Oh good…we get John Negroponte for our National Intelligence Director.  A man who claims he couldn’t even detect death squads that were being conducted under his nose, being run by a man with whom he had daily contact.

     Nobody argues with the undeniable fact he has been very successful in everything he has ever done.  Everyone agrees he was very effective in carrying out the Reagan Administrations goals in Honduras.  Everyone agrees that he will do whatever it takes to get things whirring along exactly the way the Bush administration wants them to.

     Yes, he’s polished, poised, brilliant, urbane.  Yes, he was raised abroad and has a lifetime of international experience and a real flair for diplomacy.  Yes, his wife is an international humanitarian and he has a blue-blood pedigree a mile long.  And yes, it’s true that he is capable of seeing things more in shades of grey than in black and white, and understands that what is right in one situation might not be right in another…and we all know that those things are only evil, morally corrupt, and “flip-floppy” if you are running for President.

     There’s no question that Negroponte has, and will continue to, get things done.  He was a favorite of Henry Kissenger, the ultimate pragmatist…the most hardened student of real politic that we’ve had in this country.  Negroponte gets results, and often leaves situations better than they were when he came into them.

     And there’s something to be said for that.  There really is.  There are times when the ends seem so good that the quickest, dirtiest means seem appropriate.  You can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs…right?  I mean, sure it’s sad, but then you move on.  You bury the shells and have breakfast.

     And if one of those broken shells is the body of a Priest from Iowa, and if admitting that the government you are supposed to be diplomatic with were the ones that killed him is going to derail what your bosses want to accomplish for your country…you do the patriotic thing.

     You lie to the senator investigating the priest’s disappearance, you lie to the part of the government that doesn’t sign your paycheck, you lie to the press, and you lie to the families of close to 200 victims, and you get on with your job.

     Death squads?  Drugs? Guns?  Hostages?  What are you talking about?

     Wake up America!  I realize that Michael Jackson and David Hasselhof started their brilliant careers in the Reagan Era.  I realize that we had to listen to Limozeen and Skid Row and the Beastie Boys and watch Different Strokes…

     …but we can’t afford to be so traumatized that we block out the events of an entire decade.

     If you want to be “protected” by people who think you have no right to know what decisions they are making on your behalf, who think they have no accountability to you for their actions as long as they get results…or can redefine “results” to match what they got…who act in your name and with your authority without any estimation of your ability to understand…then this is your administration.

     I have to admit, I wondered why Bush wanted to seal all Presidential records from the Reagan administration onward.  I thought “What’s up with that, its ancient history.  All it would do is protect Reagan’s image, and that’s not so important that it’s worth risking credibility on.”

     Silly me.  The Press that was all over Bill Clinton for putting up a traffic blockade in front of the White House “in the dead of night”…has said nothing…NOTHING about sealed presidential papers since a blurb on CNN in early 2001, about how he issued an executive order to do that, and it was being challenged in court….and no more has been said about it since.

     There IS no accountability anymore.  There is no risk to credibility in anything they do…at least not from the Main Stream Media.

     And if they want to bring back all of Reagan’s trusty old pals who can still hold a pen and get things done…they can’t risk some wildcatter getting into the presidential papers and dredging up all of that old inconvenient stuff from the ‘80’s…can they?

     Gee…if only there were something they could do about all the people who lost family and friends and constituents in Honduras.  If only there were SOME way to keep them quiet.  Don’t worry, I’m sure Gonzales will come up with a perfectly “legal” way of accomplishing that.  In the meantime…we’ll just have Ann Coulter and Bill O’Reilly call them quacks and terrorists, and anyone official can just keep saying; ”Death Squads? Guns? Drugs? Hostages?  What are you talking about?”