In part one, I discover dormant political material from hell.

Do Something!

The voice on the other end of the phone is emphatic, "Why don't you Democrats DO SOMETHING! I'm a World War II vet and I think you're going to raise taxes."

He sounds like my father who died a few years ago. He was a World War II vet as well - Iwo Jima and the Pacific theatre. He never, ever spoke about the war. Not once in memory. But I saw the military books he hid away in a basement room on a higher shelf. I shouldn't have opened them.

Pages were filled with piles of dead bodies. I learned a lot about war in those pages. What can anyone talk about. How do you explain, justify, or account for what happens in war. There's nothing to say. I don't want to talk about it either.

My dad, like his fellow brothers and sisters came home from war and created the most successful, progressive, Democratic country on earth. A thriving middle class economic engine fueled employment, health, and social services unparalleled anywhere in a country this size. Today, they've been brainwashed to turn their backs on their own success. American Dream? What American Dream?

"We're not going to raise your taxes."

"Look I HATE THESE PEOPLE. I don't like what Bush is doing either. But you Democrats don't do anything about it! Why don't you DO SOMETHING!"

"We're trying, sir. We're all trying. Give Joe the benefit of your doubt. Thanks."

Later, I click on the youtube video smearing Courtney. There's that pile of bodies again. I think of the indignity of dying like that, naked, anonymous, humiliated - no final prayer. Whoever CT-CIA is, they have no idea how gruesome or outrageous the use of these pictures is. They have to come down. The voice of the dead would scream out to anyone, "How dare you use this shame for personal gain."

As Harry Truman once said, "The only thing new is the history we haven't yet read."  This aphorism is particularly apt in the wake of the Scooter Libby grand jury indictment and ongoing investigation into the Valerie Plame leak.

Turn back the clock to 1973 and observe the strategy at the Nixon White House during the ongoing Watergate investigations.  Nixon strategists such as H.R. Haldeman and Charles Colson sought out John Dean, the 31-year-old White House counsel, as a convenient sacrificial lamb.  The strategy was to blame the whole sordid Watergate mess on Dean and get back to business.  Dean refused to play the role of patsy and the rest is history as the Nixon Administration went down in flames and the first presidential resignation in American history occurred the following year.