar of terror across his face, eyes wide with fear when he realizes that he is going to a place where he will be told when to eat, when to sleep, when to pray, and when to shit.

And then after the fatal heart attack, he'll burn in hell for all eternity. Beautiful.