The way things ought to be

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consider how any other Administration would have acted and history would have unfolded if the fix hadn’t been in. If the decisions to invade and loot Iraq weren’t already primed and armed and waiting for a trigger.

Any trigger.

Consider what the world would have looked like if we weren’t in the hands of sociopaths and criminals who don’t give a shit what happens to America, but instead, in the care of men who genuinely wanted to do what was best for their country.

In that world where Joe Wilson comes back from abroad to save the Bush Administration from lying in the State of the Union, at the UN, and generally flushing its credibility down the shitter.

Where he would have been quietly thanked and feted. Maybe even decorated.

If the Bush Administration had ever been even slightly interested in the facts or the truth or the good of the country, having been shown to be wrong, and having been spared the embarrassment of butt-scooting (I know how fond some of you are of that phrase :-) that grotesque error all over the planet, Bush would have taken the Lestrade role.

Having made such a big deal of retaining and then listening to the experts he hires, Bush would have been appreciative of a delicate job well done...and he would have won himself an ally instead of making an enemy.

Bush would have told Wilson, “... if you come down tomorrow, there’s not man, from the oldest Cabinet Member to the youngest staffer, who wouldn’t be glad to shake you by the hand.”

Instead, they and their toadies went after his wife like the gangsters that they are. Then they went after him. Then they went after anyone who called them on their thuggish behavior. And the only explanation for this behaviour, now that every other alternative has been eliminated, is that they are desperately covering up a crime. And the magnitude of their desperation tells us that it was a Big One. Probably several, commited by several people, acting in concert.