Mind the Gaps

The US Justice Department scandal is now turning on a sixteen-day gap in the White House and DOJ emails that have been released. Gaps are one of the things that ultimately chased Nixon from office - in his case those in the transcripts that he released to Congress. Nixon left when he had to turn over the entire tapes under order of the Supreme Court.

The questions that are being obscured by that gap sound an awful lot like "What did the President know, and when did he know it?" Plus ca change...

Lying Liars

Juan Cole has an excellent post on the Pentagon's attempts to cherry-pick intelligence in order to foment war fever. In it he disassembles the lies told by Douglas Feith in a CNN interview. Reading the whole thing is informative, but here's the money quote:

Former No. 3 at the Pentagon under Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Douglas Feith, has been found guilty by the Inspector General of "inappropriate" behavior in setting up a rogue unit inside the Pentagon to cherry pick intelligence so as to get up a war. Of course, the Inspector General was careful to say, this treasonous activity was not "illegal." Lying about sex is illegal. Lying the country into a war that kills or wounds 25,000 US troops is just "inappropriate."

This group of charlatans is probably not going to get taken down like the Nixon administration was, and yet the more that is revealed about how the operate the more I think they are going to leave a taste of Watergate cynicism in our mouths.