Signs and Symbols

As the attentive reader may have noted, it's my view that most of what actually motivates change in our political system is hidden from sight. This tendency has grown stronger and more impervious since WWII and the rise of the national security state. The newspapers and the media present only what is necessary to mold public opinion and actions, national and international conflicts are presented in the same light, while the real struggles go on behind the scenes. Even when the press becomes aware of behind the scenes actions, they refrain from reporting it until the necessary conditions arise (as in Presidential wiretapping).

Seen in that light, I believe we have been non-spectators in a battle for power over the US government, and its policies at home and abroad. VP Cheney, working with a select group of media owners and their lackeys, oil industry figures, bureaucrats, judges, and politicians has for the past six years been working to create a 'deep state', basically unknown to the public, unreported for the most part, and capable of guiding US policy behind the structures of the institutions. Domestic wiretapping has nothing to do with 'terrorists', and everything to do with blackmail, black-ops, and the deep state.

This plan has been opposed by some of those who know about it. The CIA and the State Department, and perhaps even the Department of Justice have shown signs that there are people in those institutions that are using their power to resist this 'deep state' process. They represent, I suspect, the old school of consensus by the elite, hardly less secretive than the Cheneyites to the public, but who still recognize the need for compromise and discussion.

After the complete victory by Cheney in the ISG affair, another chapter in this battle for supremacy is now underway in a courtroom in Washington. Libby's trial is now striking directly at the VP. As Digby noted, the chattering class is chattering:

Norah O'Donnell is asking Andy Card and Leon Panetta if the president is going to have to ask Dick Cheney to resign as a result of what's being alleged at the Libby Trial.

On the other hand, maybe Cheney will ask Bush to resign, or persuade him in another fashion. We may be at the moment when the knives come out.

Digby also says this in another post:

I suspect that when the history is written we will find more and more proof that Vice President Cheney has been running a shadow government from the very beginning and that much of the malfeasance of this era is a result of incompetent and competing power centers vying for supremacy. It begins to explain the unprecedented level of faulty reasoning and epic mistakes coming from the one administration.

Here I disagree to an extent. Certainly in the early days there were people such as Richard Clarke and others who tried to sway Bush away from Cheney. But Rice was and is a nonentity, while Powell lacked to balls to take a stand, so Cheney has been running things his way in the White House. The battle is outside the White House, and it could get bloody very soon, both figuratively and factually. Or, of course, health problems might intervene and make everything wrap up nice and neatly.

In any case, we readers of signs and symbols have our work cut out for us in the upcoming days.