Fisher's Scarlet Letters

Tenet sure doesn't know, and he heads the biggest intelligence apparatus in the world, the CIA. The British don't know either. Blair isn't sipping soothing cups of Old Grey --- indeed hell is loose even after Lord Hutton's inquiry into the David Kelly-Andrew Gilligan-Alistair Campbell "sexing up" debacle fell down hard on the BBC's editorial management. But Lord Hutton's conclusions are not enough: Michael Howard (the opposition leader in the House of Commons) is digging for the premiership, spinning every single word of the report to his advantage. He's out to get Blair and he's not kidding. With the recent close vote on Blair's higher education reform, the face of "New Labor" sure isn't smiling.

Bush isn't so happy either. With Tenet dropping the hot potato on his lap, he now has to come up with something, and fast. He's appointed a panel to conduct an inquiry into the whole thing, like that's going to help. We all know he was out to get Saddam --- call it a family grudge --- but there's no justice in politics. Bill Clinton "almost" had sex --- depending on how you want to define it --- and he was on the brink of impeachment. Bush sent legions of soldiers to an uncertain fate without proof and he wants to be portrayed as a hero. Nope, there's no justice in politics....

In the meantime, Michael Moore's email box is swamped with somber accounts of privates and corporals, the sons and daughters of the USA, who can't even dream of going back home with all the car bombs going off in Iraq. And they are not stupid, they know their purpose is to protect the pumping of dollars into Bush's petrogovernment. And with politics heating up, with Democrats steaming in their primaries, Bush will not back down. He'll be as stubborn as ever. Kerry and Edwards (after the whole Dean shouting sham) are making credible appeals for a shift in US foreign policy. But let's be realistic: neither candidate, if he reaches the presidency, is going to bail out on Iraq. Right now that would be a suicide of Carter-ian proportions. If the US backs down from Iraq or from Afghanistan, their governments would surely crash amidst the violent rattling of AK-47's. The United States stands in the middle of a predicament ---one of imperial magnitude.

But what of the WMDs? Where the heck are they? Are they stashed with bin Laden in some forlorn and remote corner of the universe?

The military is sure lost in space. Perhaps all the hype about the little rovers on Mars is due to NASA's better chance of finding Osama in a crater, sleeping soundly in a bed carefully knit out of anthrax and smallpox. Down here, in our sick sad world of perpetual uncertainty and neo-con aberrant leadership, the probabilities of finding the bearded scapegoat of the post-9/11 economic slowdown are slim to none.

Bush must be furious. Of the Bush - Blair - Aznar coalition of the willing, the only one seeming to have a good time is the latter: his scandals at least are sexual in nature. Bush indeed must be scared out of his Texan wits now that Kerry is the pretty boy of the polls.

George W. must be dreading to leave his legacy in history books as a jeopardy question that might sound like: What president used 9/11 as PR to justify every single of his misdeeds? Kind of harsh, don't you agree?

But hell, there's no justice in history either. And sometimes that's good, for better or for worse.

E. Arthur Fisher is a Panamanian writer, author of three books; his most recent work, "Diario en Verso" is a poetry collection. You can read his regular column "Scarlet Letters" twice each month at The Panama News Online (www.thepanamanews.com).

Also in this section:
Castro, Omar Torrijos and repression
Greater Caribbean This Week
Fisher, Scarlet Letters
Gutman, The Democratic field
Jackson, Panama's minor political parties
Kerry, Ending special interest rule
Arango, Remarks at the start of a campaign

opinion

Where's WMDaldo?