Last weekend, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales officially turned in his resignation to President Bush. Although the resignation doesn’t take effect until Sept. 17, people are already breathing a sigh of relief.

This relief comes from the weight of embarrassment being lifted off of us as a nation. During this administration, we have had a lot of officials come out and blatantly lie to us, but Gonzales was one of the worst at doing so.

Most of these politicians are trained liars and can tell the American people whatever they want to with a straight face, but Gonzales was different. He wasn’t a politician. He was a puppet.

The way this administration seems to work is officials tell us what they need to in order to further their agenda, that agenda goes awry and they then blame someone else, forcing them to lie so that person can take all of the blame for everyone and eventually lose their job.

This is probably how it worked in this situation. In this situation, the administration wanted to fire certain deputy attorneys due to party alignment and beliefs, which is illegal. In order to get this done, they needed a scapegoat, and it looks like they planned for it to be Gonzales all along. Gonzales was inexperienced when he came to be considered for the attorney general position. His most noticeable experience was representing Bush in the Supreme Court, and his inexperience would lead him to listen to others within the administration. This would effectively make Gonzales a puppet, with others in the administration pulling the strings.

Everything went as planned and attorneys were fired. Of course, between the press asking questions and the Democrats complaining about their attorneys, the administration’s plan was exposed, but this was also part of their plan.

Once the plan was exposed, they could blame Gonzales, have him lie about what really went on and then have him go on his merry way.

Gonzales didn’t exactly lie, but instead froze up and said that he forgot everything that went on with any of the firings. This is a significant difference because it shows us a little more about how this administration works behind the scenes.

Before Gonzales went in front of Congress he had practiced sessions with fellow party members on how to answer Congress’ questions. Even after these practice sessions, Gonzales came off as an idiot who couldn’t remember his own name. This is very possibly because the administration wanted him to look incompetent, which would lead to a reason for the illegal firings, and wouldn’t lead to anyone higher up in the administration getting blamed.

The administration has been doing this in the years they have been in power. This situation is almost identical to the situation that happened a while ago with Scooter Libby. The administration used Libby for their agenda just like they used Gonzales. Libby was blamed from something that someone else higher in the administration actually did. He was forced to lie and he was removed from office. The only difference is that, in Libby’s case, he also had to be pardoned because what was going on was illegal.

The bottom line is that people really have to watch what the current administration is doing. They know people are busy, and they think that people are too busy to realize what is going on. If people really look, though, they can see the layers of deception that these public officials lay out, and then maybe the country won’t be so confused and divided along party lines.

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