Deep Throat Revealed! (so why is it ME who's gagging?)

So after three and a half decades of mystery, the man we've come to know as Deep Throat appears in a doorway, supported by a walker, looking frail enough to expect that death will surely be visiting in the next year or two. Strange to think that the American political landscape turned on the words uttered, the facts given by this grandfatherly-looking guy.

The bare bones facts of the Watergate Affair are bizarre and convoluted. What it boils down to is that people associated closely with the President, perhaps even Nixon himself, ordered a break-in of the Democratic National Headquarters in the Watergate complex, in Washington DC. A night watchman came across the men in the headquarters, and had them arrested.

Enterprising reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward caught wind of it, started connecting the dots, and eventually were able to tie the story credibly to the White House. When it was discovered that Nixon had a taping system in his office, well...without going into too many details, the President's stack of lies began to crumble. The scandalous affair ended in the one and only resignation of a President of the United States, and a series of corrective laws which emerged in its wake.

So the question remains: why am I gagging over the revelation of who Deep Throat is? Because it made me flash back to the details of Watergate. As awesome and tacky as they are, they are nothing--nothing--in comparison to what our current President has done. Think I'm stretching the truth?

--President Bush began a war on a premise that's been since proven false. In this war,
conservative estimates claim 24,000 Iraqis have died, 1700 Americans. (I recall not a single
death caused by the Watergate scandal). You don't cause optional wars. You just don't.
--We've incurred $300,000,000,000 (300 billion) in debt to fight the Iraq war. While
Watergate cost money to prosecute, a buckets-to-0ceans is analogy is about right.
--The world in general thinks we're absolutely nuts to be in Iraq. While they thought we were
nuts during Watergate, they admired that we could uproot a cancerous aspect of our
government without a collapse of it.
--The recent memo found in England is strong evidence that Bush was committed to invade
Iraq 9 months before he ordered it, and states that he was gathering evidence to justify the
war to the American public.
--Former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neil says that Bush was planning to Invade Iraq eight months before 9-11.

Chooose any one of the above items, and it's far worse than Nixon was ever guilty of in Watergate. Far worse. That all five of them could happen under one president is chilling.
And yet the idea that Impeachment could be seriously considered for GW Bush is almost laughable. The man is so entrenched with the powers that be, his party SO in control of the mechanisms of government that even a left-ended guy like me doesn't even seriously consider the possibilty, despite all the fine reasons to impeach, or at very least, pressure him to be the 2nd President to resign. The Democrats lack the power and the Republicans lack the moral will to demand better of the president, or resist the power he wields. This is a far more shameful period of American history than Watergate ever was.

I thought the lesson of Watergate was to create government that earned its people's trust, that behaved ethically, and that admitted its mistakes as it tried to right them. The lesson of Watergate though was quite different: secure absolute power and there will be no Watergate.