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Opinion

Don't take White House tricks lightly

David Salinas
Opinion Columnist

On Saturday, Dick Cheney shot a man in the face while hunting a few minutes from my hometown. It was obviously an accident, considering the victim, Harry Whittington, is a close friend and campaign contributor of Cheney's. It also appears the wounds Whittington received were not life threatening, thanks to the type of pellet gun Cheney was using. 

But peculiarly, the public did not know what had happened for almost 24 hours after the accident occurred. Corpus Christi Caller-Times reporter Jaime Powell broke the story only after receiving a tip from the owner of the ranch where Dick Cheney was hunting. When asked if the information would have ever been released had it not been for the Caller-Times, Cheney spokesperson Lea Anne McBride said, "I'm not going to speculate." 

So the vice president of the United States shoots a man in the neck, which sends him to the hospital, and the public isn't supposed to know about it? In a shooting, regardless of whether it was an accident or not, there is usually a police report. Is Dick Cheney allowed to sidestep that, too? 

Dick Cheney's hunting mishap is just the latest example of the Bush administration's hypocrisy toward openness: The public has to forego privacy in the name of "security" while George Bush and Dick Cheney can forego public accountability in the name of politics. 

As the White House increasingly invades the personal lives of Americans through wiretappings and probes on credit card statements and online search engines, they have become evasive on matters that might embarrass the president. 

This administration has refused to release photos of George Bush and Jack Abramoff, saying they are irrelevant and don't prove a relationship between the two. However, according to Abramoff, a man who personally gave the 2004 Bush campaign $100,000, he met with the president more than a dozen times. 

"The guy saw me in almost a dozen settings and joked with me about a bunch of things, including details of my kids. Perhaps he has forgotten everything, who knows," Abramoff told the Washingtonian Magazine. 

The New York Times recently published a photo of Abramoff in the background during a meeting between Bush, congressmen and a tribal chief. Besides photographs, the Bush administration, according to CNN, has "has refused to reveal, when asked by reporters, who at the White House has met with Abramoff and under what circumstances." 

Jack Abramoff has already pleaded guilty to charges of corruption and fraud, and the ongoing investigation that could bring down others in Washington is being hampered by the White House for no other reason than to keep the president's approval ratings from falling even further. This isn't a new tactic.

On Sunday, Sens. Jack Reed, D-R.I., and George Allen, R-Va., both said that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald should investigate the vice president in the CIA leak case if they leaked classified information. In a letter from Scooter Libby's lawyer to Fitzgerald, he says, " … it is our understanding that Mr. Libby testified that he was authorized to disclose information about the NIE (National Intelligence Estimate) to the press by his superiors." "His superiors" means Dick Cheney, and if it were not him, the only other "superiors" it could be were George Bush or Karl Rove. 

But the reason Libby's lawyers are mentioning this is because they would want classified information to be part of the trial. Knowing Cheney would not allow it, they would force the judge to drop the case on lack of evidence, which would "violate Libby's right of due process" -- another investigation stymied by the stonewalling and cover-ups of the Bush White House.

If this information were important to national security, why allow Libby to leak it in the first place, as his defense has already admitted? The problem isn't national security -- it's politics. The White House had no problem talking about the foiled terror plot to attack to the U.S. Bank Tower in Los Angeles. That information put them in a positive light, so it was OK to disclose.

Far too often, the Bush White House has gone to the well of trust with Americans, getting the benefit of the doubt on most issues concerning the well-being of our country. The Bush apologists argue that because we're alive right now, he must be doing something right. 

But he was in charge on 9/11; he was in charge when no weapons of mass destruction were found; he was in charge when the postwar plan failed. American soldiers got bogged down and are to this day in Iraq; he was in charge during the lethargic response to Hurricane Katrina. 

Bush has seen many Americans die under his watch. This administration has done absolutely nothing to earn the trust of this nation, and their elusiveness must be met with a great deal of skepticism.

Salinas, an opinion columnist for The Daily Cougar, 
can be reached at davidcsalinas@yahoo.com.