After Plame-Gate

It's probable that Fitzgerald will hand down indictments in the Plame-gate affair next week. It is also highly probable that Bush will pardon anyone close to him, even at the risk of tarnishing what he believes to be his legacy and losing whatever "political capital" he things he might have left less than a year into his second term, simply because he is loyal, to a fault, and stupid beyond belief.

I have been watching this drama unfold for more than two years, ever since Joe Wilson first appeared on Democracy Now! I actually had my Google homepage set to send me e-mail alerts with anything that had Valerie Plame's name in it and nothing would pop up for months at a time. It is only now that the media has taken an interest -- after one journalist was sent to jail and another banned from CNN for swearing -- that this case has caught the American imagination.

So the glee that will come with whatever is revealed next week in the indictments (and over the coming months, should prosecutions move forward) is, in fact, a hollow and Pyrrhic victory, at best. We are still at war (with the world), our children are still dying, and we're still killing thousands of innocents around the world with our policies and hatreds and greed and xenophobia.

And none of this will address the questions still open, some of which I list below, in no particular order:

What horrific type of torture is happening on the Island of Diego Garcia that we're not supposed to know about?

Is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi still alive or has he become a convenient composite cartoon for anything that goes wrong in Iraq?

Did anyone ever identify the "John Israel" mentioned in the Taguba Report or is he simply another composite contractor who happens to speak both Arabic and English? Am I the only one for whom alarm bells ring at his name -- the Israeli equivalent of John Doe or the Arabic equivalent of M. Fulaan? And how many of those non-American composite "contractors" are still working as translators and/or interrogators?

Just how many "top lieutenants" and "seconds in command" to al-Zarqawi and bin Ladin can we kill or capture before we get to the lower echelons and is anyone really fooled by this rhetoric?

Whatever happened to the investigation into why the U.S. bombed a wedding in the western desert of Iraq?

Whose idea was it to have Iraqis vote during the Holy Month of Ramadan and to ban cars during the voting so that everyone had to walk to the polls during daylight hours when they were unable to eat, drink, or even brush their teeth?

Where are the wives and families of the Chalabis and Alawis and Jafaris and all the fat cats who sit in the relative safety of the American controlled Green Zone? Do they live in Baghdad and go shopping and hang their laundry out on the balconies when there's water and electricity to even attempt to do laundry and there are no bombs falling out of the Baghdad sky? Or are they ensconced safely in Bahrain or Qatar or London? Shouldn't having one's family in country be a requirement for candidacy?

When did the media and talking heads realize that Mahmoud Abbas aka Abu Mazen was not the same as "Abu Abbas" and why did they persist on this Freudian slip (which was never challenged) throughout his first stint as Prime Minister under Arafat?

Whose idea was it to put Karen Hughes in charge of diplomacy in the Muslim world and to send her out on a meet and greet during Ramadan? And couldn't she at least taken a course in basic Arabic (or cultural sensitivity) before leaving? Just how many diplomats have we trained in Arabic over the last four years? It's Arabic, guys -- not rocket science.

And whatever happened to the idea of having Laura Bush head up a task force to reduce gang activity among American youth? That's been just about as effective as No Child Left Behind (which in Belenistan means No Child Left in School since abstinence only is taught in our sex ed classes and childbirth is the major industry here in central New Mexico).

Just a few thoughts on a Saturday -- a no news day.