"And the band played on...."

The HMS Dubya sustained even more damage over the weekend.

First,in AttorneyGate, Gonzalez got nailed by a single memo sniper shot. Despite claiming he was not involved in any discussions about the firings of the Gonzo 8, records show that on 11/27/06, Gonzalez was at an hour-long meeting to review the plan to fire the Gonzo 8.

Gonzalez probably has not earned any points by tossing his then-Chief of Staff, Kyle Sampson, under the bus, saying that all the details (of the firing) were left to Sampson. But Sampson is about to get his revenge, as he is scheduled to testify about the firings before the Senate Judiciary Community on Thursday.

The reaction to this latest revelation has been quite pointed, with several GOP senators ( saying Gonzalez should step down.

Second item- maverick GOP Senator Chuck Hegel has uttered the "I" word and taken Dubya out to the woodshed where he beat his ass like a red-headed stepchild.

I'm just going to gank from AP reports and bold the especially juicy bits:

GOP Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a frequent critic of the war, stopped short of calling for Bush's impeachment. But he made clear that some lawmakers viewed that as an option should Bush choose to push ahead despite public sentiment against the war.

"Any president who says, I don't care, or I will not respond to what the people of this country are saying about Iraq or anything else, or I don't care what the Congress does, I am going to proceed - if a president really believes that, then there are - what I was pointing out, there are ways to deal with that," said Hagel, who is considering a 2008 presidential run.

On Sunday, Hagel said he was bothered by Bush's apparent disregard of congressional sentiment on Iraq, such as his decision to send additional troops. He said lawmakers now stood ready to stand up to the president when necessary.

In the April edition of Esquire magazine, Hagel described Bush as someone who doesn't believe he's accountable to anyone. "He's not accountable anymore, which isn't totally true. You can impeach him, and before this is over, you might see calls for his impeachment. I don't know. It depends on how this goes," Hagel told the magazine.

"We have clearly a situation where the president has lost the confidence of the American people in his war effort," Hagel said. "It is now time, going into the fifth year of that effort, for the Congress to step forward and be part of setting some boundaries and some conditions as to our involvement."

"This is not a monarchy," he added, referring to the possibility that some lawmakers may seek impeachment. "There are ways to deal with it. And I would hope the president understands that."


This, Gentle Readers, is some seriously heavy stuff coming from a Senator from his own party.

And Hegel has cut through the bullshit and gone straight to the heart of the matter- that Dubya does not believe he is accountable to anyone, that he truly is the King. Congress hasn't done much to dissuade him, rubber-stamping Dubya's acts in a manner that would have made the Soviet-era Politburo green with envy. Dubya was given free reign and anyone who opposed him or countered him- Richard Clark, Joseph Wilson, etc etc- were destroyed by White House attack dog Karl Rove and his minions in a manner reminiscent of G Gordon Liddy's gang back during Watergate.

Dubya doesn't care about the Congressional elections where voters said they wanted us out of Iraq. No, instead, Dubya gives the electorate a collective "Fuck You" and instead sends more troops.

And we're supposed to get the warm and fuzzies because in Baghdad some market inside a barricade is secure enough for the US's top commander to walk around in during broad daylight. Hell, I guess that means those 3200+ dead servicepeople didn't give their lives in vain.

This is cutting a bit close to the bone, but let's be brutally honest here. This is the lie that we are continuing to be fed by this Administration. And if we're going to play that game, then let's play it out all the way. Do you want your son or your friend's daughter or the kid who used to deliver your paper being killed over this?

Of course Dubya's getting edgy and hostile. It's all on the record that he lied to launch this war and he's got a helluva lot of blood on his hands.

We keep hearing that if we pull out from Iraq, then the terrorists would be emboldened over our loss and if we don't "fight them over there, we'll have to fight them over here."

Again, I call bullshit.

Everyone was convinced that if we left Vietnam, the entire Southeast Asian peninsula would turn Red Commie and we would soon be taken over by the Red Chinese and made a slave state of China.

The sick irony? In order to fund this war, we've had to go up to our necks in foreign debt, held largely by.... drum roll, please..... China!

How's that for loving freedom, selling our future to China?

Then again, nobody in Dubya's administration is all that big on irony, so it's up to us here in BlogWorld to pick up the slack.