Everyone in Washington is talking about the recent indictment of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby in connection with the CIA leak case and its implications for President Bush’s chief adviser, Karl Rove, who is still under investigation. The scandal seems to have left no set of hands unsullied and may reach into the highest levels of U.S. government—namely the office of Vice President Dick Cheney.
True, no one has been convicted yet, but I’m looking past that. Let’s talk sentencing.
The major players involved in this case are charged with lying, scheming, and conspiring to leak the name of a covert CIA agent as a means of punishing critics of the administration’s run-up to the Iraq War. These people were so intent on campaigning for the war effort that they broke federal law to discredit the experts that told them they might be on the wrong track.
So, I think it’s only fair that anyone connected with this scandal be sentenced to promote American ideals in the one liberal stronghold where U.S. troop support seems the weakest: Fallujah.
Think about it. Karl Rove tumbling his pudgy flesh-bag frame through the alleys of Fallujah, draped in a muumuu that reads “I Lied About The Iraq War And All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt.” He’d also have to wear a NASCAR hat, pass out free pork rinds to starving homeless children, and display two miniature American flags stapled to his temples. We’ll stick Rove in Fallujah, Libby in Sadr City, and force Cheney to jog the winding mountain trails of the Iraqi-Syrian border until his left ventricle explodes.
As tempting as this fantasy is, it still wouldn’t be enough. These are people who stopped at nothing to push an agenda on the American people using the fearful patriotic climate of post-9/11 U.S. politics like they were selling snake oil to wrinkled rubes at a Wyoming truck stop.
What they need and deserve is public humiliation on American television. We could put them on Taradise. They could be the advance men who go out and find dim-witted college students to grope Tara Reid as she vomits in the bathroom of a Walgreens or beats up small children, or whatever goes on in her crazy world.
It’s important to remember that these are the people that promised us they would restore the honor and dignity of the White House after the sordid dealings of President Clinton’s Monica Lewinsky scandal.
Clinton lied about getting a hummer from a White House intern.
The web of lies that is now being exposed led to the duping of a crippled nation and the deaths of over 2,000 American troops—not to mention the tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens that have perished since the conflict began. There simply is no comparison to past scandals, and no possible punishment, not even impeachment, would seem able to erase the damage these people have caused.
Wait, I’ve got it! Grave duty. This administration was all too happy to send young men and women to die for a dubious political theory—even though few of them had ever seen combat themselves. So, let’s give them front row seats to the consequences of military combat.
Let’s force everyone who is convicted in this scandal to dig the graves for soldiers who died defending their country. It could go all winter.
Who wouldn’t tune in to see old, white power-hungry men fumbling in the harsh cold winter winds, waist-deep in a newly-formed grave, their fat fingers cracking every time the shovel hits a stone?
We could call it Project for a New American Cemetery, weeknights on Fox, 8 p.m. EST.
Hey, the punishment should fit the crime.
