And so this is Fitzmas, and what have you done?

So … the first indictment against a member of the Bush administration came on Friday. This one was against I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, Dick Cheney’s chief of staff (until recently, at least) regarding the illegal leaking of the identity of a covert CIA agent in retaliation for her husband’s public opposition to the Iraq War.

I’ve been following this story for the past two years. Like many other progressives, I’ve anticipated these charges with eagerness, almost glee. (Fellow progressive politics addicts have been speculating about the timing of Fitzmas for weeks [Patrick Fitzgerald is the special prosecutor assigned to investigate the leak and prosecute those responsible.])

And now … I feel strangely flat about the whole thing. It could very well be the beginning of the end of the Bush administration as we know it. (And wouldn’t that be a good thing for everybody?) And yet … Even if the whole lot of them were thrown in the slammer today, there are still over 2000 American servicemen killed in Iraq.

The posthumous Purple Heart rested near the folded American flag on the modest dining-room table of his parents' home in Cleveland. Edward (Augie) Schroeder, a Boy Scout turned Marine, was killed along with 13 other soldiers on their fifth trip into Al Hadithah, Iraq, to clean out insurgents. Their fifth trip. "When you do something over and over again expecting a different result," Augie's grieving father, Paul, told me, "that is the definition of insanity." As the death toll of American soldiers in Iraq reached 2,000 last week, Paul Schroeder concluded that the military had not sent enough troops to Iraq to do the job properly and that the president was incompetent: "My son's life was thrown away, his death was a waste." Then, noting that he shared a birthday with his boy, he broke down and said he would not be able to celebrate his own birthday anymore.

There have been an estimated 26000 – 30000 innocent Iraqi civilians killed in this misadventure. A fascinating city of priceless antiquity has been trashed and its educated, dignified people now held hostage to hoodlums and terrorists. (Don’t get me wrong – Saddam was no prince, but I can’t believe that most people there feel their lives have improved since he was deposed.)

And then there are so many other casualties of this administration. The city of New Orleans. People needlessly dead due to the incompetence of FEMA (run by a Bush crony). Attrition of skilled public servants from every federal agency (CIA, FBI, EPA, etc.) The environment has been shafted at every turn. America fiddled while North Korea worked on building nuclear bombs. And it goes on and on and on …

I just wish the damn fools had been competent and interested in governing in everyone’s best interest in the first place.