In an act of rare personal honor, one of those "loyal Bushies" has risen above political cowardice and resigned rather than humiliate his boss. Randall Tobias quit as head of the Agency for International Development after being exposed as an "escort service" customer.
Compared to gross betrayal of oaths by others in the Bush administration, Tobias' sin amounts to stupidity, not a threat to the U.S. Constitution or civil liberties.
Meanwhile, other "loyal Bushies," with no such shame, hang on. It's been three years since a claque of "officers and gentlemen," including four generals, scripted lies to cover up the friendly fire death of NFL star-turned-Army Ranger Pat Tillman in Afghanistan and exploit him as a "hero" to distract Americans from the war gone bad. The officers still collect pay and points toward five-figure pensions rather than resign in shame. But why should they? Their Pentagon pals are in no rush either to punish them.
The moral character of other generals is also being questioned in a gutsy treatise in the Armed Forces Journal by Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, an Iraq war combat veteran. He compares command quality in Iraq to Vietnam and warns of "intellectual and moral failures" in the U.S. high command that tend to rubberstamp President Bush.
Another "loyal Bushie" empty of any character is Paul Wolfowitz, the Pentagon's onetime No. 2 man and a principal architect of the Iraq catastrophe. He's facing ouster as president of the World Bank, where he was installed by President Bush as reward for his Pentagon incompetence. Wolfowitz is accused of slathering a $60,000 pay raise to $193,000 on his girlfriend. Rather than resign in honor, Wolfowitz fights to remain, whimpering he's misunderstood.
As for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, no need to restate well-known crimes against Americans by this bottom crawler with the ethics of a mob lawyer, who hocked his soul for the right to be George Bush's hit man on the U.S. Constitution.
The newest of the "loyal Bushies" is ex-CIA director George Tenet, who claims in his new book, "At The Center of The Storm," that he was used to create fraudulent grounds for war.
Tenet squawks too late. He stuck around with his mouth shut to collect a Medal of Freedom from Bush and a $4 million book advance before finally claiming foul deeds in the presidency.
Tenet is no profile in courage. He's a sniveling, whining, spineless coward who placed a medal and a few million bucks above honor and country, rather than warn Americans of vile misconduct in high places.
