Cheney, Libby, Bush reunion and a "Service Before Self" award. Priceless.

October 23, 2:06 PMDC Ethical Issues ExaminerLaura Harrison McBride

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 Cheney giving "Service Before Self" Award(AP  Hamburg)

Appended to a Jason Linkins article on HuffPo about the event at which Dick “Vietnam Draft Dodger” Cheney scolded Mr. Obama for supposedly “dithering” about keeping American safe was this gift:

“Fun fact! Dick Cheney made his remarks at some sort of ‘Bush administration reunion’ at Union Station last night. There, he received the super-prestigious ‘Keeper of the Flame’ award and watched as beloved Bush administration felon Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby was honored with the ‘Service Before Self’ award. Then, everyone had to board the Acela back to reality.”

There are so many treats in this for someone examining ethical issues in Washington, DC, it’s hard to know where to begin.

A “Bush Administration Reunion” is one possibility, although it may be more a semantic problem than an ethical one. Most of us weren’t aware that the Bush Administration had disbanded, since its prime miscreants are very busy covering the Internet, TV screens and printed pages while they cover their behinds. Since the administration seems to think it is some shadow government, it hasn’t really disbanded. So how could it have a reunion?

Of course, Linkins was scrubbing epithelial cells from between his upper and lower jaws when he made the remark about the “super-prestigious ‘Keeper of the Flame”’ award. No ethical quandary there.

But what about “beloved Bush administration felon Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby.” Is it wrong to call someone a felon? If Libby were not in fact a felon, having been adjudged so in a court of law, it would be both unethical and stupid, since Linkins could be sued. But Lewis is, verifiably, a felon. The only ethical lapse here is implied: why aren’t we yet able to put that descriptive term in front of the names Bush and Cheney?

As for the ‘Service Before Self’ award, it leaves one weak. It implies that there is something altruistic about what this craven crew has done, and which one of their gutless members has managed to do better than most. One can only really come to one conclusion; Libby got the award because he took the fall for all the other self-serving thugs in the Bush administration, so that he, and he alone (to date) has the term felon hanging around his obsequious little neck.

And they lived happily ever after. Oops. I meant they boarded “the Acela back to reality.”
The Acela is a nice train, and it does get one back and forth between DC and NYC PDQ. So is reality NYC? For this crowd, I guess so. That’s where they’ve got their money gnomes making off with the nation’s treasure, and nothing is more real to Draft Dodger Dick and his coterie of cowards than money.